Your Top Choices Of The Century - survey results on 20th century dance - includes related chronology on history of modern dance

Dance Magazine, March, 1999 by Doris Perlman

* Loie Fuller (1862-1928). An American actress with no dance training, she became a wizard at creating magical illusions of natural forms with lighting and drapery. Idolized in France, she made Paris her permanent home.

* Mary Wigman (1886-1973). A peerless solo artist who became the most important figure in German expressionist dance. Influenced by the movement theories of Rudolf Laban, she drew on primitive mythical subjects that emphasized a bond with nature while developing a style that evolved from muscular tension and release.

1925

* Katherine Dunham (b. 1912) pursued her artistic vision in popular theater and movies. A serious student of Afro-Caribbean folk culture--she is shown here in her L'Ag'Ya (1937)--Dunham prepared evening-length productions of sensuously costumed dance.

* Hanya Holm (1893-1992). A student of Wigman, she established a school here in 1931 and introduced the German Expressionist use of space as a sculptural entity to U.S. modern dance.

* Martha Graham (1894-1991). After a late start at age twenty-two as a Denishawn student, this intensely passionate artist developed a contraction-and-release technique based on breathing that became the most widely taught of modern styles in the U.S. Developing a company as she built a repertory, Graham explored Greek myths, the Bible, the American frontier, and the human heart while struggling against our Puritan heritage. Among the choreographers she nurtured were Hawkins, Cunningham, Taylor, and Sokolow. as well as May O'Donnell and John Butler.

* Bella Lewitzky (b. 1916) shared the eclectic artistic sensibility of her mentor, Lester Horton (1906-53). In 1946 they established Dance Theater in Los Angeles, the first U.S. performing space devoted exclusively to dance. Lewitzky is shown above with Carl Ratcliff in Horton's A Bouquet for Molly (1950).

* Charles Weidman (1901-75) and Doris Humphrey (1895-1958) in their Humphrey-Weidman Company (1928-45) developed a movement vocabulary based on fall and recovery. His wit meshed comfortably with her idealistic humanism in a repertory that stretched the body to its physical limits.

* Helen Tamiris (1905-66) danced with the Metropolitan Opera Ballet before beginning her solo career and choreagraphing for Broadway musicals, the concert stage--she was the first to use spirituals for concert dance--and the company she formed with her husband, Daniel Nagrin (b. 1917).

* Ted Shawn (1891-1972) parted artistic company with St. Denis in 1933--they never were officially divorced--to form Teal Shawn and His Men Dancers, the first all-male troupe in the U.S. (Shawn is the central figure above). He disbanded it in 1940 to start Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival.

* Paul Taylor (b. 1930). Determined to explore human experience, he has created an outstanding repertory of antic wit and hard reality. Taylor scrutinizes the epic and the everyday with tough innocence and athletic vigor. (He's at the center, in white, in this 1964 company photo.)

* Jose Limon (1908-72). Born in Mexico and brought up in the U.S., he joined the Humphrey-Weidman company (1930-40) and organized his own troupe after World War II. A hero betrayed is a motif in his work. Limon is flanked by Pauline Koner (b. 1912), Lukas Hoving (b. 1912), and Betty Jones in his Moor's Pavane (1949).