Relativity
Modern dancers influenced by the minimalist movement–the search for the fundamentals of art–have produced substantially different results. The first generation of modern dancers, Martha Graham and Doris Humphrey, rebelled against ballet. The second generation, including Trisha Brown and Lucinda Childs, rebelled against both modern dance and ballet, rejecting not only the classical emphasis on straight lines but almost everything to do with training the body to perform unnatural movements. Many postmodern choreographers created works for people with no dance training at all; a number of athletes became dancers, such as Chicago’s David Dorfman. Later the postmodernists created a different style based on a technique for releasing muscular tension; in this approach the ideal body moves in curves, following the motion’s momentum. In many ways, this style is a culmination of the ideas formulated by Graham and Humphrey.
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Minimalist postmodern choreographers also rejected most theatrical conventions. They preferred abstract dances over narrative ones, studio spaces and natural environments over proscenium stages, silence and nonrhythmic sound over music. Some rejected choreography altogether, instead performing improvisations; of these forms, the most successful was contact improvisation. As originally envisioned by Steve Paxton, it combined improvised abstract movement and a released body with silence–a technique that could be learned easily, without years of classroom training. The defining rule is that bodies should touch as often as possible; the technique focuses on abstract qualities like weight, counterbalance, gravity, and release.
Contact improvisation has also become a vehicle for devising and disseminating new ways of moving. And the technique concentrates so hard on the fluid transfer of weight–from body to floor or body to body–that all other techniques can seem impossibly stiff and artificial. In the right hands, it’s a virtuoso form. Because contact improvisation includes many lifts, it can be viscerally exciting; because it’s improvised, it can have a strong element of surprise and humor. And because people are in real danger of being hurt, it has an inherent suspense. But it’s terribly subtle and nonlinear; dancers take cues off the slightest movements of other dancers, so an audience that’s not paying attention or not familiar with the form may not see the connective threads.
