The early years of American Modern dance

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...

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