Contemporary Dance

‘If I could tell you that, I wouldn’t have to dance it.’
Isadora Duncan, asked what one of her dances meant. 

Contemporary dance came around in the 20^th century. Things move on and dance styles change, Contemporary dance has evolved over time from other styles of dance. There’s not really any rules to Contemporary dance it’s all about expressing yourself and putting your own interpretation into it. It’s very different to tradition styles like ballet, it doesn’t have a set techniques. Often the choreographer uses personal experiences to create their dance. Contemporary dance is all about exploring your natural energy and expressing your emotions. Some important names in

Contemporary dance are –
- Martha Graham
- Trisha Brown
- Isadora Duncan
- Merce Cunningham
- Jose Limon

Martha Graham is probably one of the most famous people in Contemporary dance. The Martha Graham Dance Company comes from America and was founded in 1926 by Martha Graham. It’s a contemporary dance company and dance school where people travel from all over the world to study. Her works are so famous and have been performed by many successful dancers such as Mikhail Baryshnikov, Margot Fonteyn, Liza Minnelli and Rudolf Nureyev. Martha Graham is one of the most important creative influences in contemporary dance in the last century. She was the founder and creator of contemporary dance and the inspiration for many contemporary dancers and groups. Her work is different and pushes the boundaries. Martha Graham had a set dance company she uses for all her pieces. I have focused on her as I have heard a name a lot in the dance world. I’ve studied her on other projects and know lots of information about her. 

Isadora Duncan is another very important person in the world of Contemporary dance. Isadora Duncan was born in America in 1877. She started teaching when she was 5 and she would get all the girls in the neighbourhood together and taught them to sway side to side to look like waves. She was very unusual for a woman of her time, she encouraged people to dance in their own style. She said “The dancer of the future will be one whose body and soul have grown so harmoniously together that the natural language of that soul will have become the movement of the human body. The dancer will not belong to any nation but to all humanity.”  Isadora is said to be the creator of modern dance. She wasn’t afraid to take risks and break boundaries with her work.

Another being Merce Cunningham. Merce Cunningham danced in Martha Graham’s Dance Company from 1939 to 1945. He formed his own dance company in 1953. His work has been performed by many international ballet companies and has been used in several films. He’s won lots of awards for his work. Merce’s dance company include dancers, musicians and artists. The company created a computer software called DanceForms. It’s a software where you can sketch out a dance and see it come to live in a 3D image. His style was ballet and contemporary. Merce Cunningham says it’s all about the dancer expressing them self through the dance and not the choreography by someone else. It’s all about individual expressing them self through dance. This is a quote from Merce Cunningham – “If a dancer dances – which is not the same as having theories about dancing or wishing to dance or trying to dance or remembering in his body someone else’s dance – but if the dancer dances everything is there... Our ecstasy in dance comes from the possible gift of freedom, the exhilarating moment that this exposing of the bare energy can give us. What is meant is not license, but freedom.”   

Contemporary dancers can have any training background. They can put anything from any other dance styles into Contemporary. Contemporary dance connects the mind and body because the dancers express their thoughts and emotions which pushes against the traditional ways of dance.

In Contemporary dance classes students are taught a number of different things. They are taught to connect their mind to their body and use their emotions to create a dance. They also focus on breathing and posture. They could be either taught a piece or asked to improvise their own. Contemporary dance normal has a story or stimulus to it. This is normally personal to the dancer so it makes it easier to be able to perform the dance and give out emotion.

A number of different major cities around the world offer Contemporary companies that perform to the public. You can go to college, university and dance school to study Contemporary, it’s a very popular style.    

I chose to look at contemporary dance as it’s a style I’ve only been doing for a few years. A lot of my GCSE dance course was based around contemporary dance and it interests me a lot. Being a ballet dancer from a young age I find contemporary easy to pick up but then again it can be very hard. For example ballet is very flowing and graceful where as in contemporary it’s more about attack. Contemporary doesn’t really have any set moves so you can put your own interpretation on it. This is what I like about it as you can really go outside the box and make it your own.