The big shift in dance technique between ballet and modern-dance lay in the use of the torso, body weight, and the use of the floor as a valid surface to perform on with the whole body, not just the feet. Ville de Clermont-Ferrand Dance technique challenges establishment Merce Cunningham à la Comédie de Clermont. Along with the American forerunners of modern dance, Ruth St Denis (1879-1968), Isadora Duncan (1877-1927) and Lois Fuller (1862-1928), they paved the way for Martha Graham (1894-1991) and Doris Humphrey (1895-1958), in particular to develop new styles that sought to embed raw human emotion within their dances, differing from the highly stylised emotional and refined content of ballet.
The European influences on American modern dance came from the German Expressionist dancers Mary Wigman (1886-1973) and Hanya Holm (1893-1992). What came before?īefore we had contemporary dance (1970s onwards), we had postmodern dance (1960-70s) and, prior to that, modern dance (1920s-1960s) and it is here that the styles of dance we comfortably call “contemporary” today find their genesis. In fact, it’s probably easier to say what contemporary dance is not than what it is.īut a good place to start is by thinking of it as a genre in its own right, with different styles that can be housed under one roof. Contemporary dance is a catch-all phrase used fairly indiscriminately, meaning many things to different dance communities across a wide range of cultures.