Modern dance - Research Paper Example

Modern dance is considered a synonym of contemporary dance. The two dances share ideological or aesthetical characteristics. The name is a dance term that is used to refer to a dance trend born in the 16th century and had lasted up to the 1950’s. The dance trend had its homes in Germany, the United States and some of the surrounding countries. In the 1920’s there was a passion for interpretive dancing sweeping America. Dancers and audiences alike had been introduced to a new form of theatrical dancing that was serious.

Most of the groundwork had already been laid for the first generation of the modern dancers; they then began to develop the art to what we have presently today. Lester Horton attended early classes in ballet dancing together with the Native American dance. He did this at a school called Denishawn. In 1932, his first dance group appeared and over the two ensuing decades, the group became quite renowned. They had adopted an individual theatrical style and technique that had embraced the themes of the political and social protests as well as dressing.

He choreographed projects that were commercial and created dances for the nineteenth film of Hollywood. Some companies such as Alvin American Dance Theater still teach his dancing style (Kassing79). At the end of World War II, the founders of the modern dance style had already produced a group of talented students whom they sent out to start their own dance styles. The great battle that has been fought over respectability and position of the modern dance style has been fought and won already.

The second generation did not have to take their art or themselves with the seriousness that the founders had in the dance. Artists who were renown during the second generation of modern dance include artists such as pearl primus, Paul Taylor, Twyla Tharp and José Limón (Kassing 35). The artistic and social upheaval of the late 60’s and late 70 has signaled radical changes to modern dance. Today modern