-ʤ- Dance Classes: Dance Styles: Modern. Dance Studio Mississauga

Modern

Modern dance usually refers to 20th-century concert dance that developed in the United States and Europe. Rebelling against classical ballet, early modern dance pioneers began to practice "free dance", often in bare feet. In America, Loie Fuller, Isadora Duncan and Ruth St. Denis developed their own styles of free dance, paving the way for American modern dance pioneers Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey and José Limón. In Europe, Rudolf von Laban, Émile Jaques-Dalcroze and François Delsarte developed theories of human movement and methods of instruction that led to the development of European modern and expressionist dance.

Today the term modern dance is sometimes used interchangeably with contemporary dance. However, for some people, modern dance refers only to dance that was aligned with the modernist art movement of the 1930s and all dance that developed afterwards, from these early roots, is contemporary dance.

Unlike ballet choreographers, who usually work within an established vocabulary of steps, modern choreographers explore their own movement styles, creating steps as they go and passing them on to their dancers. Sometimes this results in the establishment of a specific style and technique. Below are techniques of several early modern dance choreographers:

Cunningham: In his work, choreographer Merce Cunningham experiments with chance methods and explores pure movement devoid of emotional implications. While his ideas and approaches are taught in dance schools around the world as the Cunningham technique, Cunningham himself prefers that his ideas not be codified but remain flexible. Some elements taught in Cunningham classes are strength, clarity and precision and maximum use of the spine and torso.

Graham: Martha Graham created a technique that was the first significant alternative to the idiom of classical ballet. Her dance language was intended to express universally shared human emotions and experiences, rather than merely provide decorative displays of graceful movement. Many of the steps feature forceful, angular movements originating in spasms of muscular contraction and release centred in the dancer's core. Graham technique is taught in dance schools throughout the world.

Horton: Along with ballet, Lester Horton studied the dance of American First Nations people and trained with Alvin Ailey and Japanese dancer Michio Ito. This wide-ranging background provided a rich base for his choreographic works. The technique based on his teachings and choreographic style is distinguished by a powerful stillness in the torso from which radiates asymmetrical movements of the limbs.

Humphrey: Doris Humphrey was a prolific choreographer and, after training at the Denishawn School in Los Angeles, she founded a school and company in New York City with Charles Weidman. Her interest in the body's weight in relation to gravity led to explorations of fall and recovery, which became one of the main principles of her technique. She believed that dance existed in "the arc between two deaths", meaning that when dancing the body is in a constant state of either "fall" with gravity or "recovery" in a swing or rebound away from gravity.

Limón: The Limón technique is based on the choreographic and teaching approaches of José Limón, who further developed the ideas of his teacher Doris Humphrey. Limón choreographed many works known for their drama and musicality. Limón technique uses principles of opposition, succession, and fall and recovery to a state of suspension through swing or rebound. Limón created an exercise known as body as orchestra, where the legs, arms and torso represent sounds of the timpani, strings and woodwind sections of an orchestra, in order to teach integration of different qualities into a whole movement.