Modern dance, the other major genre of Western theatre dance, developed in the early 20th century as a series of reactions against what detractors saw as the limited, artificial style of movement of ballet and its frivolous subject matter. Perhaps the greatest pioneer in modern dance was Isadora Duncan. She believed that ballet technique distorted the natural movement of the body, that it “separated the gymnastic movements of the body completely from the mind,” and that it made dancers move like “articulated puppets” from the base of the spine. Duncan worked with simple movements and natural rhythms, finding her inspiration in the movements of nature—particularly the wind and waves—as well as in the dance forms that she had studied in antique sculpture. Elements that were most characteristic of her dancing included lifted, far-flung arm positions, an ecstatically lifted head, unconstrained leaps, strides, and skips, and, above all, strong, flowing rhythms in which one movement melted into the next. Her costumes, too, were unconstrained; she danced barefoot and uncorseted in simple, flowing tunics, with only the simplest props and lighting effects to frame her movements.
Duncan believed that dance should be the “divine expression” of the human spirit, and this concern with the inner motivation of dance characterized all early modern choreographers. They presented characters and situations that broke the romantic, fairy-tale surface of contemporary ballet and explored the primitive instincts, the conflicts and passions of man’s inner self. To this end they sought to develop a style of movement that was more natural and more expressive than ballet. Martha Graham, for example, saw the back, and particularly the pelvis, as the centre of all movement, and many of her most characteristic movements originated from a powerful spiral, arch, or curve in the back. Doris Humphrey saw all human movement as a transition between fall (when the body is off-balance) and recovery (when it returns to a balanced state), and in many of her movements the weight of the body was always just off-centre, falling and being caught.
Instead of defying gravity, as in ballet, modern dancers emphasized their own weight. Even their jumps and high extensions looked as if they were only momentarily escaping from the downward pull of the Earth, and many of their movements were executed close to, or on, the floor. Graham developed a wide repertoire of falls, for example, and Mary Wigman’s style was characterized by kneeling or crouching, the head often dropped and the arms rarely lifted high into the air.
As ballet sought to conceal or defy the force of gravity, so it also strove to conceal the strain of dancing. Modern dance, on the other hand—particularly the work of Graham—emphasized those qualities. In the jagged phrases, angular limbs, clenched fists, and flexed feet, in the forceful movements of the back and the clear lines of tension running through the movement, Graham’s choreography expressed not only the struggle of the dancer against physical limitations but also the power of passion and frustration. Movements were always expressive gestures, never decorative shapes. Often the body and limbs appeared racked and contorted by emotion, for these choreographers, like Nijinsky, were not afraid to appear ugly (as indeed they did to many of their contemporaries).
The structure of early modern dance works responded in part to the fragmented narrative and symbolism characteristic of modernist art and literature. Graham often employed flashback techniques and shifting timescales, as in Clytemnestra (1958), or used different dancers to portray different facets of a single character, as in Seraphic Dialogue (1955). Groups of dancers formed sculptural wholes, often to represent social or psychological forces, and there was little of the hierarchical division between principals and corps de ballet that operated in ballet.
The Expressionist school dominated modern dance for several decades. From the 1940s onward, however, there was a growing reaction against Expressionism spearheaded by Merce Cunningham. Cunningham wanted to create dance that was about itself—about the kinds of movement of which the human body is capable and about rhythm, phrasing, and structure. Above all, he wanted to create dance that was not subservient to the demands of either narrative or emotional expression. This did not mean that Cunningham wanted to make dance subservient to music or design; on the contrary, though many of his works were collaborations, in the sense that music and design formed a strong part of the total effect, these elements were often conceived—and worked—independently of the actual dance. Cunningham believed that movement should define its own space and set its own rhythms, rather than be influenced by the set and the music. He also felt that it was more interesting and challenging for the spectator to be confronted with these independently functioning elements and then to choose for himself how to relate them to one another.
Believing that all movement was potential dance material, Cunningham developed a style that embraced an extraordinarily wide spectrum, from natural, everyday actions such as sitting down and walking to virtuosic dance movements. Elements of his style even had a close affinity to ballet: jumps tended to be light and airy, the footwork fleet and intricate, and the leg extensions high and controlled. He placed greater emphasis on the vertical and less emphasis on the body’s weight and the force of gravity. Like those of Graham, many of Cunningham’s movements centred on the back and torso, but they tended less toward dramatic contractions and spirals than toward smaller and more sharply defined tilts, curves, and twists. The arms were frequently held in graceful curves and the feet pointed.
Cunningham’s phrases were often composed of elaborate, coordinating movements of the head, feet, body, and limbs in a string of rapidly changing positions. The arrangement of performers on stage was equally complex: at any one moment there might have been several dancers, in what seemed like random groupings, all performing different phrases at the same time. With no main action dominating the stage, the spectator was free to focus on any part of the dance.
While Graham’s works were usually structured around the events of a narrative, Cunningham’s works usually emerged from the working through of one or more choreographic ideas, whose development (i.e., the ordering of movements into phrases or the number of dancers working at any one time) might then have been determined by chance. Deriving its movements from such formal origins did not mean that Cunningham’s works lacked expressive power. One of his pieces, Winterbranch (1964), started out as a study based on moving into a space and falling, but it produced a powerful effect on audiences, who variously interpreted it as a piece about war, concentration camps, or even sea storms. Cunningham believed that the expressive qualities in dance should not be determined by a story line but should simply rise out of movement itself. “The emotion will appear when the movement is danced,” he claimed, “because that is where the life is.”
During the 1960s and ’70s a new generation of American choreographers, generally referred to as postmodernist choreographers, took some of Cunningham’s ideas even farther. They also believed that ordinary movement could be used in dance, but they rejected the strong element of virtuosity in Cunningham’s technique and the complexities of his phrasing and structure, insisting that such a style interfered with the process of seeing and feeling the movement clearly. Consequently, the postmodernists replaced conventional dance steps with simple movements such as rolling, walking, skipping, and running. Their works concentrated on the basic principles of dance: space, time, and the weight and energy of the dancer’s body.
Postmodernists discarded spectacle as another distraction from the real business of movement. Costumes were often ordinary practice or street clothes, there was little or no set and lighting, and many performances took place in lofts, galleries, or out-of-doors. Narrative and expression were discarded, and the dance structures were usually very simple, involving either the repetition and accumulation of simple phrases or the working through of simple movement games or tasks. In Tom Johnson’s Running Out of Breath (1976) the dancer simply ran around the stage reciting a text until he ran out of breath.
Most avant-garde modern-dance companies have been quite small and have occupied a position on the fringe of the dance world, attracting only small and specialist audiences. Although “mainstream” modern dance now attracts large audiences in both Europe and North America, it too was for many decades a minority art form, often playing to only a handful of spectators. Modern-dance companies were then, and still are, relatively small. Partly because they lack funding, they tend to use less elaborate costume and staging, and they perform in small theatres where contact with the audience is close.
Perhaps the most genuinely popular of all the subgenres within ballet and modern dance are the dance forms associated with the musical, such as tap, jazz, ballroom, and disco. In musicals of both stage and screen, dance is an essential ingredient along with song, acting, and spectacle. Although the dancing is often mechanical and unoriginal, in the work of such dancers and choreographers as Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly it can rise to the status of a genuine art form. Sometimes, as in Jerome Robbins’s choreography for the dances of the rival gangs in West Side Story (1957), it creates a powerful dramatic effect. Other innovative choreographers include Agnes deMille, whose dances in Oklahoma! (1943) were the first ever used to advance the plot, and Bob Fosse, particularly known for his work on the film All That Jazz (1979).