Modern Dance

Modern dance was a movement that began at the turn of the 20th century when American dancers Loie Fuller, Isadora Duncan, and Ruth St. Denis broke from formal dance traditions with their own personal vision of movement. Soon, their visions evolved through Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey, and Charles Weidman, who would all go on to teach their methods and present modern dance as a serious art form.

Time magazine called her “the Dancer of the Century.” Her technique, used by dance companies throughout the world, became the first long-lasting alternative to the idiom of classical ballet. Her pioneering movements—powerful, dynamic, jagged, edgy, forthright—combined with her distinctive system of training, were the epitome of American modernism, performance as art. Neil Baldwin, author of admired biographies, gives us the artist and performer, the dance monument who led a cult of dance worshippers as well as the woman herself in all of her complexity.

Anthony Powell's universally acclaimed epic encompasses a four-volume panorama of twentieth-century London. Hailed by Time as "brilliant literary comedy as well as a brilliant sketch of the times," A Dance to the Music of Time opens just after World War I. Amid the fever of the 1920s and the first chill of the 1930s, Nick Jenkins and his friends confront sex, society, business, and art.

Anthony Powell's universally acclaimed epic encompasses a four-volume panorama of twentieth century London. Hailed by Time as "brilliant literary comedy as well as a brilliant sketch of the times," A Dance to the Music of Time opens just after World War I. Amid the fever of the 1920s and the first chill of the 1930s, Nick Jenkins and his friends confront sex, society, business, and art.

Anthony Powell's universally acclaimed epic encompasses a four-volume panorama of 20th-century London. Hailed by T Time as "brilliant literary comedy as well as a brilliant sketch of the times," A Dance to the Music of Time opens just after World War I. Amid the fever of the 1920s and the first chill of the 1930s, Nick Jenkins and his friends confront sex, society, business, and art.

Anthony Powell's universally acclaimed epic encompasses a 4 volume panorama of twentieth century London. Hailed by Time as "brilliant literary comedy as well as a brilliant sketch of the times", A Dance to the Music of Time opens just after World War I. Amid the fever of the 1920s and the first chill of the 1930s, Nick Jenkins and his friends confront sex, society, business, and art.

From the illicit reggae blues dances and acid-rock free festivals of the 1970s, through the ecstasy-fuelled Second Summer of Love in 1988, to the increasingly corporate dance music culture of the post-Covid era, Party Lines is a groundbreaking new history of UK dance music, exploring its pivotal role in the social, political and economic shifts on which modern Britain has been built.

The story of modern dance is known to be one of subversion. But it's less widely acknowledged how often its schisms concerned social attitudes towards women and feminist politics. From the late 1800s to the late 1950s, a diverse group of trailblazing women changed the face of dance, and in the process, contributed to shifting attitudes about women's bodies and rights. In Wild Grace, Sara Veale focuses predominantly on nine women, each of whom were instructive in the development of modern dance.

From the illicit reggae blues dances and acid-rock free festivals of the 1970s, through the ecstasy-fuelled Second Summer of Love in 1988, to the increasingly corporate dance music culture of the post-Covid era, Party Lines is a groundbreaking new history of UK dance music, exploring its pivotal role in the social, political and economic shifts on which modern Britain has been built.