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 and/or dance:
“The modern woman is the curse of the universe. A disaster, that’s what. She thinks that before her arrival on the scene no woman ever did anything worthwhile before, no woman was ever liberated until her time, no woman really ever amounted to anything.”
—Adela Rogers St. Johns (1894–1988)
“You whig emblem, you woman chaser,
why do you dance over the wide lawn tonight
clanging the garbage pail like great silver bells?”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)