
Modern dance has always been political – both an artful form of revolt and a rejection of the status quo. By straying from the principles of classicism that favoured symmetry and balance, the women behind modern dance revolutionised the art form, enthralling many but also provoking numerous critics to write scathing reviews.
In a refreshing blend of biography, criticism and social history, divided into three generations, the dance writer Sara Veale presents the women who propelled modern dance into the mainstream. Veale focuses on the decades between the 1880s and the 1960s, a period of political upheaval, civil rights movements, war and social change, all of which began seeping into the dance narrative, providing an alternative to enchanting love stories and tales of tragedy. Yet it wasn’t until the likes of Loie Fuller, Maud Allan and Isadora Duncan – the “Mother of Modern Dance” – took to the stage at the turn of the 20th century that the medium gained widespread success.
Performing their solos contemporaneously, Duncan, Allan and Fuller challenged societal norms and allowed for future generations to solidify modern dance as a choreographic style and a means of political expression. Even though Allan’s fame did not quite match Duncan’s, both women scandalised on and off the stage: aligning themselves with the New Woman cause, they wore diaphanous costumes at a time where they could still be arrested for wearing trousers in certain American states, took male and female lovers in a society that demonised women’s desire, and created choreography that radically differed from ballet – a form both women despised. Although Duncan’s career came to an untimely end (she was strangled when her scarf got caught in the wheels of a car), it was a high-profile defamation case against the right-wing politician Noel Pemberton Billing that brought down Allan, the era’s most in-demand performer. The case used Allan’s sexuality against her and became “a radical reference point for early-20th-century culture at large”.
As much as Duncan and Allan were notorious for denouncing Edwardian drawing-room decorum, Fuller was the endlessly intriguing inventor. In more than 100 works choreographed between the 1890s and 1920s she “reimagined the aesthetic potential of dance and theatre” by introducing mixed-media choreography to the stage and innovating with lighting and costumes. Though none of Fuller’s choreographies survive in full, Veale persuasively argues that her contributions to the performing arts single-handedly pushed the boundaries of stagecraft – and of rigid social norms.
While the first generation of moderns channelled female agency through solo dance, their successors opted for companies and collectives. War, fascism and economic depression inspired the dancers to forge memorable choreographies from narratives about the atrocities of the Spanish Civil War (Martha Graham) and from poverty and social degradation in 1930s Britain (Margaret Barr). The big four of modern dance – Graham, Doris Humphrey, Charles Weidman and Hanya Holm – defined the technique, opened schools, and spent the 1930s creating a through-line between dance and political consciousness. Veale points out it was the second-generation moderns that “unified their dancing selves into a voluble persuasive body politic” and helped dance become more accessible.
It was perhaps those efforts that led to the Third Reich banning modern dance from theatres. With the legacy of Jim Crow and Nazism, a third generation of moderns began embracing personal history as both choreographic material and a political stand: Pearl Lang dramatised Jewish subjects and stories, Katherine Dunham merged modern dance with black dance traditions, and Sophie Maslow performed with an interracial cast while segregation was still rife in the US. For many ethnic minority dancers historically excluded from ballet, modern dance became the perfect platform for exploring a new discourse around ethnic marginalisation.
By the 1960s, modern dance diversified into a new genre, giving dancers ever-more freedom to express themselves. Its influence on choreographers and audiences is ongoing, as is the legacy of the women who recast “what usually feels fixed, ignoring ‘should’ and embracing ‘could’”.
Wild Grace: The Untamed Women of Modern Dance
Sara Veale
Faber & Faber, 288pp, £25
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[See also: The Pierre Bonnard renaissance]
This article appears in the 22 Jan 2025 issue of the New Statesman, Messiah Complex