<Begin Segment 23>

SY: During this time, modern dance was not really viewed as, in the way modern dance is viewed now. What was the public opinion of modern dance at that time?

MN: Well, there wasn't a very big public for modern dance. But it was anti-ballet in philosophy. Ballet is beautiful, and it's a set in a vocabulary of movements that have been established since Louis XIV. And everything falls in that frame, and you don't make up anything of your own. But in modern dance, you learn how to use space and rhythm, and develop your body to a instrument that can express you. And then, if you lift anything out of the technique class, off goes your head. You have to do your own movement, and your own movement comes from your own creativity and whatever your subject matter is. But you're not, you don't use your technique as a means to an end. It isn't -- technique is something you leave when you start doing your own dances. But you use that technique that your body has developed, to help you express yourself better. Without technique it's hard to express yourself.

SY: So if -- so it's very different from ballet...

MN: Yeah, 'cause ballet...

SY: Because ballet is very technique-centered?

MN: And it's all set, the arms and legs. (...) I don't know whether you could say it defies gravity or not. But it's an upward movement, (...) you get up on your toes. They're on their toes, and they go, they go heavenly. But in modern, you take off your shoes and you go barefooted and you can use the floor level, the floor. The earth is very important, as well as going up in the air and standing on your feet. And it developed (...) mostly after the first World War in Germany and in New York. And Mary Wigman was the main dancer in Germany. And they had suffered so badly from the first World War, so her movement was always down, down towards the floor, low swings. And so people get the idea that modern dancers roll on the floor and grovel on the floor. [Laughs] But if the subject matter demands it, you do. But like Martha Graham, her movement is not flowing and lovely like ballet. It's more -- it's strong and percussive. So is life. So the modern dancers started using different ideas. And the different ideas demanded a different kind of movement, different kind of technique. And that's how modern dance came into being. But since everybody was used to seeing ballet and how lovely it was, they thought, "Oh, boy, that modern dance, that's dirty dance." [Laughs] But it's not the same today. They're both -- they're almost alike now. The modern dancers are doing ballet, and the ballet dancers are doing modern. It's all interchanged now.

SY: But back then, it was -- modern dance was not really publicly accepted as dance. It was a different kind of dance and, also...

MN: Well, it wasn't very well-known. It was just known in New York. That was about the only place that people knew about it. And then John Martin, he would -- he was a good reviewer. He reviewed dance. And he would review modern dance and that's one of the main reasons that it got known. But then with television, wham, it really took hold then so the whole world knows what modern dance is now.

<End Segment 23> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.