Focusing upon the work of the key figures involved in Modern Dance analyse the ways in
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"Ballet was dead, to begin with"
Before the work of Loie Fuller, Isadora Duncan, Ruth St. Denis, Ted Shawn, Martha Graham and others, Dance bore very little resemblance to the art form it is today. The human form was disguised or altered on stage and there was little or no fluidity in movement. I have focused my study upon the works of Fuller, Duncan and Graham and have discovered the ways in which they changed this superficial portrayal of the body and their beliefs about the human form onstage.
Before the birth of the 'Modern Dance', ballet was virtually the only form of artistic dancing to be seen in America, and in fact, across the world. When the Metropolitan Opera House opened in 1883, the ballet performed there was not ballet as we know it. Dancers were imported from Europe and performed strict, 'classical' dances, wearing corsets and tutus. Nowadays ballet has integrated aspects of Modern Dance so that we fail to see how very different the two genres were before the birth of Modern dance. If you were to attend a balletic performance today, the likelihood is that the dancers, unless performing a 'classical' ballet, would be wearing form-fitting body suits or leotards. Ballet dancers nowadays can wear costume that display their bodies, which allows them to move freely, and which shows the human form in its purest state, without the constrictions of corsetry...