Description

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Dance, as discussed in this book, is an art concerned with the communication of idea or feeling through the medium of movement. Modern dance is a term in current use applied to that kind of contemporary dance that organizes expressive movement in certain characteristic ways in a time-space structure. This manifestation of dance has developed in our democracy. As such, it represents, like other contemporary developments in the arts, the unique expression of an individual, or a group. The modern dancer, or the artist, uses his medium in a very individualized way to give expression to those aspects of life which move him. He is likely to concern himself with the changing world which impinges upon him in his daily life. He considers the sordid, the grim, the ugly, the humorous and the ridiculous aspects of life as worthy of ex pression as the nobler aspects of his world. He experiments freely with tone, color, clay or movement, and manipulates them according to no pattern, nor tradition, but in any way that he can devise, to reveal the essence of his experience. Since modern dance is thus a highly individualized expression, since it Is experimental and since it takes for content phases of the passing scene, the modern dance of tomorrow will be something quite different from modern dance today. For ours is a world of rapid change. As society is restructured under the impact of far-reaching world events, dancers find new ideas which seem worthy of expression. But only so long as ours is a free country, or only so long as democracy, that makes possible freedom of expression, persists, will art remain individualized and experimental. Since in the freedom of democracy, dance may concern itself with socially significant ideas, it may, in turn, like the other arts, influence the direction of social change.