Postmodern dance

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

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 that the architectural and literary 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 it's legacy lives on in contemporary dance (a blend of modernism and postmodernism) and the rise of postmodernist choreographic processes that have produced a wide rage of dance works in varying styles.

Table of contents

1 The infulence of postmodern dance

2 The postmodern choreographic process

3 Founders of postmodern dance

4 Related articles

5 Further reading

The infulence of postmodern dance

postmodern dance lead to:

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

see also: 20th century concert dance

The postmodern choreographic process

The postmodern choreographic process may reflect the following elements:

see also: choreographic technique

Founders of postmodern dance

the founders of postmodern dance are

Merce Cunningham (who came before postmodern dance per se but used a postmodern choreographic process)
Robert Dunn (who taught composition at the Cunningham school)
the members of the Judson Dance Theater
Alwin Nikolais
Murray Louis