Supriya Ghosh (Editor)

Postmodern dance

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Postmodern dance is a 20th century concert dance form. A reaction to the compositional and presentation constraints of modern dance, postmodern dance hailed the use of everyday movement as valid performance art and advocated novel methods of dance composition.

Contents

Claiming that any movement was dance, and any person was a dancer (with or without training) early postmodern dance was more closely aligned with ideology of modernism rather than the architectural, literary and design movements of postmodernism. However, the postmodern dance movement rapidly developed to embrace the ideology of postmodernism which was reflected in the wide variety of dance works emerging from Judson Dance Theater, the home of postmodern dance.

Lasting from the 1960s to the 1970s the main thrust of Postmodern dance was relatively short lived but its legacy lives on in contemporary dance (a blend of modernism and postmodernism) and the rise of postmodernist choreographic processes that have produced a wide range of dance works in varying styles.

Influence

Postmodern dance led to:

  • contemporary dance
  • dance improvisation
  • contact improvisation
  • dance for camera
  • the concept of all movement as dance
  • the postmodern choreographic process
  • Process

    The postmodern choreographic process may reflect the following elements:

  • post-structuralism / deconstructivism
  • parody
  • irony
  • jouissance
  • hyperreality
  • Death of the Author
  • Founders

    The founders of postmodern dance are

  • Merce Cunningham (who came before postmodern dance per se but used a postmodern choreographic process)
  • Robert Ellis Dunn (who taught composition at the Cunningham school)
  • Simone Forti
  • Anna Halprin
  • the members of the Judson Dance Theater
  • Murray Louis
  • Alwin Nikolais
  • Yvonne Rainer
  • Lucinda Childs
  • Trisha Brown
  • References

    Postmodern dance Wikipedia