(classical piano music playing) MALE NARRATOR: Modern dance is a uniquely American art form.

Seeded in the 20th century, it took root in the creative soil of American ingenuity.

It was different, daring and seemingly undisciplined compared to the established rigor of ballet.

(gentle classical piano playing) NARRATOR: At the start of the new century, Isadora Duncan brought something entirely novel to the dance stage.

She performed in bare feet, used the force of gravity like roots, reaching up to the sky and sending that energy spiraling out to the universe.

The mother of modern dance, Isadora, and those after her, created a tradition that increased the physical range and movement vocabulary of dance, through carefully constructed dance techniques.

Generations of modern dancers learned from these pioneers, as well as each other, and were connected by their search for meaning in movement.

Innovations introduced by artists like Ruth St. Denis, Martha Graham, Merce Cunningham, Katherine Dunham, all contributed, in turn, to what we see in today's modern dance, in people like Robert Battle, Twyla Tharp, Mark Morris, and David Parsons.

In many cases, each dancer-choreographer broke from their past linked to their time and place, often with themes of activism and made room for another generation of modern dancers.

I feel like, for a dancer, your preparation is, it's from the beginning, trying to find what is the aesthetic and how do I create that in my own body, so that by the time I get to the performance, I know how to access that, and I know how to align... bones and muscle and your heart and your breath and your intellect into a shape, where...

I don't have to think anymore.

And I think, to me, that's the best performance, the one where...

I've done all the prep work, and I can really purely execute in a away that... that is transformative.

MARGOT PARSONS: Isadora Duncan went against the grain when she presented her work.

(classical piano playing) And threw caution to the wind, followed her heart, and just danced from the very depths of her soul.

She was outrageous, and she showed people that is was okay to be your own person, to have an individual voice, that there is a place for that in dance.

NARRATOR: Ruth St. Deni considered herself and Isadora as the first modern dancers.

Both their mothers advocated for dress reform, aesthetic exercise, open air activities and art.

They had their daughters take lessons in Delsarte exercises to learn basic principles of expression and movement.

And this fit into the new idea of physical culture for women.

What began as seeds of individual expression, became roote in a fertile modern tradition.

SHAWN MAHONEY: Instead of coming from a tradition of classical training and classical ballet company structures, um, I think that instinctively I needed to explore new traditions, and create a new tradition for myself.

(classical piano music playing) NARRATOR: Beginning with Isadora, the natural movements we do every day became the vocabulary of a new dance language, a language called modern dance.

Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn founded Denishawn in Los Angeles in 1915.

Several of their students went on to become a part of the heartwood of this towering tree we now know as modern dance.

REBECCA RICE: My grandmother was trained by Ted Shawn and Ruth St. Denis At 57, she was gravitating more towards not moving on the floor so much because of her age.

As I look older pictures, she really was par of those early modern feeling, modern energy.

NARRATOR: Denishawn had many successful American and international tours, and they were known for their interpretations of multi-cultural dances, from Indigenous Native American to Japanese.

These were not the exact dances They learned in their world travels but interpretations.

This is an interpretation of a Hindu ritual which was the first piece on all of St. Denis programs because it was a blessing of the performance space.

During the '30s and '40s, dancers had to make difficult choices about their role in society.

FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT: This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly.

Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today.

This great nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper.

NARRATOR: These dancer-choreographers were people of character who acted on their beliefs.

Strong individuals in arts and politics took their stance against the Nazis and segregation.

Women had the vote, and these women took their independence seriously.

And it was a time when modern dancers refined and codified their techniques, techniques that are still taught today.

IRIS FANGER: And then Martha Graham had her tradition of storytelling, of psychological movement, of psychological analysis of a character, which she then expressed.

In other words, Martha Graham was in the Denishawn company, but then she broke out, and the work that she created was totally different than anything Ruth St. Denis created.

(suspenseful classical music playing) NARRATOR Graham felt that movement began from the breath — released the body with an inhale and contracted it with an exhale.

From her aesthetic, a whole new dance technique was born, instilling a discipline which is a vital feature of modern dance.

Her company fostered protégés, like Anna Sokolow, Paul Taylor and Merce Cunningham, who all became great artists in their own right.

Katherine Dunham was an anthropologist, an author and an innovative choreographer.

She started the Black diasporic dance tradition.

She changed modern dance using isolations — shoulders, torso and hips often moving by themselves, or in patterns of curved lines and polyrhythms.

She used the ballet barre in her training and freed up the hips and torso, to release an unabashed sensuality of movement.

She elevated the beauty and magic of Caribbean, African and American dance.

KATHERINE DUNHAM: Shango is one of the gods from Africa that has been maintained through the Caribbean through the entire African diaspora.

Shango was a very strong god that one associated with an iron will and a determination that, that could bring things about, bring them to happen for good or for bad if needed.

And Id say Shango was probably the strongest of the African gods.

And he was worshipped all through the Caribbean and South America.

And every place that I went a Shango ceremony was bound to be an important one You might have one for Agwé or Ogun, or whatever and they were vivid, colorful and so forth but Shango you knew there would be something that would be extraordinary, that woud be very strong and very powerful.

NARRATOR: Katherine Dunham performed in 67 countries of the world.

She built five schools, including the famous Dunham School of Dance and Theatre in New York City, where such artists as Marlon Brando and James Dean took classes.

Most importantly, she had an impact on whomever met her.

She was activist through her art.

KATHERINE DUNHAM: I know you've heard about it, the occasion when I was in Lexington, Kentucky, and, uh, the audience was totally segregated.

I did not — foolishly I didnt think about it because I was so busy with the company and that has saved me so many, many times.

I was just too busy to get into what I considered the small things.

This turned out to be a big thing.

It turned out that no Black people could sit in the Orchestra seats.

And I — after going through a whole lot of resistance, threats, you name it, I did everything possible to be able to get on that stage and feel good about it, and I couldn't, I couldn't win then.

Therefore, I decided if I couldn't win at the beginning, I'd win at the end.

I did the show.

They loved it.

Maybe the show was better than it had ever been because everybody was uptight.

[laughter] In the end, I told them we would never come back until we could appear before people who were sitting next to each other, people of my color were sitting next to people of their color.

(tribal chanting music playing) NARRATOR: Doris Humphrey and Charles Weidman also came out of the Denishawn company, and created their own dances.

They reinvented what was modern dance at that time, and created a movement system called fall and recovery, or the Humphrey-Weidman technique.

They felt that movement flowed in an arc, beginning from an off-balance start, and continuing into a series of falls, rebounds, rises, suspensions and falls again.

(light classical music playing) LIM: I think Weidman's dramatic falls is just fun.

It's like this roller coaster for your body.

When we think about the Humphrey-Weidman technique was about, and it's about fall and recovery.

And that sounds so natural, right?

But to create that in this choreography, I think you want to heighte that sense of being off-balance for as long as you can go before your body drops and catches itself.

(slow classical music playing) NARRATOR: Anna Sokolow, a protege of Martha Graham, left the the Graham company and developed her own vision of modern dance.

She was brought up in a socialist family and became a leader in the New Dance Group.

“Dance is a weapon in the class struggle” was their slogan.

And they brought a large, new working class to modern dance through their performances.

The New Dance Group developed one of the first integrated studios, with affordable classes in a variety of styles.

Anna had a spare and uncompromising style of dance that spoke to the harsh realities of war, political repression and alienation.

She would use extremely slow motion or explosive staccato energy that emphasized the raw feeling of movement.

She traveled widely and brought her unrelenting honesty to Israel and Mexico, firmly instilling a modern sensibility into their dance tradition.

The New Dance Group created a hub of integrated, inexpensive and multi-cultural dance.

Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey, Charles Weidman, Pearl Primus, Anna Sokolow and others performed with them, and expanded modern dance's range, depth and sense of purpose.

As Daniel Nagrin, a later member of the group described it, “The world outside has burst into the studio.” LORRY MAY: Anna used to talk about you know, emotional fortitude.

I think they're all about that.

It's like, get your act together.

You know, you need to be strong... really strong to do this kind of work.

MARGOT PARSONS: Anna Sokolow was adamant about the integrity of the individual within the dance.

She was very concerned about social issues, and about the individual's own journey through life.

(dramatic theme playing) MARCUS SCHULKIND: We have this thing that happened.

We have the pioneers, we have people who developed the concept of expressive movement which couldn't be called ballet because it wasn't turned out and it wasn't that ethereal nature of a woman on her toe, therefore no longer woman, but ethereal swan, crazy, legend, who knows, Benjamin Grimm story that we're dancing to.

SHAUMBA DIBINGA: Theres no other company like the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.

And theres no other legend like Mr. Ailey.

I believe that there are a lot of different legends and Ive been influenced in a lot of different ways by many of them.

But I feel like Mr. Ailey had it.

And he had a way of bringing people together for one common goal.

(Revelations' “Wade in the Water” playing) NARRATOR: Alvin Ailey was inspired to dance by watching a performance of Katherine Dunham's.

He studied technique and dance in Los Angeles with choreographer and dance pioneer Lester Horton.

After performing in House of Flowers in New York, he started his own company.

Most of his work reflects the life, music and spirit of Black America.

Horton technique, which Ailey studied, and is still taught at the Ailey studio today, strengthens and stretches every muscle in the body.

A demanding technique, it gave Ailey the technical ability to convey the story of Black migration.

Ailey's dance talent blossomed with his use of gospel rhythms, to convey the journey from slavery to hope and freedom, as seen in his signature work, Revelations.

♪ ...the water ♪ ♪ God is gonna trouble The waters ♪ ♪ God is gonna trouble The waters ♪ NARRATOR Paul Taylor danced with Graham and as a guest soloist with noted ballet choreographer George Balanchine.

Taylor started his own company in 1954, which was an incubator for major dance artists such as David Parsons and Twyla Tharp.

Known for his range, his work was imaginative, witty and inspired by the quirkiness and humor of every day actions, such as walking, jumping, sliding and even waiting in line.

(classical violin music playing) Taylor said that he made dances “to feel less alone, to offer a reprieve from the world, because I want people to know about themselves.” Jose Limón, a crucial figure in the development of modern dance, believed that the artist's function is to be the voice and conscience of his time.

His powerful dancing shifted perceptions of the male dancer.

His choreography continues to use dramatic passion and enlarged gestures, a technique he learned from Charles Weidman, communicating with specificity and nuance, as in Limón's The Moor's Pavane.

Born in Mexico, Limón moved to New York City in 1928.

And after studying and performing for 10 years with Doris Humphrey and Charles Weidman, he established his own company, with Humphrey as artistic director.

Limón was a consistently productive choreographer, creating at least one new piece each year until his death in 1972.

(dramatic classical theme playing) (ominous theme playing) Merce Cunningham was another innovator who pushed the limits of modern dance.

After six years performing with Martha Graham, he went out on his own.

He began collaborating with his lifelong friend, John Cage, and set up his own company in 1953.

He believed that dance was done with music, not to music.

He would throw dice to mix up predictable patterns, or use a computer program, Life Forms, to find fresh movement possibilities.

His work evolved into a rebellion against some of the standard features of modern dance at that time — storytelling, playing a character, and even dancing to music.

This approach opened new possibilities for a grou of experimental choreographers, such as Yvonne Rainer, Anna Halprin, Steve Paxton and Twyla Tharp, some of whom were part of New York's Judson Dance Theater.

MARCUS SCHULKIND: We had the Judson revolution against what those people did, which said no more is there a soloist, no more is there a ranking, no more is there men better than women in dance, no more is there partnering of men and women.

Again, breaking down all of the classical rules.

No more is there material.

No more is there things you can sing and not have a tune that you dance to.

No more is any less crawling up a building any less of a dance than doing something about the human condition under lights and somewhere else.

(rain pattering) (dramatic classical theme playing) NARRATOR: Throughout history, artists have responded to their times, and that's true as well today.

Dancer-choreographers like Mark Morris, Twyla Tharp, Robert Battle, David Parsons all use eclectic dance vocabularies and amazing technical skills to reflect on the wonder and chaos of modern life.

Mark Morris returned modern dance to its origins.

Similar to Isadora, he uses classical music and Greek themes like Dido and Aeneas.

His love of India is reminiscent of St. Denis in works such as O Rangasayee.

His use of a musical score as he choreographs is a reminder of Humphrey's music visualizations.

Like Graham, he's unafraid of the psychological depths of Greek tragedy.

Also, like Paul Taylor, who he admires, he's witty and unpredictable, in such works as Pepperland.

Above all, he's returned music, with clarity and joy, to its rightful place in modern dance.

MAHONEY: When I think about Twyla, what I think about is... exploration and laboratory.

NARRATOR: Twyla Tharp is one of modern dance's most striking innovators.

She began her career as an experimental, post-modern dancer at New York's Judson Dance Theater, and establishe her own dance company in 1966.

A post-modern choreographer, she's known as one of the first to make crossover dances, using all styles — modern, ballet, jazz, tap, baton twirling — in her pieces.

Among her many musicals are Moving Out, Come Fly Away, and The Times They Are A-Changin'.

David Parsons is a bright light on the modern dance horizon.

His signature piece, Caught, is a tour de force solo, with a flying figure caught in mid air by a strobe light.

He danced with the Paul Taylor Company for eight years and started his own company in 1985.

He created more than 80 works for Parsons Dance, operas, films and TV specials.

(gentle classical music playing) A veteran dancer with David Parsons, Robert Battle founded his own dance company in 2002.

Battle sets up a rhythm, a movement emphasis, an increasing pace which grows into a group spirit and boosts the force of his choreography.

In 2011, he became head of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.

SHAUMBA DIBINGA: I love the energy that he has with his dancers, and the realness.

You know, he'll be in there in jeans and a button-up shirt and dress shoes, and jump up and go over some choreography to make sure the dancers have it.

He's very, very about the people.

And Ailey said dance was taken from the people, and it has to be given back all the time, and Mr. Battle is giving it back every single day.

Oh, it's amazing.

MARGOT PARSONS: I wish the universities would — the administration, the deans would see the value.

I often wish if I could just have them for one day they would see how difficult and how challenging it is and how it incorporates the mind and the body everything the Greeks wanted of the body is there.

MARCUS SCHULKIND: Lots of places create dancers who can go out and work and who are interested in working, Youve still got to do the work.

And youve still got to do the work thats about shaking up your sensibility and developing yourself as a human being, as an artist.

It is truly a sign of the times that all dancers are merging.

There was the modern dancers, the classical ballet dancers, the musical theater dancers, the folk dancers, the world global dancers, and, um, now everything is just one fantastic roller coaster of a ride.

(contemplative classical piano music playing) NARRATOR: Modern dance, a proud legacy, born of natural movements, sways and bends like a grand oak in the winds of change, ever sowing new generations of dancers.

(classical music continues)