P.E L-4
P.E L-4
P.E L-4
Contemporary
Dance
Modern Dance According to
historians, modern dance has
two main birthplaces: Europe
(Germany specifically) and the
United States of America.
François Delsarte (1811 -
1871, France).
He is considered as a precursor by
modern dance history because he
invents a theory about the
relationship between human
movement and feelings.
: “feelings
and their intensity are
the cause of movement and its
quality”.
the source of dance lies inside
the dancer, and not outside, in
codified gestures, like classical
dance would propose
These are some of Delsarte’s renowned
contributions:
Elaboration of a new code of gestures,
completely independent from the
classical dance tradition.
Study and codification of a logic system
about the relationships between the different
parts of the body, different types of
movement and different human feelings. -
Creation of a system for the study, analysis
and teaching of movement.
Invention of the
fundamental notion of the
gesture’s expressiveness.
Introduction of the
importance of the upper
body (trunk, arms, face) as
the main vehicle of
expression of the soul.
Émile Jaques-Dalcroze
(1865 - 1950, Austria -
Switzerland)
He is a pianist and conductor,
important for modern dance
history because he invents a new
approach to movement called
“Rhythmics” or “Eurhythmics”.
Its main contribution is the work
. between music
over the relationship
and movement. According to him,
body expresses a degree of
‘musicality’ that can be studied and
taught
To understand the so called ‘postmodern’
dance, it is important to remember the social
context in which it develops. The 1960s in the
U.S.A. are years of questioning of the historical
‘truths’ and ideological principles that rule
over the social, political and artistic fields.
Society starts a process of opening to the
recognition of plurality, relativism of
knowledge and subjectivism of perception.
Some of the postmodern dance features are:
Course Module - “Anything goes” (time of
subjectivism), which means that everything
proposed is valid.
- Questioning of ‘modern’ dance principles
and history (in the early times), and
recovering of its heritages and acquisitions
(later).
Search for the degree zero of movement:
exploration of daily life movement as a
sufficient aesthetical experience and denial of
the importance of technical virtuosity.
- Substitution of aesthetic judgment by
). - Intention of approaching dance (arts) to life and big audiences
(dance in the streets, performers that are not dancers…).
- Search of a lack of expression by the dancer. - Identification of
social and ideological marks in the body and its movement.
- Refusal of the pretention of creating a vocabulary, repertory or
style.
- Questioning of the value of the notion of ‘author’ of an art
piece.
- Performance: doing something more than representing it.
Dancers, actors, musicians and visual artists have the same status
within it. Frontiers between artistic genres become undefined.
- Importance of improvisation.
- Exploration of repetition as a compositional method.
- Artists (dancers) react against the consumer society, the wars
held by the U.S.A., the art market and the elitism of its
conventional places
Butoh
Butoh is the name given to a
group of performance
practices that could be
considered as a type of
Japanese contemporary dance.
Some of the butoh’s common features are: -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
. -Playful and grotesque imagery.
-Performed with or without an audience. -No set style:”
There are as many types of butoh as there are butoh
choreographers.” (Hijikata).
It may be purely conceptual with no movement at all.
- Its technique uses some acquisitions from the traditional
Japanese knowledge, like the control of energy, which
translates into an insistent rhythm (close to Nô Theater) and
strong expressivity.
Pina Bausch (1940 - 2009, Germany):
Heir of the German expressive dance, Pina
Bausch receives her dance training at the
Folkwang School in Essen, under the
supervision of Kurt Jooss. She is engaged
there as a choreographer since 1973, thanks
to what she creates the Wuppertal
Dancetheater. Under this name, although
controversial at the beginning, her company
gradually achieves international recognition
because of the proposal of a new form of
show that shatters the world of dance as
much as the world of theater.
According to contemporary dance history, these are some
of the features of her work:
-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.
-Refusal of creation of ‘characters’ in a theatrical sense, but
use of voice and theatrical gestures.
-Virtuous dancers, daily trained in classical ballet.
Ballet and contemporary dance (art) ideas:
While at the origins of modern and
contemporary dance, ballet appears often either
as a model to refuse or as a foreign field, the
second half of the XX century sees classical and
contemporary dance into a position of reciprocal
interest. From the point of view of some
contemporary dance cases, ballet will be an
allied that serves mostly for the technical
development of performers. From the
perspective of ballet, contemporary dance ideas
will mean the access to huge creative and
experimental issues, as much as the possibility
to experience technical alternatives.