Ideas About Dance
Charles Weidman wanted to create a uniquely American style of movement. He wanted to develop movement that was not based on animals or bugs or fairy tale stories like the common themes in popular ballets. He also wanted to break free from the current ideas of modern dance embodied by the DeniShawn company (of which he was a member). He wanted to "dance man and woman in America today." He was most famous for his work with Doris Humphrey with whom he started the Humphrey-Weidman Company. The two met when they were dancing in the DenisShawn Company (of Ted Shawn and Ruth St. Denis) and they soon after decided to create a dance company that built off of "dance style that sprang from American Soil". Weidman's work was completely new to the dance world because he was trying to break away from ballet's nature of defying gravity to create a dance style that gave in to the natural "pull of gravity."
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