Modern Dance Figure - Essay Example

Among those who started such changes was Isadora Duncan who looked towards Greek culture as an inspiration to different movement forms and later danced with bare feet and simple garbs (van Rensburg) to make her feel more freely and control her movements that express the resistance and yielding of one’s self to gravity. Chopin and Liszt were dictated her choreography. Ruth St. Denis, a contemporary of Duncan on the other hand, sought ethnic and Asian dance style and later shared her talent and discoveries in Denishawn, a dance company she established with her husband.

She taught and choreographed dance movements which were immortalized by the joint efforts of Katherine Dunham and Pearl Primus who continued to work on her style. Another contemporary in the person of Mary Wigman, looked to African and Orient culture where she widely made us of masks (van Rensburg). Towards the middle of the twentieth century, the second wave of modern dancers flourished in New York and were represented by Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey and Charles Weidman who danced with Denishawn and another dancer from the Wigman company.

However, unlike their teachers who looked for external inspirations, they turned to basic human movements like walking, running, breathing, sitting among others and transformed them to aesthetic movements expressed in dances. Graham concentrated in the breathing process and improved her movements from there, using them as she indulged in the narrative structure. Humphrey on the other hand used the natural dynamic of human footfall expressing fall and recovery (van Rensburg). Twyla Tharp who came later, combined the styles of the aforementioned early dancers and choreographers with that of the ballet and social dances which is now largely reflected in the ‘modern’ modern dance. P. Diddy, one of the modern dancers nowadays, expresses the combination of the aforementioned dance styles in his dance movements.

He is a living legacy of those who came before him who valued dance movements to express their thoughts and emotions. Diddy’s dance is under the genre of hip-hop and break dance, which reflects his expressions in his songs. Sometimes, Diddy just seems to be walking, a reflection of the second wave of modern dance perception who incorporated natural human phenomena in their dance steps. Most of Diddy’s steps are simple and basic so that he is criticized as one who cannot really dance or does not know how to dance.

His skills in other ventures like business probably affected his patronage in the entertainment industry, coupled by his being linked to modern famous personalities like Jennifer Lopez. His dramatic and controversial lifestyle probably influenced his fame in the industry which is also basically reflected in his music and his dance. This made him a figure who young people could relate with, reflecting the life of a bad boy who freely expresses himself the way he wants to, going beyond the freedom one should have in doing anything he pleases, unmindful of what norms and people suggest. P. Diddy is able to reach out to the adolescents, strengthened by the effects of media and other entertainment figures, to express one’s freedom in whatever means one can have.

The simplicity of Diddy’s dance is also an encouragement to those who are not skilled in dancing, or it