Search Results 1 - 25 of 198


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Dance

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,…

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Expressionism

Expressionism was one of the foremost modernist movements to emerge in Europe in the early years of the twentieth-century. It had a profound effect on…

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Foxtrot

The foxtrot emerged circa 1914, most likely within African American practices, as a variation on the older duple meter one step popular with dancers since…

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Capoeira

Capoeira is an Afro-Brazilian movement practice that has been categorized as national sport, folklore, martial art, and dance. Although capoeira has been considered a game…

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Dalman, Elizabeth Cameron (1934--)

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…

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Wu Xiaobang (吴晓邦) (1906–95)

Wu Xiaobang, known in China as “the father of Chinese new dance,” was the most important pioneer of modern dance in twentieth-century China. Exposed to…

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Collins, Janet (1917–2003)

Magical on stage, elusive off stage, Janet Collins was an enigmatic and complex presence in twentieth-century dance. As the first full-time African American ballerina at…

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Jook House

The jook house (also juke joint), an African American institution found mainly in semiurban areas in the Southern United States, is an important cultural phenomenon…

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Ragtime Dancing

Ragtime dancing is a social dance practice, performed to ragtime music, that began in the 1890s and gained widespread popularity in US dance halls until…

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Fokine, Michel (1880–1942)

Michel Fokine’s seventeen works for Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes (1909–29) revitalized ballet in the early twentieth century. In Fokine’s most successful works, the body became…

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Massine, Léonide (1896–1979)

Russian-born Léonide Massine’s career flourished in the cities of Western Europe, where he made his name as a lead dancer and choreographer for Serge Diaghilev’s…

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Harlem Nightclubs

In the 1920s and 1930s, Harlem became a major hub of New York City nightlife and a prolific space for African American artistic creation. It…

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Deboo, Astad (1947--)

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.…

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Dance and Writing

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…

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Chandraleka (1928–2006)

Chandralekha Prabhudas Patel, known by the mononym Chandralekha, was a pioneering choreographer, dancer, writer, graphic designer, and social activist based in Chennai, India. Best known…

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Keita, Fodéba (1921–1969)

Fodéba Keita was a poet, playwright, musician, choreographer, impresario, anti-colonial activist, and statesman. As the leader of several musical bands, author of poems and essays,…

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Chinese Revolutionary Ballet

Introduced to China in the 1920s, Western ballet evolved into a significant performance genre in modern and contemporary China. Its popularity grew in the twentieth…

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Workers Dance League, The

In the midst of the economic and social upheaval of America’s Great Depression, a group of young modern dancers came together in 1932 to form…

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Tudor, Antony (1908–1987)

Born into a modest household in London’s East End, Antony Tudor changed the way we look at ballet and what it was thought to express.…

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Dudley, Jane (1912–2001)

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…

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Nijinska, Bronislava (1891–1972)

The premiere female ballet choreographer of the first half of the twentieth century, Bronislava Nijinska experienced the transformative power of the Russian Revolution and discovered…

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Balanchine, George (1904–1983)

George Balanchine (Georgii Melitonovich Balanchivadze), arguably the greatest ballet choreographer of the twentieth century, was at once both modernist and traditionalist. Unlike many radical innovators,…

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Shankar, Uday (1900–1977)

A legendary dancer often credited as the father of Indian modern dance, Uday Shankar was a visual artist and an astute choreographer with a keen…