Dadaism
Dada began in Zurich, Switzerland, in the midst of World War I. Several expatriate artists converged in the city to escape the brutal and seemingly…
Dada began in Zurich, Switzerland, in the midst of World War I. Several expatriate artists converged in the city to escape the brutal and seemingly…
This brief preamble will introduce the kinds of material the reader can expect to find in the entries treating drama, theater, and performance, and suggest…
Historically, modern dance scholarship has followed the contours of the field as defined by John Martin, the revered dance critic for The New York Times,…
In a career that has spanned over sixty years, Elizabeth Cameron Dalman has been shaped by a politically progressive view of the role of dance…
One of the earliest large-scale musical revues to be created and performed by an all-Black cast, Darktown Follies premiered in 1913 at the Lafayette Theatre…
Astad Deboo’s name is synonymous with Contemporary Indian Dance, a style that he pioneered at a time when innovations in Indian dance were not welcomed.…
The centrality of dance to aesthetic modernism led to dance becoming a major preoccupation of modernist literature and a model for the generation of the…
John Dos Passos was an American writer best known for his ‘contemporary chronicles’ of American life. His early novels, including Manhattan Transfer (1925) and the…
Often called the pope of Brazilian Modernism, Mário de Andrade spearheaded several different phases of the movement, and is credited with introducing the term modernismo…
Jane Dudley, a key figure in the radical dance movement of the 1930s, was a choreographer who developed her own distinctive voice within the modern…
Agnes de Mille performed as a self-producing female dance soloist; she choreographed for Ballets Russes and Ballet Theatre (now the AmericanBallet Theatre) and transformed the…
Dartington Hall (near Totnes, Devon, England) is a country estate centered on a medieval courtyard and Great Hall. In 1925, the newly married Dorothy and…
Holger Drachmann was a Danish writer and painter, active in the period of the Modern Breakthrough in Scandinavia (1870s–1890s). He was influenced by Georg Brandes…
Lawrence Durrell was born in Jalandhar, India under British colonial rule. Both his parents were born in India and never saw England before 1923 when…
Edwin Denby is best remembered as one of the preeminent critics of dance modernism, yet he was also an accomplished poet and an experienced dancer,…
Guy Ernest Debord (1931–1994) was a French radical political theorist, writer, activist and filmmaker. After his early involvement with French avant-garde art movements in the…
Robert Duncan was an American poet, dramatist, and critic central to the San Francisco Renaissance and Black Mountain College. He was born Edward Howard Duncan…
A performer and teacher of voice and movement, François Delsarte developed a theory of expression that influenced modern dance, actor training, poetic recitation, silent film,…
Agus Djaya was an Indonesian artist who rejected academic formalism in favor of a more expressive mode of painting, achieved by the flattening of space…
Dong Xiwen [董希文] was a modern Chinese painter, whose art was widely appreciated in Communist China. Dong attended the National Academy of Arts in Hangzhou,…
A leading post-World War II artist, Willem de Kooning painted in the vigorous style known as ‘‘gestural abstraction’’ or ‘‘action painting,’’ one of the two…
Diagonalsymphonien [Diagonal Symphony], a black-and-white, abstract, animated short film made in Germany by Swedish painter Viking Eggeling, assisted by Bauhaus student Erna Niemeyer, is a…
The works of Emiliano Di Cavalcanti are at the center of modernism and national art in Brazil. Practically a self-taught artist, he attended the workshop…
Frequently credited with the invention of modern dance, Isadora Duncan was a choreographer, dancer, educator, international star, and author of a bestselling autobiography My Life…
Born in southern Illinois, Edward Merton Dorn marked the trail westward for the Black Mountain poets. He followed the advice of mentor Charles Olson (1910–1970)…