Postmodern Dance In The 1960s And 1970's

“Postmodern Dance and Its Influences on Partner Dance in the 1960s and 1970s” The 1960s were a time of great change in America that led into the 1970s where even more changes continued to take place. President Kennedy in the early 1960s brought many new programs to the country; one of them was the Peace Corps. His assassination in 1963 caused turmoil across the country. The next president, Johnson, brought this country the War on Poverty and at the same time America’s involvement in Vietnam was continuously increasing. The Vietnam war continued until 1975, and in 1973 President Nixon was impeached from office. During these years America also saw Civil Rights movements and Women’s Liberation Movements. Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated
A new form of dance developed and made its first appearance in 1962 at the Judson Dance Theater. This new movement was named postmodern dance. Amanda Hermes writes, “Like other cultural phenomenon of the time, it was a rebellion against traditional ideas and assumptions. Postmodernists questioned the established parameters of dance and pushed dance and art to new levels. The movement was short-lived, but it planted the seeds for new genres in dance and performance art.” Anna Halprin is considered one of the earliest pioneers of postmodern dance. It was not really established however, until some dancers that she had trained along with others started the Judson Dance Theater in the Judson Memorial Church in New York City. The postmodern dance movement believed in the creative process and allowing dance to be about real life and things that the body does in day-to-day occurrences
The one thing that has had the largest impact on partner dance was the development of Contact Improvisation, also known as CI. Steve Paxton developed CI around 1972. Steve Paxton helped create the Judson Dance Theater in the 1960s and then went on to co-find the Grand Union in the 1970s. Paxton is quoted saying this about CI, "I was trying to understand what makes integrity in movement. I thought I spied in CI a form arising from us rather than imposed upon us. It's a game that takes two people to win, so it doesn't create losers; it ignores gender, size, and other differences. It's about attending to your reflexes in a touch communication--faster than words, faster than conscious thinking.” The methods of contact improv have helped shaped every advance in partner dance since its creation. The freedom to use one’s body and other’s bodies to create new movements and shapes has allowed partner dance to grow and change the way that it has over the past 30-40 years