Modern Dance Revolutions Palette

Overview

Documentary-style history of modern dance, highlighting rebellious choreographers, key works, and ideas that overturned ballet conventions and shaped contemporary dance.

From Ballet to Free Movement: Isadora Duncan

• Late 19th-century ballet seen as rigid, aristocratic, and encrusted in convention.
• Isadora Duncan pioneered natural, barefoot movement and loose clothing.
• Emphasized personal voice, freedom from convention, and expressive physicality.
• Feminist manifesto “The Dancer of the Future” envisioned liberated female dancers.
• Major impact through charisma and opening stages to non-ballet virtuosity.

Early 20th-Century Revolutions: Stravinsky, Nijinsky, Nijinska

• Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring (1913): propulsive, visceral music inspiring radical choreography.
• Nijinsky’s choreography inverted ballet: turned-in feet, angular, jerky force, collapsing jumps; caused a riot.
• Bronislava Nijinska’s Les Noces (1923): structured, socialist-inflected wedding theme; ensemble-focused virtuosity.
• Used pointe as stabbing, cubist angularity; counterpoint rhythms between men and women.
• Legacy preserved in Royal Ballet revivals (Ashton inviting Nijinska in 1966).

German Ausdruckstanz and Laban’s System

• Rudolf Laban: teacher, theorist; movement choirs, dance notation; Ausdruckstanz founder.
• Bohemian background; exploratory schools (Munich 1913; Monte Verità) blending mysticism and natural living.
• Key principle: dance as primary art, independent from music visualization.
• Mary Wigman’s Witch Dances: first in silence (1914), later with percussion; dancer-led music, mask, raw force.

Politics and Dance Theatre: Kurt Jooss and The Green Table

• Jooss fused Laban methods with ballet to create political dance-theatre.
• The Green Table (1932): anti-war allegory with masked diplomats; recurring Death; cyclical inevitability of war.
• Nazi era: Jooss fled; Laban briefly employed, censored by Goebbels; lost positions, schools closed.
• Laban in England: movement analysis in factories; heritage reconstruction attempts (e.g., Green Clowns metaphors of mechanization).

American Modernism: Martha Graham

• Sought distinct American identity; narrative works (e.g., Appalachian Spring).
• Developed Graham technique: contraction (breathing out) and release (breathing in) rooted in the gut.
• Emphasis on breath shaping emotion and movement; rigorous codification, analysis, and class.
• Helios displayed technique theatrically; Graham built company, repertory, and legacy.

Abstraction and Chance: Merce Cunningham and John Cage

• Cunningham removed narrative and prescribed meaning; movement stands alone.
• Influenced by Cage’s chance operations (I Ching), independent music/dance creation.
• Dancers rehearsed in silence; stopwatch precision; austere, self-motivated process.
• Audiences challenged to read non-synergistic dance/music; critics later lauded spacious inventiveness.

Judson Dance Theater and Minimalism

• 1960s New York: everyday movement, collaboration across arts; democratized who can dance.
• Yvonne Rainer’s No Manifesto: rejecting spectacle, virtuosity, star glamour, hierarchy.
• Trio A: plain, weighted, continuous awkward movement; non-hierarchical execution; strict transmission via designated custodians.

Punk, Pop, and Transgression: Armitage and Michael Clark

• Carol Armitage fused ballet refinement with punk energy (Drastic Classicism); embraced extremes.
• Michael Clark combined rigorous ballet with punk, club culture, and provocative costuming (Lee Bowery collaborations).
• Attracted non-traditional audiences; controversial, charismatic, “rock and roll” company ethos.

Accumulation and Feminist Structures: Trisha Brown and Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker

• Trisha Brown’s Accumulation: simple, additive everyday gestures; elegant, architectural clarity.
• De Keersmaeker’s Rosas danst Rosas (1983): precise repetition, teenage-like gestures, femininity as device.
• Debate on pop appropriation (Beyoncé’s Countdown); De Keersmaeker launched Re: Rosas remix tutorials, inviting public remixes.

Dance-Theatre on Grand Scale: Pina Bausch

• Tanztheater integrating speech, props, game-like actions; epic, highly visual dreamscapes.
• Collaborative process via questions, filmed responses, iterative selection.
• Spectacular sets (earth, water, stones) challenge and transform dancers.
• Works reflect grotesque, poetic, and personal memories (e.g., Café Müller).

Reimagining Ballet’s Language: William Forsythe

• Questioned ballet’s codified constraints; foregrounded the body without decor.
• Drew on Laban’s spatial architecture: linking positions with lines, creating/relocating centers.
• Classical vocabulary stretched to extremes (e.g., Steptext); bridged ballet and contemporary communities.

Postmodern Collage and Image Mining: Leigh Anderson

• Smithereens (1999): collaged historical dance images into new “mysterious dances.”
• Students explored gesture, spacing, group relations; playful “Martian dance historian” approach.
• Interest in populist theatre; widening dance audiences beyond traditional venues.

21st-Century Hybrids and Technology: Akram Khan and Wayne McGregor

• Akram Khan: hybridizes Kathak with contemporary; influenced by pop-cultural physical icons; authenticity via cross-pollination.
• Wayne McGregor: technology-fed research; non-sequitur structures (Polar Sequences) to disrupt flow and build disquiet.
• Internet/YouTube broaden access, influence, and documentation; choreographers remix global sources.

Preserving Living Heritage: Musée de la Danse

• Boris Charmatz’s museum-as-choreography at Tate Modern; blurs visitor/performer roles.
• Emphasizes dance as embedded in economy, social networks, history, politics.
• Advocates collective participation and rethinking conservation through bodies and memory.

Key Figures and Works

Key Terms & Definitions

• Ausdruckstanz: “Dance of expression/feeling,” early German modern dance emphasizing inner states.
• Contraction/Release: Graham technique based on breath; exhale contracts torso, inhale releases.
• Chance Operations: Compositional method using randomness (e.g., I Ching, dice) to decide elements.
• Movement Choir: Laban’s large-group formations exploring communal movement structures.
• Living Architecture: Laban/Forsythe view of the body mapping spatial lines, centers, and geometric relations.
• Accumulation: Trisha Brown’s additive structuring of gestures in fixed sequence.
• Tanztheater: German “dance-theatre” blending dance with theatrical elements and narrative fragments.

Action Items / Next Steps

• Study exemplar works via available recordings to analyze innovations (Rite of Spring, Les Noces, Witch Dance, The Green Table).
• Practice Graham contraction/release drills; relate breath to emotion.
• Explore Cunningham chance procedures: create short studies with independent music.
• Reconstruct Rosas danst Rosas excerpts; experiment with remix methodology.
• Apply Laban/Forsythe spatial analysis: create phrases shifting centers and replacing lines.
• Devise short Tanztheater scenes using prompts, props, and set constraints (e.g., sand, water).
• Conduct a mini Musée de la Danse: participatory sharing of repertory fragments in public space.