Analytic post-modern dance emanated from the rejection of story-telling and rhythmic structure as the defining constituents of dance. Instead, it intended to focus on sheer techniques for what they were. In its renewed perspective, post-modern choreographers didn’t want to convey a meaning through the various movements enacted through the medium of the body; they actually drew attention to the body itself with the emphasis on scientific laws that govern it and drive its different, complex states of motion. As a result of the withdrawal of musicality and metaphorical purposes, dancers presented dance as the subject of their performances.
Steve Paxton’s techniques truly attest to the analytic post-modern dance tenets of the body as the focus of the performance. In his contact improvisation style, two or more bodies display the force of gravity as one person spontaneously reacts to the movements of another; they do so without any preparation, improvising in response to the actions randomly chosen by their partners. Such dance vocabulary constitutes neither music nor story telling, but rather the exploration of the mechanics of the body. Thus, Paxton demonstrated the significance of the bare form itself by removing any symbolic meaning traditionally woven into dance.
-Faryal
“Post-modern dance” was extremely different from its similar-sounding, mother-genre that was “modern dance”. In fact, post-modern dance was revolutionary because it focused on the medium of the dance, rather than on the dance itself. “Movement is not pre-selected … but results from certain decisions”, says Michael Kirby in one of his issues of “The Drama Review” (Kirby qtd. in Banes XIV). All of a sudden, the elements that once were crucial and central to a performance, that were performance itself such as costumes, stage, music and lighting, become just marginal, and serve merely functional roles (Kirby qtd. in Banes XIV). Thus, the body assumes the role of protagonist rather than instrument, leaving the dance and the movement as the reactions, the effects. All of a sudden, then, everyday actions such as walking or eating became a performance, leading to the revolutionary new conception of dance as being defined not by its content but by its context (Banes XIX). Once the barrier of predetermined standards and canons of movements for dance performance were taken down, the post-modern choreographers could finally focus on transmitting emotion and meaning through the naturality of the body.
Trisha Brown fit in with the post-modern definition particularly with her “Solo olos”, in which the movements of the dancers were instructed by herself, telling them to perform a certain choreography in different ways and guiding them back to unity at the end. Once again, the focus is certainly on the body here: the dance itself changes every single time, so the movements of the bodies and the way they move relative to each other defines the performance. Furthermore, to perform such momentous choreography the dancers have to be completely aware and in control of the movements of their bodies, leading back to the post-modern concept that the medium of the dance is what defines it. Trisha Brown also used to music, referring back to the fact that music and stage elements were marginal and purely functional.
Sara Camnasio