Modern dance , like jazz, is a quintessentially American art form. In the beginning its pioneers claimed that it was inherently different from all traditional genres of dance , chiefly ballet , and that the practitioner of one could not perform the other . But as with every thesis and antithesis , a new synthesis is created . Well-trained dancers now perform brilliantly in both ballet and modern dance - or in the hybrid style that has become common to many choreographers in the United States and Europe.
The term modern dance is imprecise because it includes a huge variety of dancers , choreographers and movement styles that began to develop after the turn of the century . The common element is more an attitude or an approach than a single style . Mostly women , the pioneers in the new way of dancing were rebels by nature. They were breaking with tradition ; they were also creating a tradition. As they choreographer and dance writer Agnes de Millie has said of Isadora Duncan, the barefoot Californian who introduced a stripped -down style of movement to Europeans .
The Denishawn Company , presided over by the husband -wife team of Ruth St.DENIS and Ted Shawn , was another early alternative to ballet. Through its tour and its school , Denishawn popularized a version of dance as an exotic spectacle modeled on the traditional dances of Egypt and India . Perhaps the company's greatest influence, through derives from its dancers,some of whom reacted against what they perceived as the overly decorative and restrictive Denishawn style to become the first modern choreographers .
Two of these were Martha Graham and Doris Humphrey. beginning in the 1920s, Graham developed a system of movement based upon an awareness of breathing . Well into her 90s at this writing and still at work as a choreographer, Graham in her classic works like Primitive Mysteries (1931) and Appalachian Spring (1945) has often relied on a rough - edged display of emotion oriented dance entered America through h=the works of the German expressionist Mary Wigman and her disciple, Hnya Holm.
A third line of development came form another cultural tradition entirely. Beginning in the 1940s , Katherine Dunham and Pearl Primus, both trained as anthropologists , resurrected a mixture of black dances - form jazz , from Africa, the Caribbean and the American south and melded htem into an eclectic style that thrives today,most notably in the company of Alvin Ailey.
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