Modern Dance

The discipline practiced by Martha Graham, Twyla Tharp and others has gone into some very useful studies of human movement. Rudolf Laban, who tackled choreographic notation, gave us images to start from. The body in one dimension, as a line, he described as a "Pin" to have a dancer start from a very straight, centered place. I like the little head on the top. As we ballroom dancers connect to each other, the two dimensional plane of our bodies can be thought of as a "Wall." It sounds very stiff, but that's just to have a starting place. The movements he uses are free flowing, and relate very well to the smooth dances, Waltz, Foxtrot, Quickstep and Viennese.