Modern dance

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An example of modern dance
Ultima Vez / Wim Vandekeybus with Mauro Pawlowski : What's the Prediction? ( ImPulsTanz 2010)

The term modern dance is colloquially understood (in contrast to historical dance ) in ballet schools, dance studios and dance training courses largely as an aesthetic delimitation from classical ballet and thus largely means what is more correctly summarized today under the term " contemporary dance ".

As a historical dance term, modern dance describes a variant of stage dance that has arisen in the USA from efforts to renew classical ballet, but also from the influences of vaudeville , pantomime , silent film , avant-garde and exotic movements since around 1900.

Modern dance in dance history

The modern dance can be similar to the European expressive dance on student generation of François Delsarte traced. The famous solo dances of Ruth St. Denis and Isadora Duncan shaped a new style that was less characterized by technical brilliance than by a fundamental openness to foreign cultures or popular culture and which put physical expression in the foreground.

The choreographer Martha Graham , who emerged from the Denishawn School, is considered to be the most important founder of a modern dance that is diametrically opposed to classical ballet and at the same time claims to be stylistic uniform. Thanks to Graham's artistic charisma and publicity, as well as her long life, the term, initially directly associated with her person, has for a long time become a synonym for dance art anchored in the present.

In addition to Martha Graham, a number of other choreographers have shaped the development of modern dance in the USA for decades : Doris Humphrey , Helen Tamiris , Charles Weidman, Lester Horton and José Limón should be mentioned, among others . The latter two in particular should have a significant influence on the development of modern dance in dance lessons through the development of their own teaching systems.

A large number of American dance companies such as u. a. the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and the Dance Theater of Harlem , succeeding the Martha Graham Dance Company, had international touring successes under the label Modern Dance . It was only through the efforts of new generations of choreographers since the 1970s that terms such as postmodern dance and new dance as well as contemporary dance emerged , a term that is now also anchored in most European languages ​​as Danse contemporaire , danza contemporanea and contemporary dance in Germany. In 2007, the Iwanson Sixt Foundation was the first foundation for modern contemporary dance to be established in Germany.

Modern dance in the German-speaking area

In Germany , the term modern dance was even more paradigmatic for contemporary dance art than in the USA . Last but not least, the continuous touring activity of the Martha Graham Dance Company, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, the Limón Dance Company, the Dance Theater of Harlem and others has contributed to the concept of modern dance well beyond professional circles to make known.

The German translation of Moderner Tanz was never able to gain acceptance. Choreographers in Germany who (in contrast to the strong movement of German dance theater ) were inspired by the American aesthetics of modern dance , used the downright programmatic term for themselves. Mention should be made of Birgitta Trommler and Jochen Ulrich, the Swedes Jessica Iwanson and Christina Caprioli, but also the US-Americans Amanda Miller, Liz King, the siblings Christa and Jenny Coogan (today Palucca-Schule ) and Jörg Wenzel, who is the Limón technique teaches.

Modern dance in the dance studio

As a result of the popularization of modern dance on the stage, a large number of so-called “modern dance centers” emerged in the field of artistic dance lessons as a counterpoint to the traditional “ballet school”. As the choreographers of modern dance conceptually always the more popular and more like the musical dance attributed jazz dance had accrued, so does the modern (not traditional) dance lessons developed into two categories: jazz dance and modern dance . Terminological and content-related compromises such as “modern jazz” are also widespread in the courses offered by dance studios. From today's perspective, it is interesting to observe that the development of hip-hop dance, which in the past would probably have been assigned to jazz dance, is assigned to the conceptual successor of modern dance , i.e. contemporary dance, in the perception of dance history .

See also

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