What is modern dance?

Modern dance is a dance genre that rose in Europe and America at the end of 19 and the beginning of the 20th century. Its main aesthetic point of view is to oppose the conservatism of classical ballet, advocate getting rid of the bondage of rigid action procedures of classical ballet, freely express people's true feelings with dance movements that conform to the laws of natural movement, and emphasize that dance art should reflect modern social life. Its founder, isadora duncan, a recognized American dancer, believed that classical ballet would cause abnormal development of human body. She yearns for the simplicity and natural innocence, and advocates that "dancers must integrate body and soul, and their body movements must develop into the natural language of the soul", expressing their inner feelings sincerely and naturally. It was Rudolf Laban, a Hungarian, who systematically established a relatively complete theory and training system for modern dance schools. He created a training method, called the natural law, which summarized the composition of human movements into eight elements: "cutting, pressing, rushing, twisting, sliding, flashing, knocking and floating", and thought that all kinds of movements could be formed by correctly handling the relationship between the elements. His Labannot is still one of the most influential dance music in the world. Ruth St. Denis was a dancer in Duncan's time and a pioneer of American modern dance. She has widely absorbed the dance cultures of Egypt, Greece, India, Thailand and Arab countries, and formed a modern dance with oriental mystery and religious spirit. Her student Martha Graham is an outstanding representative of contemporary modern dance. She believes that since human beings have beauty and ugliness, love and hate, goodness and evil, dance should not only praise beauty and goodness, but also show sin, regret and jealousy. Therefore, she put special emphasis on using dance to strip off the cloak that covers people's behavior and "expose an inner person". She also created a set of dance techniques called "Graham technique". In recent decades, the dancers of this genre have developed independently and formed many factions with different styles and artistic opinions.