History
Contemporary dance draws on both classical ballet and modern dance, whereas postmodern dance was a direct and opposite response to modern dance. Merce Cunningham, initially a student of Martha Graham, accompanied his dance in April 1944, with music that was composed and performed by John Cage, who said that Cunningham's dance "no longer relies on linear elements (...) nor does it rely on a movement towards and away from climax. As in abstract painting, it is assumed that an element (a movement, a sound, a change of light) is in and of itself expressive; what it communicates is in large part determined by the observer himself." Cunningham continued to showcase his work until 1953, when he formed Merce Cunningham Dance Company at the Black Mountain College in North Carolina. Cunningham is considered the first choreographer to "develop an independent attitude towards modern dance" and defy the ideas that were established by it. Cunningham made over one hundred and fifty works for his dance company and his pieces have been incorporated into ballet and modern dance companies internationally.
Read more about this topic: Contemporary Dance
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are rather of the nature of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.”
—Aristotle (384–322 B.C.)
“The history of his present majesty, is a history of unremitting injuries and usurpations ... all of which have in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world, for the truth of which we pledge a faith yet unsullied by falsehood.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“Culture, the acquainting ourselves with the best that has been known and said in the world, and thus with the history of the human spirit.”
—Matthew Arnold (1822–1888)