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Post-Modern Dance Artists

By the early 1960s, however, a new generation of dancers began to view modern dance as a genre beset with the same problems of exclusive virtuosity, a formulaic standardization of vocabulary and the limited expressive freedom that had plagued the classical ballet and against which it had been offered, in part, as an alternative. In response, dancers and choreographers began to turn away from the standards of modern dance. These post-modern artists began to experiment with every aspect of dance in order to discover and develop new forms of expressive movement.

Terpsichore In Sneakers by Sally Banes explores the post-modern dance movement, its most prominent artists and their work. The introduction includes a brief history the modern dance from which post-modern dance arose. It begins in the late 1800s with the work of Loie Fuller who presented, in the context of serious art, dances borrowed from the styles of popular entertainment. The development of non-classical dance continued through the more personalized, natural rhythms of Isadora Duncan. Ruth St. DenisÆ exotic dances, inspired and influenced by the spiritual dances and traditions of Asia. And finally the modern dance of Martha Graham, whose movement and gestures evoked universal psychological states ranging from pain to ecstasy.

The break from modern to post-modern dance begins in the late 1940s with the work of Merce Cunningham, who had gotten his start as a member of the Martha Graham Dance Company. His departure was based on his reconsidered assumptions concerning expressive movement. He asserted that: Any movement can be material for a dance: Any compositional method is valid: Any part of the body can be used: Music, costume, decor, lighting and dancing have their own separate logics and identities: Any space can be danced in: Dance can be about anything, but it is fundamentally and primarily about the human body and its movements, beginning with wa...

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Post-Modern Dance Artists. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 08:49, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1713082.html