Modern Dance has been widely misunderstood. In fact, even the name is now kind of obsolete! When Modern dance began to emerge it was considered very rebellious and forward for its time. But that was around 1900, making modern dance's foundation over a hundred years old! Modern dance today does NOT refer to current or popular dance styles such as hip-hop or jazz.

Modern dance today is a style/technique unto itself. The dancers still wear leotards and tights, however modern dancers usually dance barefoot. There are “modern shoes” that can be worn to facilitate turning and protect the ball of the foot. However, these shoes are not required for class and many professional modern dancers wear no shoes at all for class or performance. The exercises, movements and “technique” of each modern class may vary based on the background and training of your particular teacher. Some modern techniques are very specific in their movement vocabulary and training methods. An example of a specific modern technique would be the Graham technique, based on the work of Martha Graham, a famous modern dance pioneer. Other modern classes may consist of a mix of style and movement vocabulary based on the teacher’s training.

All modern classes should include a warm-up usually started on the floor. Modern dancers, unlike ballet dancers, will spend a lot of time using the floor in both class exercises and choreography. Modern classes should also help the student explore new movement ideas and spend time teaching improvisational skills. A modern class should introduce concepts of movement unique to modern dance, such as qualities of movement, contraction and release, the use of gravity and balance in fall and recovery.
At the Diamond Dance Center, students may begin the study of modern dance when they reach the Primary II-III level. Keep in mind that modern dance is a technique and should not be viewed as easy. Upper level classes in modern can be challenging and too difficult for an untrained dancer. We strongly encourage our students to take modern. Dancers who take modern dance enjoy the freedom of movement as well as the opportunity to express themselves in a different way.

The Beginnings of Modern Dance
Developed in the 20th century, primarily in the United States and Germany, modern dance resembles modern art and music in being experimental and iconoclastic. Modern dance began at the turn of the century; its pioneers were Isadora Duncan, Loie Fuller, and Ruth St. Denis in the United States, Rudolf von Laban and Mary Wigman in Germany. Each rebelled against the rigid formalism, artifice, and superficiality of classical academic ballet and against the banality of show dancing. Each sought to inspire audiences to a new awareness of inner or outer realities, a goal shared by all subsequent modern dancers.

Early Dancers in the United States
Isadora Duncan shocked or delighted audiences by baring her body and soul in what she called “free dance.” Wearing only a simple tunic like the Greek vase figures that inspired many of her dances, she weaved and whirled in flowing natural movements that emanated, she said, from the solar plexus. She aimed to idealize abstractly the emotions induced by the music that was her motivating force, daringly chosen from the works of serious composers including Beethoven, Wagner, and Gluck. Although Duncan established schools and had many imitators, her improvisational technique was too personalized to be carried on by direct successors.

The work of the two other American pioneers was far less abstract although no less free. Loie Fuller used dance to imitate and illustrate natural phenomena: the flame, the flower, the butterfly. Experimenting with stage lighting and costume, she created illusionistic effects that remained unique in the history of dance theater until the works of Alwin Nikolais in the 1960s.

The pictorial effects achieved by Ruth St. Denis had a different source: the ritualistic dance of Asian religion. She relied on elaborate costumes and sinuous improvised movements to suggest the dances of India and Egypt and to evoke mystical feelings. With Ted Shawn, who became her partner and husband in 1914 and who advocated and embodied the vigor of the virile male on the dance stage, St. Denis enlarged her repertoire to include dances of Native Americans and other ethnic groups. In 1915 St. Denis and Shawn formed the Denishawn company, which increased the popularity of modern dance throughout the United States and abroad and nurtured the leaders of the second generation of modern dance: Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey, and Charles Weidman.

Around 1900, the dance scene had gotten fairly stale. Romantic Ballets were just about the only things being performed, but the peak of their popularity had been some 60 years earlier. At that time, a young woman named Isadora Duncan decided there must be another way to move; ballet was too artificial. So modern dance arrived as a rebellion to ballet.

ISADORA DUNCAN 1878-1927
Known as the “Mother Of Modern Dance,” Isadora Duncan’s pioneering dance style featured the free and natural movements of America’s new athleticism—skipping, jumping, leaping, tossing—blended with her passion for classical Greek arts, folk dances, social dances, nature and poetry. Perhaps Duncan’s greatest technical contribution, from which all modern dance was born, was using the torso to initiate all movement. Her modern ways and iconoclastic views on everything from dance to marriage were considered scandalous at the time. (Duncan had two children with two different men, but never married.) Her appearance was also rebellious: Duncan wore Grecian-style, free-flowing gowns, bare feet and loose hair when she danced. She was born Angela Duncan in San Francisco, but founded her first dance school in Grunwald, Germany in 1904, from which she chose six of its students, lovingly called “The Isadorables,” to tour with her.

Duncan’s story is one of the most tragic in dance history: Her children drowned in a car accident and her own life ended when her scarf got tangled in a tire on her chauffeur-driven sports car, pulling her from the moving vehicle and ultimately strangling her
Bibliography -

1. Electronic Sources

a) www.factmonster.com/ce6/ent/A0833540.html
b) The Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th Ed. Copyright 2004. Columbia University Press.
c) “What The Heck Is Modern Dance?” www.dance.net/read.html?postid=152160

2. Magazines

Susie Eisner Eley. “Dancing Through History – Segment Three.” Dance Spirit Magazine, 2002.