early american modern dance. why modern dance? 1900’s-1920’s *the world is changing with mass...
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Early American Modern Dance
Why Modern Dance?
1900’s-1920’s
*The world is changing with mass numbers immigrating to the US.
*WWI, The Stock Market Crash, The Great Depression, Population Growth
*WWI-mass killing (7 million people world wide)
Why Modern Dance?
*Urbanization- cities becoming more and more crowded. Extremes between the poor and rich.
* Industrialization- Factories and the production line. Small menial tasks, “repetitive”- loss of identity
Why Modern Dance?
*Ballet becoming more elaborate with sets and costumes.
*Dance has become entertainment as opposed to art.
*Art begins to speak about real things….
nature, tragedy, ugliness
Loie Fuller1862-1928
Began as a skirt dancer
Interest in lights, colors, angles
Experiments with chemical dyes to creates light gels
Famous in Paris- “La Loie”
Owns patents on light gels and dyes
Loie Fuller
Fuller began her theatrical career as a professional child actress and later choreographed and performed dances as a skirt
dancer in vaudeville, and circus shows.
Loie FullerAn early free dance
practitioner, Fuller developed her own natural movement and improvisation techniques. Fuller
combined her choreography with
silk costumes illuminated by multi-coloured lighting of
her own design.
Loie FullerAlthough Fuller became famous in America through works such as Serpentine Dance (1891), she felt that she was not taken seriously by the public who still thought of her as an actress. Her warm reception in Paris during a European tour persuaded Fuller to remain in France and continue her work. A regular performer at the Folies Bergere with works such as Fire Dance, Fuller became the embodiment of the Art Noveau movement. Her Serpentine Dance was filmed in 1896 by the pioneering film-makers Auguste and Louis Lumiere.
Loie Fuller
Fuller's pioneering work attracted the attention, respect, and friendship of many French artists and scientists.
Loie Fuller
Fuller held many patents related to stage lighting including chemical
compounds for creating color and the use of chemical salts for luminescent
lighting and garments
Loie Fuller
Loie Fuller's original stage name was "Louie".In modern French "L'ouie" is the word for a sense of hearing. When Fuller reached Paris she gained a nickname which was a pun on "Louie"/"L'ouie". She was renamed "Loïe" - this nickname is a corruption of the early or Medieval French "L'oïe", a precursor to "L'ouie", which means "receptiveness" or "understanding".
Loie Fuller
Fuller is responsible for the European tours of the early modern dancers (she was the first American modern dancer to perform in Europe), introducing Isadora Duncan to Parisian audiences and developing the acceptance of modern dance as a serious art form.
Isadora Duncan1877-1927
Dancer, adventurer, revolutionist, ardent defender of the poetic spirit, Isadora Duncan has been one of the most enduring influences on 20th century culture. Ironically, the very magnitude of her achievements as an artist, as well as the sheer excitement and tradgedy of her life, have tended to dim our awareness of the originality, depth and boldness of her thought.
Isadora Duncan“Mother of Modern
Dance”
Female freedom
Nature and natural movements
Inspired by the Greek culture
Barre Legged, Barre Foot
Isadorables
Isadora Duncan
Isadora was a thinker as well as poet, gifted with a lively poetic imagination, a radical defiance of "Things as they are," and the ability to express her ideas with verve and humor. To best understand Isadora, she was a theorist of dance, a critic of modern society, culture, education and a champion of the struggles for women's rights, social revolution and the realization of poetry in everyday life.
Isadora Duncan
Virtually alone, Isadora restored dance to a high place among the arts. Breaking with convention, Isadora traced the art of dance back to its roots as a sacred art.
Isadora Duncan
She developed within this idea, free and natural movements inspired by the classical Greek arts, folk dances, social dances, nature and natural forces as well as an approach to the new American athleticism which included skipping, running, jumping, leaping, tossing.
Isadora Duncan
With free-flowing costumes, bare feet and loose hair, Duncan restored dancing to a new vitality using the solar plexus and the torso as the generating force for all movements to follow. Her celebrated simplicity was oceanic in depth -- and Isadora is credited with inventing what later came to be known as Modern Dance.
Ruth St. Denis1879-1968
Ruth St. Denis• Inspiration for new dance
and drama techniques came from her studies of Egyptian goddesses
• Traveled Europe performing her "Dance Translations"
• Married Ted Shawn in 1914
• Taught the idea of "music visualization" and the Denishawn studio in Hollywood for many years
Ruth St. Denis
Her early works are indicative of her
interests in exotic mysticism and
spirituality
Ruth St. DenisBy 1905, St. Denis began a career as a solo artist. She had designed an elaborate and exotic costume and a series of steps telling the story of a mortal maid who was loved by the god Krishna. Entitled "Radha," this solo dance (was an attempt to translate St. Denis' understanding of Indian culture and mythology to the American dance stage.
Ted Shawn21 October 1891 — 9 January, 1972
• Got into dance because of a physical disorder (diptheria) at the age of 19
• Personal dance instructor to Martha Graham
• Founded the Jacob's Pillow dance school
Ted Shawn• Founded the dance
troupe "Ted Shawn and His Men Dancers"
• Appeared in one of the first dance films ever made (Dances of the Ages)
• First American man to gain a world-wide reputation for the art of dance
Denishawn
• First professional dance studio and company in America
• Established by Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn
• Focused on ballet, ethnic dances, music, and other art forms
Denishawn
• Star students included Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey and Charles Weidman
• First located in Los Angeles
Locomotor Movements
Movements that travel through from one point in space
to another
Walk
Run
Jump
Skip
Hop
Slide
Gallop
Leap
Movement Elements
Time- An idea that helps us to organize movement. It can be thought of musically or internally.
Shape- The form or forms made by the body while sill or in motion
Movement Elements
Space- Unlimited area in which movement can occur that extends in all directions.
Force- Quality of a movement. Force equals energy.
Ways to Alter Movement
Time- Fast, Slow, Rhythm
Shape- Symmetrical, Asymmetrical, Curved, Angular
Space- Direction, Level, Floor Pattern
Force- Strong, Weak, Sharp, Smooth, Shaking, Swinging
Sources
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loie_Fuller
http://www.kelseyjolarson.com/marthagraham/denishawn.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Shawn
http://www.isadoraduncan.org/About_Isadora/about_isadora.html