Free dance is a 20th century dance form that preceded modern dance. Rebelling against the rigid constraints of classical ballet, Loie Fuller, Isadora Duncan and Ruth St. Denis (with her work in theater) developed their own styles of free dance and laid the foundations of American modern dance with their choreography and teaching. In Europe Rudolf Laban, Emile Jaques-Dalcroze and François Delsarte developed their own theories of human movement and methods of instruction that led to the development of European modern and Expressionist dance.
Free dance was prolific in Central and Eastern Europe, where national schools were created - the School of Musical Movement (Heptachor), in Russia, and the Orkesztika School, in Hungary.
Famous quotes containing the words free and/or dance:
“It may be that the most interesting American struggle is the struggle to set oneself free from the limits one is born to, and then to learn something of the value of those limits.”
—Greil Marcus (b. 1945)
“Not fat but the greatest possible suppleness and strength is what a good dancer wants from his nourishment—and I could not even guess what the spirit of a philosopher might wish to be more than a good dancer. For dance is his ideal, and also his art, and finally also his only piety, his “service to God.””
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)