Description of Modern & Contemporary Dance! Newbie guide

NeilT · Joined: 11 Feb 2010 Posts: 9 Location: Manchester, UK

Hi all,

Apologies for using the word newbie... didn't mean it derogatarily (sp?), there just wasn't enough text to say new dancers!!!

First off a quick introduction as I'm new to this forum and I'm sure many would avoid my advice until they've seen my credentials!

I'm a fairly young but experienced teacher working for a company called KNT Danceworks and a company called Premier Sport, teaching in Manchester City Centre (UK). My passion lies in teaching adults, but I also teach introductory dance sessions in primary schools. I trained for 3 years at the Northern Ballet School (Manchester) and graduated with a National Diploma in Professional dance. I've been offered a contract with European Ballet, and danced with Slovak National Ballet and Leith's dance company. I'm currently spending the majority of my time teaching but also working with a small contemporary/physical theatre company.

Now that's over let's get in to the good part!

I noticed a lot of people ask what the difference is between Modern, Contemporary and other dance styles such as Jazz. What I hope to do is clear up the boundaries as best I can to help those new to the forum. Contemporary dance is notoriously dificult to describe (it's so different to other dance styles!), but I'll do my best and hope other members lend their support. If my definition differs to yours then please don't just flame, there is unfortunately no official dance dictionary and what one person calls contemporary, another would call modern, and a third person might call it hyper-neo-classical-ballet!

It's important to remember that the boundaries between different dance forms are becoming increasingly blurred as choreographers seek to take experiences, influences and inspiration from many different sources... often fusing different dance styles to create hybrid dance forums (ie. jazz funk lies somewhere in between street and Jazz).

First off in this definition I beg to differ to the forum. Modern and Contemporary are not the same thing! Though they do bear many similarities so I see the reasons behind placing the 2 together...

Modern is a very technical style of dance mainly used by various syllabi (ISTD springs to mind). In many broadway shows/musicals technical steps are often taken from modern (such as pirouettes, jetes, isolations, triplets) and stylized to create different Jazz dance forms (lyrical Jazz, Stage Jazz, Funky Jazz... the list goes on and the boundaries become increasingly blurred, and the definition between the dance forms is ultimately down to personal opinion!

Contemporary comes crom the latin words con tempo, literally meaning 'with time'. This is one of the reasons why Contemporary dance is so difficult to describe... the name means 'with time' so the dance form is ever evolving. It always frustrates me when people go along to a contemporary dance and in the middle of a routine/exercise whisper to a friend 'this isn't very contemporary is it?'. There is no solid definition of what contemporary is, as it is always changing into something new... Dance legend Martha Graham once said:

'no artist [dancer] is ahead of their time, they are time and everyone else is behind'

Contemporary dance is essentially dance taken out of the box and all rules removed. It can take it's influences from many places and every choreographer, teacher and even each individual dancer develops his/her own style or version of contemporary (some have even been known to take influences from as far afield as tai chi and other martial arts and mix it with elements from Ballet!).

It is dance in it's rawest form, however there are technical methods of teaching it including Graham, Cunningham and Laban (I won't go into this part further but any readers should feel free to elaborate!). One of my old teachers once said to the class:

'I hate it when people ask what style of Contemporary I teach... am I a Graham or Cunningham dancer... I'm a 'me' dancer, and teach my style, a mix of everything... it's old fashioned to put yourself in a box and say I dance Graham or I dance Laban, these people evolved there styles over 30 years ago... I take influences from them, who couldn't, but I don't dance purely in their style!'

Conversely this doesn't mean it's wrong to say 'I dance Cunningham styles contemporary'... maybe you do take your influences entirely from one dancer and evolved it into your own personal style!

Essentially what I'm trying to say is the boundaries between dance styles don't exist! Dance is dance and that's the end of it! The difference between Modern and Contemporary, Street and Hip Hop where invented after the dance style was developed, so people going to classes, watching shows or joining companies would know what dance style to expect!

Hope I helped and my post wasn't too 'rant-like'! Feel free to add your own opinions and hopefully we can build something truly helpful for new forum members!

Regards,
Neil @ KNT Danceworks

Finally, a concise (very concise) list of worthwhile names for anyone wanting to do some further research (feel free to add to the list):

Isadora Duncan (arguably the person who started Contemporary off)
Merce Cunningham
Martha Graham
Matthew Bourne (arguably a neo-classical choreographer... created the all male swan lake)
Chrirstopher Bruce (watch his piece 'Ghost Dances'... a couple of decades old now but beautiful nonetheless!)
Russell Maliphant (regularly choreographs for 'Ballet Boyz', a small UK based company)