Modern dance is a term usually referring to 20th-century concert dance, although it has also been applied to a category of 20th-century ballroom dances. Modern dance refused classical ballet's stress on feet as the primary catalyst for dance movements. It, instead, put stress on torso employing such elements as contact-release, floor work, fall and recovery, and improvisation. It was usually performed in bare feet, often with non-traditional costuming.
Read more about Modern Dance: Predecessors, Early Modern Dance in America, Popularization in America, African American Modern Dance, Legacy of Modern Dance
Famous quotes containing the words modern dance, modern and/or dance:
“Miss Nancy Ellicott smoked
And danced all the modern dances;
And her aunts were not quite sure how they felt about it,
But they knew that it was modern.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“Perhaps a modern society can remain stable only by eliminating adolescence, by giving its young, from the age of ten, the skills, responsibilities, and rewards of grownups, and opportunities for action in all spheres of life. Adolescence should be a time of useful action, while book learning and scholarship should be a preoccupation of adults.”
—Eric Hoffer (1902–1983)
“God be with the times when I
Cared not a thraneen for what chanced
So that I had the limbs to try
Such a dance as there was danced—
Love is like the lion’s tooth.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)