Contemporary Dance History

Formerly, in The History of Dance Part 6: From Modern to Post-Modern Dance, we saw how after African American dancers Katherine Dunham, Pearl Primus and Alvin Ailey integrated Modern Dance with Folk Dances and presented a social discourse in their dance around the 40’s and 50’s Modern Dance was entering into another era called Post-Modern Dance. This was initiated by the great dancers Merce Cunningham, Erick Hawkins and Paul Taylor, who focused on abstract works, somatic dance techniques and everyday gestures with neoclassical dance. Then, in 1960, post-modern dance was solidified and characterised by experimentation with the work of Yvonne Rainer [...]