ABSTRACT
One of the most vivid recollections I have in my dance study was a moment in a class with John Martin, then the astute dance critic of the New York Times, who announced to a class at Bennington College that at that moment of dance history we had at last discovered the full potential of the human body. In 1937 this was, to me, a shocking statement. I had previously believed that this knowledge was centuries old. I had yet to learn that modern dance was based on this new realization-not on past formsthat modern dance in 1937 was a contemporary form, at the beginning of its formulation.
