Contemporary Moderns

By monicalaurel

  • Loie Fuller born

  • Isadora Duncan born

  • Isadora Duncan moves to London

  • Pioneers tour Europe

  • Duncan opens first school

    School in Berlin-Grunewald, Germany

  • Katherine Dunham born

  • Denishawn School Opens

    In 1915, St. Denis and Shawn started the Denishawn school in Los Angeles. Ballet moves without shoes, ethnic and traditional dances, Dalcroze Eurhythmics, and Delsarte gymnastics were all studied by the students.

  • Doris Humphrey attends Denishawn

    Humphrey relocated to California, where she studied, performed, taught workshops, and acquired choreography at the Denishawn School of Dancing & Related Arts.

  • Pearl Primus born

  • Xochitl performed by Martha Graham

    Graham danced the title character of Xochitl in this piece choreographed by Ted Shawn about an Indian Princess. Emperor Tepancaltzin was played by Ted Shawn. Martha remembers something that happened during a performance.

  • Duncan moves to Moscow

  • Period: to

    Isadora Duncan's last US tour

    Isadora alluded to her communism during her last United States tour

  • Isadora Duncan dies

  • Martha Graham Dance Company and School Established

    Martha Graham Center of Contemporary Dance was established in a small studio on the Upper East Side.

  • Loie Fuller dies

  • Humphrey/Weidman School & company established

    Humphrey and Weidmanquit Denishawn to start their own school and business. Humphrey desired to depart from Denishawn's sentimentalism and romanticism in favor of a new dance language and technique that was really "contemporary."

  • Martha Graham's Heretic

    first concert made up of solos, Graham created Heretic

  • Ted Shawn buys Jacob's Pillow

    Shawn set up Men Dancers who worked at Jacob's Pillow.

  • Ballet Negres established

    Dunham formed a group called Ballets Nègres, one of the first black ballet companies in the United States.

  • Alvin Ailey born

  • Katherine Dunham's School Negro Dance Group established

    Negro Dance Group. It was a school for Dunham to teach young black dancers about their African heritage.

  • Pina Bausch born

  • Pearl Primus Joins New Dance Group

    Primus began her formal study of dance with the New Dance Group under founders, Jane Dudley, Sophie Maslow & William Bates.

  • Pearl Primus travels to Africa to study dance

    Pearl Primus receives a Rosenwald Foundation scholarship to travel to Africa to study dance, which would become the first of many research trips.

  • Revelations Premieres

    Ailey said that one of America’s richest treasures was the African-American cultural heritage—“sometimes sorrowful, sometimes jubilant, but always hopeful

  • Phoenix Dance Theatre formed

  • Alvin Ailey dies

  • Pearl Primus dies

  • Pina Bausch dies