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Psychological View on Modern Dance Modern dance was developed at the beginning of the 20 th century. The modern dance pioneers refused to obey the rigid constraints of the Classical Ballet. They also rebelled against classical ballet technique, shoes and costumes. The new era of modern dance was followed by the appearance of various branches of modernism in art, literature, sculpture. The psychological ground for modernism was taken from the works of well-known scholar Sigmund Freud.
Sigmund Freud turned the attention of the public to the inner world of a human. Humans emotions, gestures, mimics are motivated subconsciously. They all evidence a humans sole which is full of contradictions but at the same time it is a unique and the most precious thing in the world. A human can cognize himself and his inner world only by setting free his feelings and emotions. A human should not be afraid of his emotions; a human should express himself, - that is the essence of our existence. Thus the first American dance modernists Love Fuller, Isadora Duncan and Ruth St.
Denis developed their own styles of a new branch of modern dance - free dance. They also laid the foundations of modern dance in America. In Europe Emile Jaques-Dalcroze, Rudolf Laban, and Francois Delsarte developed theories of human movement and methods of instruction that lead to the development of European modern and Expressionist dance. [ 5, chap. Modern Dance].
Martha Graham was among the brightest representatives of modern dance. Her contribution to the development of choreography and techniques of modern dance can not be underestimated by us. She was a teacher for a whole new generation of dancers. Her company was the training ground for future modern choreographers such as Merce Cunningham, Paul Taylor and Twyla Tharp. She created roles for classical ballet stars such as Margot Fonteyn, Rudolf Nureyev, and Mikhail Baryshnikov, welcoming them as guests into her company.
In charge of movement and dance at The Neighborhood Playhouse, she taught actors such as Bette Davis, Kirk Douglas, Madonna, Liza Minnelli, Gregory Peck, Tony Randall, Anne Jackson, and Joanne Woodward how to use the body as an expressive instrument. [ 2 ]. It should be born in mind that psychological views of modernism played a great role in Marthas work and remained in the basis of her concepts and techniques of modern dance. From the psychological point of view, dance refers to human movement either used as a form of expression or presented in a social, spiritual or performance setting. [ 5, chap. Dance]. According to psychological studies [ 5 ], dance belongs to forms of non-verbal communication together with body language, clothes, eye-contact, gesture, posture, tone, prosody, touch, facial expression etc. So dance can treated as a form of communication, which does not use words.
A dancer can transmit his thoughts, ideas by means of gestures, posture, eye-contact. Even more, a dancer creates images by his movements and these movements serve as a key to understand the whole idea of the dance. There are some aspects in modern dance which can be considered from the psychological point of view. 1. Gestures of a dancer. The language of gestures helps to express joy, content, hostility to other people. According to electronic encyclopedia, Wikipedia, most people use gestures and body language in addition to words when they speak; some ethnic groups and languages use them more than others do, and the amount of such gesturing that is considered culturally acceptable varies from one location to the next. [ 5 ].
For a dancer gestures have not only emotional and cultural meaning, they also serve as bright means of expression of a personal outlook. A number of reviews of Martha Grahams works very often noticed the meaning of gestures in her dances. A review from The Dance, described Graham as "clad in a heavy gold kimono, making patterns with her body against a screen of brilliant lacquer... Martha Graham presents a series of pictures that fire the imagination and make a hundred stories for every gesture. Shall we say her dances are motion pictures for the sophisticated. ." [ 1 ]. 3. Dancers body language.
The Free Encyclopedia gives the following definition for the notion of body language. Body language is a broad term for several forms of communication using body movements or gestures, instead of, or as a complement to, sounds, verbal language, or other forms of communication. In turn, it is one category of para language, which describes all forms of human communication that are not language. [ 5, chap. Body Language]. The origins of body language are related to animal communications, some scholars claim. Human para language may represent a continuation of forms of communication that our non-linguistic ancestors already used, or it may be that it has been changed by co-existing with language. [ 5 ].
There is another point of view, that body language is a product of both genetic and environmental influences. Blind children will smile and laugh even though they have never seen a smile. The ethologist Iran eus El Eibesfeldt claimed that a number of basic elements of body language were universal across cultures and must therefore be fixed action patterns under instinctive control. Some forms of human body language show continuities with communicative gestures of other apes, though often with changes in meaning. More refined gestures, which vary between cultures (for example the gestures to indicate "yes" and "no"), must obviously be learned or modified through learning, usually by unconscious observation of the environment. [ 5 ]. Body language has also become an object of study for other disciplines besides psychology.
Thus body language as a part of para language has been investigated in social psychology. All these facts testify the general importance of body language for human society and human relationships. Body language can be involuntary and voluntary. Involuntary one occurs in everyday speech, it is natural and it is applied more often. Voluntary body language is controlled by consciousness and as a matter of fact it is used purposefully.
According to some psychological studies, involuntary body language is the best way into a persons subconscious. If people do not realize what body language they are performing, it is quite possible for a trained observer to read what they are thinking about and what their real intentions are. Bearing in mind the explicit or implicit hypotheses about body language it becomes easy to seek information that people do not always want to give. Martha Graham used to repeat her favorite dictum movement never lies. She understood the psychological importance of every single movement on the stage. [ 2 ]. Dance performance or any other related art product is considered to be a masterpiece when voluntary body language applied in it, is similar to a natural one.
Every dancer has to shape his skills of dancing in order to achieve the required similarity in body language. Public has a negative attitude to fake movements of a dancer. Such performance can not be regarded as an art. And vice versa. A performance is highly evaluated if, among other things, it demonstrates high skills of movements. There is an extract of review written on Martha Grahams works.
It may be seen that the evaluation of movements is a decisive factor and dominates the whole mood of the critic essays. Though the dances Graham created in the late 1920 s were derivative of Denishawn pieces, by 1930 she was beginning to identify a new system of movement and new principles of choreography. Based on her own interpretation of the Delsartean principle of tension and relaxation, Graham identified a method of breathing and impulse control she called "contraction and release. " For her, movement originated in the tension of a contracted muscle, and continued in the flow of energy released from the body as the muscle relaxed. This method of muscle control gave Graham's dances and dancers a hard, angular look, one that was very unfamiliar to dance audiences used to the smooth, lyrical bodily motions of Isadora Duncan and Ruth St. Denis. In her first reviews, as a result, Graham was often accused of dancing in an "ugly" way. [ 4 ]. 2.
Emotions, mood, facial expression of a dancer. The free encyclopedia, Wikipedia, states that, a facial expression results from one or more motions or positions of the muscles of the face. Charles Darwin noted that... the young and the old of widely different races, both with man and animals express the same state of mind by the same movements. [ 5, chap. Emotions].
Facial expression can be voluntary and involuntary. In fact, most people can read only 50 percent all the facial expressions. Micro expressions are considered to be involuntary and unconscious. Most people do not recognise them at all.
According to the free encyclopaedia, facial expressions include: sadness, anger, surprise, fear, content happiness, excitement, laughter, crying, shock, puzzlement, frown, desire, concentration, smile, snarl, pout and so on. [ 5 ]. Emotions, mood and facial expression are closely connected. An emotion is a mental state or process. [ 5 ]. This process can be of two types: conscious or subconscious. In any case emotion tries to balance various and often conflicting, experiences facts, and concepts. [ 5 ]. The free encyclopaedia gives a list of components of emotional experiences.
They are the following: thoughts, feelings, affective responses (e. g. , sadness, anger, joy, determination), physiological responses (changes in internal bodily functioning), cognitive responses (e. g. , a conceptual representation of an event), and behavioural responses (an outward expression such as flight or resistance). [ 5 ]. A person's mood, following the definition given by the Free Encyclopaedia, is a sustained affective state, consisting of a combination of emotions. In normal functioning, moods are largely adaptive to external events. An optimist and a pessimist evaluate a situation relatively favourably and unfavourably, respectively.
This applies also to expectations. The optimist looks at the world "through rose tinted spectacles, " i. e. , with expectations of a favourable outcome, whereas a pessimist will tend to concentrate on the possibility of outcomes being unfavourable or unpleasant. [ 5, chap. Mood] In psychology, and in ordinary language, emotion is used to describe a state of a person. Emotional state is related to mood, sometimes even identified with it, although emotions are generally considered to be more transient than moods. [ 5 ]. A dancer can pass his emotions, mood and facial expression to the audience and thus involve them to mystery of his dance.
In this way a dance may produce a bigger impression on people because they have a feeling that they are acting on the stage as well. One of the reviews notices the positive features of Grahams dances in the following way: In developing her technique, Martha Graham experimented endlessly with basic human movement, beginning with the most elemental movements of contraction and release. Using the principles of contraction and release as the foundation for her technique, Martha Graham built a vocabulary of movement that would "increase the emotional activity of the dancer's body. " Graham's dancing and choreography exposed the depths of human emotion through movements that were sharp angular, jagged, and direct. The dance world was forever altered by Martha Graham's vision which has been and continues to be a source of inspiration for generations of dance and theatre artists. [ 2 ]. There is another note: The scholar Elizabeth Kendall has written that "Lamentation (image) " is both a piece about the emotion of grief and a visual homage to contemporary architecture, most notably the new skyscrapers that were beginning to fill the New York skyline.
She describes Graham's figure in the dance as "a skyscraper reeling, " making a connection between the two impulses of Graham's aesthetic vision. [ 4 ]. Costumes of a dancer. People wear articles of clothing on the body. In its broadest sense, clothing includes coverings for the trunk and limbs as well as coverings for hands (gloves), feet (shoes, sandals, boots), and head (hats, caps). [ 5, chap.
Clothes] Our culture demands that articles should be carried rather than worn and normally they are counted as accessories rather than as clothing. [ 5 ]. By means of clothing people carry a message to other humans. And this message has functional and social reasons. Functional reason lies in protecting the bodies against strong winds and bad weather conditions in general and also everything that might be harmful for unprotected human bodies. Social reason includes the recognition of the social status of a person, his occupation, marital status and sexual availability, ethnic and religious affiliation, etc. Humans must know the code in order to recognise the message transmitted.
If different groups read the same item of clothing or decoration with different meanings, the wearer may provoke unanticipated responses, states the Free Encyclopaedia. [ 5 ]. For the purposes of dance performances, clothing is used to create the atmosphere of a certain historical age, it also may represent cultural and aesthetic views of a character. So, costumes as well as other decorative aids emphasize the topicality of a dance. Decoration may be drawn with precise details in order to show a real life scene, or these aids may be neglected to introduce some surrealistic ideas to the audience. In other words, decoration or its absence produce certain impressions on the people who watch the performance. Martha Graham is thought to be a mother of modern dance.
She and her contemporaries paid much attention to the aspect of decoration. As an artist, Martha Graham conceived each new work in its entirety - dance, costumes, and music. During her 70 years of creating dances, Martha Graham collaborated with such artists as sculptor Islam Noguchi; actor and director John Houseman; fashion designers Halston, Donna Karan and Calvin Klein; and renowned composers including Aaron Copland, Louis Horst (her mentor), Samuel Barber, William Schuman, and Gian Carlo Menotti... [ 1, chap. Martha Graham] Summing up, I think that psychology contributed much to modern dance. In the epoch of Martha Graham the revolutionary ideas about human subconscious penetrated into dance and resulted in emergence of the new techniques and the new theories of dance. The modern trends in dance allowed dancers to express their feelings and emotions freely and conduct themselves more independently and more individually on the stage.
Bibliography: Atlas Almanac Dictionary Encyclopedia: Fact Monster. 2002. 5 Dec. 2004. < web > Martha Graham. Center of Contemporary Dance: Martha Graham dance Company. 2002. 5 Dec. 2004 < web > Voice of Dance: Google. 2004. 5 Dec. 2004 < web > University of Pittsburg. 1995. 5 Dec. 2004 < web > Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia: MediaWiki. 2 Dec. 2004. 5 Dec. 2004 < web >
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Research essay sample on Psychological View On Modern Dance
