Moving into the 20th Century: 1811-1900

François Delsarte, Émile Jaques-Dalcroze, Rudolf Laban, Loïe Fuller, Serge Diaghilev, Isadora Duncan, Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn, Michel Fokine, Mary Wigman, Vaslav Nijinsky, Asadata Dafora, Michio Ito, Hanya Holm, Martha Graham and Louis Horst, Doris Humphrey, Léonide Massine

As with folk dances and religious miracles, the inspirational origins of contemporary choreography cannot be easily identified. Still, while adding in the occasional sparkling idea or innovation, humanity has always built upon that which came before. For much 20 century modern dance, its theoretical substructures emanated from the teachings of 19century European cognitive and movement theorists such as François Delsarte, Émile Jaques-Dalcroze, and Rudolf Laban.

François Delsarte

François Delsarte (November 11, 1811, Solesmes, France — July 20, 1871, Paris) was a music teacher and movement analyst who delved into the meaning of gesture. He may be considered a pioneer movement analyst who believed that the physical, emotional, and spiritual planes of the body coexist in time, co-penetrate space, and cooperate in motion. His concerns for concepts of tension-relaxation, form, force, design, and concentric (toward center) and eccentric (from center) movements provided a unique and still serviceable focus for creating and studying movement outside of the ballet vocabulary. Ted Shawn and other early modern dancers came to embrace these tenets.

Delsarte's ideas combining the physical and metaphysical worlds were also an inspiration to women, who felt that his holistic approach was the key to gracefulness and the finest forms of expression for the newly liberated female. During the early part of the 20 century, women were freeing themselves from binding corsets, their primary allegiance to motherhood, limited numbers of available careers, poor pay, and a ubiquitous sense of disenfranchisement. Delsarte and dance exhilaratingly offered the promise of a break, theoretical and then literal, from the Victorian handicaps of being a woman. These ideas manifested in part via women's clubs that featured dance tableaux, healthful dance exercises, and even a form of pseudo-Oriental dance called "Nautsch." In addition, although Ted Shawn was an ardent supporter of Delsartian ideas, his all-male dance company from 1933 to 1940 helped counteract America's perception that modern dance was only for women.

Émile Jaques-Dalcroze

Called "Eurhythmics," the work of Swiss composer, musician, and music educator Émile Jaques-Dalcroze (July 6, 1865, Vienna, Austria — July 1, 1950, Geneva, Switzerland) was a system of physical movements designed for the development of a synthesis of musical and rhythmic logic for musicians. Dalcroze teaching academies thrive all over the world to this day, such as the original Jaques-Dalcroze Institute, founded in 1915 in Geneva (http://www.dalcroze.ch/), and the Dalcroze Society of America (http://www.dalcrozeusa.org/).

The system was also found to have great application for training dancers and choreographers to form deeply felt relationships among the eye, ear, memory, and one's kinesthetic awareness. Dalcroze's philosophy was especially influential on Ruth St. Denis (1879 — 1968), who explored music visualization wherein melodic lines, harmonies, and forms of a piece of music were visually translated into corresponding dance movements. British ballet pioneer Marie Rambert (1888 — 1982) studied with Dalcroze and used his methods to come to the musical aid of Vaslav Nijinsky (1889 — 1950) as he puzzled over the irregular rhythms of Igor Stravinsky's Rite of Spring (1913; discussed in Chapter 3) while attempting the choreography of that work. "Through such pupils of Jaques-Dalcroze as Marie Rambert, Hanya Holm, and the mime Étienne Decroux, Eurythmics has also affected contemporary ballet and the dance of the theatre."

The choreographic potential inherent in the great musical forms influenced the entire generation of American modern dancers after Isadora Duncan, St. Denis, and Shawn. Doris Humphrey and Martha Graham in particular were often able to use their intimate understanding of and training with music as inspiration for their quite sophisticated choreographic work. Dalcroze's influence was also felt through the application of his tenets in the modern ballets of the Russians Michel Fokine (1880 — 1942) and Nijinsky. "Symphonic" ballets (to standalone symphonic music) were one part of the legacy of 20 century Russian choreographers such as Léonide Massine (1895-1979), Fyodor Lopukhov (1886-1973), and, later, George Balanchine (1904 — 1983). Complex and precise kinetic-rhythmic-musical correlations are frequent performance expectations to this day, and remain prudent choreographic devices for many dance compositions.

Rudolf Laban

Rudolf Laban (December 15, 1879, Bratislava, Austria-Hungary — July 1, 1958, Surrey, England) was a dancer-theoretician inspired in part by Delsarte's attempts to codify expressive gesture. His special genius lay in the conceptual analysis of movement in space and time with their characteristic energies. He first analyzed movement according to the speed, direction, and level of the body, and its parts within an imaginary twenty-sided combination sphere-cube called an "icosahedron." His scientific approach provided a clear language for movement in space that gave the work of modern dancers, especially the Germans Mary Wigman and Kurt Jooss, an analytical basis from which to acquire greater sensitivity towards motion in relation to that surrounding space. These conceptual foundations still form an integral part of the characteristics of much modern dance (www.youtube.com, search "Rudolf Laban").

Several organizations carry on Laban's vision today. They include, in London, his own Laban Guild for Movement and Dance (f. 1946, http://www.labanguild.org.uk/) and, in New York City, two organizations: the Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies (f. 1978, http://www.limsonline.org/) and the Dance Notation Bureau (f. 1940, http://dancenotation.org/), the latter of which archives on paper, via Labanotation, hundreds of dances available throughout the world (Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance; http://www.trinitylaban.ac.uk/).

A naturalized German, Laban was initially cooperative with the pre-World War II socialist German government. However, his choreography for the 1936 Olympics opening ceremony was censored by Nazi authorities and he subsequently left Germany for England before the war....