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of creative art. Musicians were finding new sounds and structures in music, while artists were discovering new things to paint about and new ways to paint them. Even ballet underwent a great upheaval in the early 1900s as Serge Diaghilev, a powerful theatrical entrepreneur in Paris, gathered the talents of Michel Fokine and Vaslav Nijinsky, Igor Stravinsky and Erik Satie, Jean Cocteau and Pablo Picasso for the making of new and quite revolutionary ballets, often growing out of some of the most marvelous collaborations in the history of the theatre. Fokine reformed ballet choreography and Nijinsky made a startling new movement vocabulary available to ballet through such works as L:apres-midi d'un faune (Afternoon of a Faun) and Le sacre du printemps (Rite of Spring). This may whet your appetite to read further about Parade, a Diaghilev production choreographed by Leonide Massine to music of Satie with cubist set and costumes designed by Picasso. This modernist work was going on in Paris from the early 1900s to 1920s while the flapper era was in full swing in the United States. Jazz was coming into being as a popular music form and Vernon and Irene Castle became the darlings of society, introducing new social dances to the ragtime music. Through the 19th century, women had been laden with long and heavy dresses and full heads of hair; dancers were equally hampered by conventions of fashion. In the 1920s, Irene Castle bobbed her hair and shortened her skirt, popularizing a style that relieved women in all roles - housewife or ballerina - and freed legs and torsos to engage in a much wider range of movements. Not only was the social scene changing as America outgrew her Victorian attitudes about body and dress and therefore dance, but events on stage also looked very different. Florenz Ziegfeld, the famous vaudeville producer, presented formations of gorgeous dancing girls chosen for shape of limb as well as quality of training. Four women who appeared in vaudeville as a beginning showcase for their particular talents are sometimes known as the originators of modern dance, certainly as "new" dancers, and occasionally as "aesthetic" dancers. They were strong women determined to make their individual artistic statement in dance outside of the conventions of ballet. In the 1890s, l.oie Fuller (1862-1928) went in search of more natural movement and explored dance in relation to the theatrical elements, inventing fantastic ''Fire" and "Serpentine" dances, costumed in yards of rippling silk, illuminated by multicolored lights and occasionally by full moonlight for special effect. You will see images of l.oie Fuller in sculptures, lamps, and pedestals in the Art Nouveau style, honored as a revolutionary in art and the originator of a new dance form. I..oie toured extensively in Europe, which was more open to the freshness of American dance than her native land. She organized the first European tours of Isadora Duncan and Maude Allan in the early 1900s. Isadora Duncan (1877 -1927) is probably the best known of the early modem dancers, being the romantic subject of books and films that celebrated her free spirit, pioneering not only "free" dances but a totally liberated way of life. Isadora's dances reflected the natural rhythms and movements of waves and trees. She was known for self-expressive improvisations to the music of classical composers like Beethoven and Chopin, ranging from the lyrical to the impassioned. Many of our images of Isadora's dances come from descriptions in books about her. The dances, or simulations of them, were also passed down from choreographer/teacher to student, and some current companies, like the Repertory Dance Theatre of Salt lake City, Utah, have some of these early dances in their performing repertoire. Maude Allan and Ruth St. Denis were concerned with form as well as freedom and actually choreographed dances that were repeated in the same way with each performance. Like Isadora, Maude Allan (1873-1956) was devoted to the simplicity of classical Greek art while St. Denis (1879-1968) was attracted by the exotic mysticism of the Orient, performing "Radha;' "Incense;' and "Nautch" dances with the flavor, costumes, and candles of India. The flurry of excitement over the dance of these women set American dancing "free" or "aesthetic dance" on the front lawns of our homes and in the gymnasiums of our schools. Physical education teachers brought dance into college programs as a part of their curriculum. As more people experienced dance in the schools and colleges, more people wanted to see dance on the concert stage. Eventually Duncan and St. Denis were lauded as artists of note who had changed the course of dance in this country forever. As you can see, modern dance had its seeds in matriarchy, consonant with tum-of-the-century concerns for suffrage and rights of women. The partnering of St. Denis with Ted Shawn (1891-19'72) began to bring balance to this strongly feminist beginning. Shawn was interested in ways of developing the body and movement ability of the dancer. He eventually formed a company of men in order to impress the favorable image of man as dancer on the prejudiced mind of dance audiences. The Denishawn School, founded by St. Denis and Shawn, was the first to educate dancers and develop choreographers, and from this school the acknowledged founders of modern dance evolved. Modern dance as a serious art form, having an artistic philosophy to guide it, a movement principle to support it, and a unique and significant statement to be made by each of its proponents, developed out of Denishawn. The seeds of artistic revolution were not limited to the United States. As Diaghilev was turning heads in France, Mary Wigman (1886-1973) was fascinating audiences in Germany. Wigman was the student of two men who were exploring movement in a more scientific way: Emile Jaques-Dalcroze was teaching musicians about rhythm by translating sound into movement; Rudolf von Laban was developing a theory of movement and a system of analyzing it that later developed into the most popular of movement languages - labanotation - used to write out or record choreographies. Wigman studied with both Dalcroze and Laban, tempering their more scientific approaches with her own emotional involvement with dance, resulting in powerful and dramatic solo and group dances. Wigman influenced the dance of the United States when she toured in this country in the 1930s. As both art and science began to make strong contributions to the development of concert dance in this country, it is no surprise that dance in education was similarly influenced. In 1916, the Physical Education Department of the University of Wisconsin at Madison sent a young teacher, Margaret H'Doubler, to New York to learn about the new dance and bring it back for inclusion in their program. H'Doubler worked with two significant teachers at Columbia University in New York City. She studied "natural dance;' a creative dance based on natural movement developed by Gertrude Colby, and the science of movement, a system in which movement originated in the torso, devised by Bird Larson. H'Doubler returned to the University of Wisconsin enthused with this wonderful synthesis of creative and scientific approaches to dance, and established the first highly developed dance program in education, with the first actual major in dance, in 1926. H'Doubler's contributions include some of the first serious writings on dance in art and education, and the oft-quoted philosophy that every child has as much right to be educated in dance and art as in spelling and arithmetic. Thus the values of educational theorists began to shift from prioritizing "the basics" to the understanding of art as basic to a student's total education. The history of concert dance continued with the Denishawn and Wigman Schools sending forth four of the most influential modern dance artists: Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey, Charles Weidman, and Hanya Holm. They had a clear vision of the kind of dance they wanted to make and the kind of dancers they needed to perform it effectively. Martha Graham (b. 1894) is perhaps the most famous of all modern dancers. Her career as choreographer, dancer, and teacher spans over 60 years. Her dance celebrates both our primitive passions and our heroic accomplishments through strong, intense, and angular motion. Her theory is that movement arises from the pelvis and is reflected through the rest of the spine, arms, and legs. From this theory grew a highly structured and sequenced technique based on the contraction and release of the lower torso. It is widely taught today in many schools and studios. She is the most prolific of choreographers, producing over 150 works that range from the powerful Primitive Mysteries, which launched her reputation as a maker of unique dance statements, to Letter to the World, a masterwork based on the poetry and life of Emily Dickinson, and one of the many dances Graham choreographed to celebrate the accomplishments of women. Appalachian Spring (with music by Aaron Copland) is an exuberant celebration of American pioneer life, while Clytemnestra and Night Journey are exemplary of Graham's interest in the more serious, often tragic, nature of Greek myths. Graham continues to be