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Merce Cunningham, considered the most influential choreographer of the 20th century, was a many-sided artist. He was a dance-maker, a fierce collaborator, a chance taker, a boundless innovator, a film producer, and a teacher.
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His style and choreographic process harnessed the use of possibility and randomisation, a new innovation for contemporary dance. During his career, Merce Cunningham created 180 repertory dances and more than 700 Events, in which he knit together movement phrases from past and future works into a choreographic event that could be performed anywhere.
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The post modern dance was majorly influenced by the political state of the USA and the action of questioning the truth. included the theories of..
- “Anything goes” (time of subjectivism), which means that everything proposed is valid.
- Questioning of ‘modern’ dance principles and history
- Search for the degree zero of movement
- Search of a lack of expression by the dancer.
-Identification of social and ideological marks in the body and its movement
-Questioning of the value of the notion -
According to contemporary dance history, the ambience of social and cultural changing is noticeable in arts by a tendency for experimentation and radicalism. From this time on, choreographers stop creating ‘schools’ or ‘styles’ like their modern masters did. Influences between each others are less direct and more fragmented. The modern dance art form was pioneered by Isadora Duncan and matured under the influence of Ruth St. Denis, Martha Graham and Merce Cunningham
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Butoh style of movement also had heavy influence from historical events. Butoh was born out the turmoil and chaos resulting in a loss of identity following WWII that propelled them to reexamine their own culture and to create an indigenous modern genre of dance. The japanese influence contempary style included..
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- Use of taboo topics -Extreme or absurd environments. -Slow hyper-controlled motion. -Almost nude bodies completely painted in white. -Upward rolled eyes and contorted face. -Inward rotated legs and feet. -Fetal positions.
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The work of Pina Bausch is close related to contemporary dance but is most commonly known as a modality of postmodern or contemporary ballet (from the dance perspective and not the theatrical one)). This is possibly because she uses classical, virtuous dancers, but goes far away from the classical ballet performing conventions. At the same time, even if her pieces include theatrical gestures and voice, she refuses the theatrical procedure of constructing characters.
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Her career and influence in dance began in 1973 and she quickly adapted and changed the contemporary genre. she included techiques such as.. -Combination of poetic and everyday elements.
-Shows where there’s mixture of musical hall, operetta and happening.
-Recurrent subject: the human loss within social systems that are stereotypical and hypocrite.
-Denunciation of codes of seduction.
-Repetition and non linear narrative. -
Rudolph Nureyev is an archetypical classical figure who will not hesitate to work with modern and contemporary dancers and that becomes a great incentive for the classical community to start trespassing barriers. he had great influence on the evolution of contemporary.
While at the origins of modern and contemporary dance, ballet appears often either as a model to refuse or as a foreign field. over time sees classical and contemporary dance into a position of reciprocal interest.