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:
“In some unused lagoon, some nameless bay,
On sluggish, lonesome waters, anchor’d near the shore,
An old, dismasted, gray and batter’d ship, disabled, done,
After free voyages to all the seas of earth, haul’d up at last and
hawser’d tight,
Lies rusting, mouldering.”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892)
“We look at the dance to impart the sensation of living in an affirmation of life, to energize the spectator into keener awareness of the vigor, the mystery, the humor, the variety, and the wonder of life. This is the function of the American dance.”
—Martha Graham (1894–1991)