ABSTRACT
This chapter traces the development of modern, postmodern, and contemporary dance alongside global conflicts of the 20th and 21st centuries. In the late 1920s, the genre modern dance was named and defined through the work of white choreographers and writers, most notably dancer Martha Graham and critic John Martin. They established the aesthetic values of modern dance soon after the enactment of the 1924 Immigration Act, and separate from the work of BIPOC artists. In the late 1950s, following World War II, different aesthetic priorities and types of performances were introduced in response to the devastation of war and as resistance to authoritarianism. Artists associated with postmodern dance in the United States include Merce Cunningham, Trisha Brown, Steve Paxton, and Anna Halprin. In the wake of the Vietnam War, Civil Rights uprisings, and Māori protest movements of the 1970s, performances were created that challenged the aesthetics of white postmodernism and insisted on more inclusive approaches to dance-making, seen vividly in the work of Atamira Dance Company in Aotearoa, also known as New Zealand. Ultimately this chapter reveals the imbrications of dance history and global conflicts, and how politics and nationalism influence the criteria and preferences of artists, critics, and audiences.
