How much do you know about the history of modern dance?

Genre of Western Concert or Theatrical Dance

• Modern dance is a broad genre of western concert or theatrical dance that primarily arose out of Europe and the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
• Modern dance was developed as a rejection of classical ballet and a way to express social concerns like socioeconomic and cultural factors.
• Early modern dance artists such as Isadora Duncan, Maud Allan, and Loie Fuller disregarded ballet's strict movement vocabulary and stopped wearing corsets and pointe shoes.
• Sociopolitical concerns, major historical events, and the development of other art forms contributed to the continued development of modern dance in the United States and Europe throughout the 20th century.
• American modern dance can be divided into three periods or eras: Early Modern, Central Modern, and Late Modern.
• Martha Graham is often regarded as the founding mother of modern 20th-century concert dance. She developed her own dance technique, Graham technique, that hinged on concepts of contraction and release.
• African American dance blended modern dance with African and Caribbean movement.
• The legacy of modern dance can be seen in the lineage of 20th-century concert dance forms.
• Postmodern dance developed in the 1960s in the United States when society questioned truths and ideologies in politics and art.
• Contemporary dance emerged in the 1950s as the dance form that combines the modern dance and classical ballet elements.
• Modern dancers use dancing to express their innermost emotions, often to get closer to their inner-selves.
• Important teacher-student relationships in modern dance include Martha Graham and Merce Cunningham, and Alvin Ailey and Lester Horton.