Early American Modern Dance

Why Modern Dance?

1900’s-1920’s

*The world is changing with mass numbers immigrating to the US.

*WWI, The Stock Market Crash, The Great Depression, Population Growth

*WWI-mass killing (7 million people world wide)

Why Modern Dance?

*Urbanization- cities becoming more and more crowded. Extremes between the poor and rich.

* Industrialization- Factories and the production line. Small menial tasks, “repetitive”- loss of identity

Why Modern Dance?

*Ballet becoming more elaborate with sets and costumes.

*Dance has become entertainment as opposed to art.

*Art begins to speak about real things….

nature, tragedy, ugliness

Loie Fuller1862-1928

Began as a skirt dancer

Interest in lights, colors, angles

Experiments with chemical dyes to creates light gels

Famous in Paris- “La Loie”

Owns patents on light gels and dyes

Loie Fuller

Fuller began her theatrical career as a professional child actress and later choreographed and performed dances as a skirt

dancer in vaudeville, and circus shows.

Loie FullerAn early free dance

practitioner, Fuller developed her own natural movement and improvisation techniques. Fuller

combined her choreography with

silk costumes illuminated by multi-coloured lighting of

her own design.

Loie FullerAlthough Fuller became famous in America through works such as Serpentine Dance (1891), she felt that she was not taken seriously by the public who still thought of her as an actress. Her warm reception in Paris during a European tour persuaded Fuller to remain in France and continue her work. A regular performer at the Folies Bergere with works such as Fire Dance, Fuller became the embodiment of the Art Noveau movement. Her Serpentine Dance was filmed in 1896 by the pioneering film-makers Auguste and Louis Lumiere.

Loie Fuller

Fuller's pioneering work attracted the attention, respect, and friendship of many French artists and scientists.

Loie Fuller

Fuller held many patents related to stage lighting including chemical

compounds for creating color and the use of chemical salts for luminescent

lighting and garments

Loie Fuller

Loie Fuller's original stage name was "Louie".In modern French "L'ouie" is the word for a sense of hearing. When Fuller reached Paris she gained a nickname which was a pun on "Louie"/"L'ouie". She was renamed "Loïe" - this nickname is a corruption of the early or Medieval French "L'oïe", a precursor to "L'ouie", which means "receptiveness" or "understanding".

Loie Fuller

Fuller is responsible for the European tours of the early modern dancers (she was the first American modern dancer to perform in Europe), introducing Isadora Duncan to Parisian audiences and developing the acceptance of modern dance as a serious art form.

Isadora Duncan1877-1927

Dancer, adventurer, revolutionist, ardent defender of the poetic spirit, Isadora Duncan has been one of the most enduring influences on 20th century culture. Ironically, the very magnitude of her achievements as an artist, as well as the sheer excitement and tradgedy of her life, have tended to dim our awareness of the originality, depth and boldness of her thought.

Isadora Duncan“Mother of Modern

Dance”

Female freedom

Nature and natural movements

Inspired by the Greek culture

Barre Legged, Barre Foot

Isadorables

Isadora Duncan

Isadora was a thinker as well as poet, gifted with a lively poetic imagination, a radical defiance of "Things as they are," and the ability to express her ideas with verve and humor. To best understand Isadora, she was a theorist of dance, a critic of modern society, culture, education and a champion of the struggles for women's rights, social revolution and the realization of poetry in everyday life.

Isadora Duncan

Virtually alone, Isadora restored dance to a high place among the arts. Breaking with convention, Isadora traced the art of dance back to its roots as a sacred art.

Isadora Duncan

She developed within this idea, free and natural movements inspired by the classical Greek arts, folk dances, social dances, nature and natural forces as well as an approach to the new American athleticism which included skipping, running, jumping, leaping, tossing.

Isadora Duncan

With free-flowing costumes, bare feet and loose hair, Duncan restored dancing to a new vitality using the solar plexus and the torso as the generating force for all movements to follow. Her celebrated simplicity was oceanic in depth -- and Isadora is credited with inventing what later came to be known as Modern Dance.

Ruth St. Denis1879-1968

Ruth St. Denis• Inspiration for new dance

and drama techniques came from her studies of Egyptian goddesses

• Traveled Europe performing her "Dance Translations"

• Married Ted Shawn in 1914

• Taught the idea of "music visualization" and the Denishawn studio in Hollywood for many years

Ruth St. Denis

Her early works are indicative of her

interests in exotic mysticism and

spirituality

Ruth St. DenisBy 1905, St. Denis began a career as a solo artist. She had designed an elaborate and exotic costume and a series of steps telling the story of a mortal maid who was loved by the god Krishna. Entitled "Radha," this solo dance (was an attempt to translate St. Denis' understanding of Indian culture and mythology to the American dance stage.

Ted Shawn21 October 1891 — 9 January, 1972

• Got into dance because of a physical disorder (diptheria) at the age of 19

• Personal dance instructor to Martha Graham

• Founded the Jacob's Pillow dance school

Ted Shawn• Founded the dance

troupe "Ted Shawn and His Men Dancers"

• Appeared in one of the first dance films ever made (Dances of the Ages)

• First American man to gain a world-wide reputation for the art of dance

Denishawn

• First professional dance studio and company in America

• Established by Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn

• Focused on ballet, ethnic dances, music, and other art forms

Denishawn

• Star students included Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey and Charles Weidman

• First located in Los Angeles

Locomotor Movements

Movements that travel through from one point in space

to another

Walk

Run

Jump

Skip

Hop

Slide

Gallop

Leap

Movement Elements

Time- An idea that helps us to organize movement. It can be thought of musically or internally.

Shape- The form or forms made by the body while sill or in motion

Movement Elements

Space- Unlimited area in which movement can occur that extends in all directions.

Force- Quality of a movement. Force equals energy.

Ways to Alter Movement

Time- Fast, Slow, Rhythm

Shape- Symmetrical, Asymmetrical, Curved, Angular

Space- Direction, Level, Floor Pattern

Force- Strong, Weak, Sharp, Smooth, Shaking, Swinging

Sources

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loie_Fuller

http://www.kelseyjolarson.com/marthagraham/denishawn.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Shawn

http://www.isadoraduncan.org/About_Isadora/about_isadora.html