For all its stylistic variations, Fokine’s choreography was couched largely in the classical idiom. Two other choreographers working with the Ballets Russes, Vaslav Nijinsky and his sister Bronislava Nijinska, produced works of a more radical nature. In Jeux (1913; “Games”), Nijinsky was one of the first choreographers to introduce a modern theme and modern design into ballet. Based on his own (rather erroneous) idea of a tennis match, the choreography incorporated sporting movements and dancers in modern dress. In The Rite of Spring, perhaps Nijinsky’s most innovative work, the dancers were arranged in massed groupings and executed harsh, primitive movements, the legs turned in, the arms hanging heavily, and the heads lolling to one side. Unlike Fokine, Nijinsky was prepared to risk ugliness in his search for a truly authentic style, and the audiences were almost as deeply shocked by the choreography as by the discordant sounds and jagged rhythms of Stravinsky’s score.
Vaslav Nijinsky in Spectre de la rose.Courtesy of the Dance Collection, the New York Public Library at Lincoln Center, Roger Pryor Dodge Collection
In her ballet Les Noces (1923; “The Wedding”), which took its theme from the marriage ceremonies of Russian peasants, Nijinska created a stark and heavily weighted style of movement. There were few elevations, and the dancers were frequently crouched or bent over, with their heads hanging low to the floor. They were also arranged in large groups, so that the overall impression was less that of individual bodies moving together than of large shapes and blocks of movement.
Although there are similarities between the works of these choreographers and the modern-dance forms that emerged in the 1920s and ’30s, there is little evidence to suggest any direct influence. The major significance of Fokine, Nijinsky, and Nijinska was in their bringing ballet out of its remote, courtly past by using modern themes and subjects and by introducing modern intellectual and artistic influences into the classical art form.
The style of later 20th-century ballet was influenced not only by the Ballets Russes but by modern dance as well. It became common for choreographers to extend the traditional ballet vocabulary with modern-dance techniques, such as curving and tilting the body away from the vertical line, working on or close to the floor, and using turned-in leg positions and flexed feet. Balanchine, influenced by jazz, used syncopated rhythms in his phrasing and incorporated steps from such popular dances as ragtime and rock and roll. His movements were usually wide, almost exaggerated in shape and volume, and frequently characterized by speed and by hard, clear accents.
Despite these changes ballet retains significant traces of its courtly and classical past. Although there are exceptions, such as those noted above, ballet dancers still tend to dance in the calm, erect, and dignified manner of their aristocratic forebears. Illusion and spectacle remain important; nearly all works are performed on a proscenium stage in a large theatre, where the performers are distanced from the audience, and productions are frequently elaborate and expensive. Ballet companies still, therefore, tend to be large organizations, receiving some kind of patronage or state subsidy. Modern dance Expressionism
Modern dance, the other major genre of Western theatre dance, developed in the early 20th century as a series of reactions against what detractors saw as the limited, artificial style of movement of ballet and its frivolous subject matter. Perhaps the greatest pioneer in modern dance was Isadora Duncan. She believed that ballet technique distorted the natural movement of the body, that it “separated the gymnastic movements of the body completely from the mind,” and that it made dancers move like “articulated puppets” from the base of the spine. Duncan worked with simple movements and natural rhythms, finding her inspiration in the movements of nature—particularly the wind and waves—as well as in the dance forms that she had studied in antique sculpture. Elements that were most characteristic of her dancing included lifted, far-flung arm positions, an ecstatically lifted head, unconstrained leaps, strides, and skips, and, above all, strong, flowing rhythms in which one movement melted into the next. Her costumes, too, were unconstrained; she danced barefoot and uncorseted in simple, flowing tunics, with only the simplest props and lighting effects to frame her movements.
Isadora Duncan.Sovfoto/Universal Images Group/REX/Shutterstock.com
Duncan believed that dance should be the “divine expression” of the human spirit, and this concern with the inner motivation of dance characterized all early modern choreographers. They presented characters and situations that broke the romantic, fairy-tale surface of contemporary ballet and explored the primitive instincts, the conflicts and passions of man’s inner self. To this end they sought to develop a style of movement that was more natural and more expressive than ballet. Martha Graham, for example, saw the back, and particularly the pelvis, as the centre of all movement, and many of her most characteristic movements originated from a powerful spiral, arch, or curve in the back. Doris Humphrey saw all human movement as a transition between fall (when the body is off-balance) and recovery (when it returns to a balanced state), and in many of her movements the weight of the body was always just off-centre, falling and being caught.
Instead of defying gravity, as in ballet, modern dancers emphasized their own weight. Even their jumps and high extensions looked as if they were only momentarily escaping from the downward pull of the Earth, and many of their movements were executed close to, or on, the floor. Graham developed a wide repertoire of falls, for example, and Mary Wigman’s style was characterized by kneeling or crouching, the head often dropped and the arms rarely lifted high into the air.
As ballet sought to conceal or defy the force of gravity, so it also strove to conceal the strain of dancing. Modern dance, on the other hand—particularly the work of Graham—emphasized those qualities. In the jagged phrases, angular limbs, clenched fists, and flexed feet, in the forceful movements of the back and the clear lines of tension running through the movement, Graham’s choreography expressed not only the struggle of the dancer against physical limitations but also the power of passion and frustration. Movements were always expressive gestures, never decorative shapes. Often the body and limbs appeared racked and contorted by emotion, for these choreographers, like Nijinsky, were not afraid to appear ugly (as indeed they did to many of their contemporaries).
The structure of early modern dance works responded in part to the fragmented narrative and symbolism characteristic of modernist art and literature. Graham often employed flashback techniques and shifting timescales, as in Clytemnestra (1958), or used different dancers to portray different facets of a single character, as in Seraphic Dialogue (1955). Groups of dancers formed sculptural wholes, often to represent social or psychological forces, and there was little of the hierarchical division between principals and corps de ballet that operated in ballet. Merce Cunningham
The Expressionist school dominated modern dance for several decades. From the 1940s onward, however, there was a growing reaction against Expressionism spearheaded by Merce Cunningham. Cunningham wanted to create dance that was about itself—about the kinds of movement of which the human body is capable and about rhythm, phrasing, and structure. Above all, he wanted to create dance that was not subservient to the demands of either narrative or emotional expression. This did not mean that Cunningham wanted to make dance subservient to music or design; on the contrary, though many of his works were collaborations, in the sense that music and design formed a strong part of the total effect, these elements were often conceived—and worked—independently of the actual dance. Cunningham believed that movement should define its own space and set its own rhythms, rather than be influenced by the set and the music. He also felt that it was more interesting and challenging for the spectator to be confronted with these independently functioning elements and then to choose for himself how to relate them to one another.