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Contemporary Dance

What Is Contemporary Dance?

Contemporary dance is a genre of dance performance that developed during the mid-twentieth century and has since grown to become one of the dominant genres for formally trained dancers throughout the world, with particularly strong popularity in the U.S. and Europe.

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The genre of Contemporary blends elements of multiple dance styles. This form of dance lets dancers express emotions through movement and breath.   

Contemporary dance is a style of interpretive dance that embraces blending improv, innovation, and technique from various styles of dance such as; jazz, modern, lyrical, and classical ballet. 

Within this genre you focus more on floor work, body shapes, and expression. Instead of relying on the strict rules that govern traditional dance styles it RELIES on your ability to move through improvisation and versatility. It allows you to have creative freedom with your movement. The fluidity of movement allows dancers to explore their mind-body connection. 

It is often referred to as a form of story-telling. Contemporary routines tend to communicate abstract ideas, moments in time, personal or historical moments. The costumes and music will typically reflect and help set the tone of the piece. Some choreographers will have their performers dance to spoken word poems, or have the dance/dancer make “music” with their bodies. 

Major power houses who helped influence contemporary included:  

✨Isadora Duncan, who was an American ballet dancer that rejected the rigid technique of classical ballet to embrace the human bodies natural lines. 

✨Martha Graham was a choreographer known for being the mother of modern dance. Her innovation laid much of the ground for contemporary movement. 

✨Lester Horton was an American choreographer who helped developed modern dance techniques inspired by Native American dances. He was also one of the first American choreographers to insist on racial integration in his performances. His legacy lives on in the work of notable contemporary choreographers including Alvin Ailey.

There are many factors, styles, and innovators who have made contemporary what it is today! This style is forever growing, and has the ability to reflect the times in a way of art movement.

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✨The hidden secret of successful dancers✨
The strength you gain as a dancer will not only help you in class and performances, but will help improve your every day life.
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The power of strength training 

Strength training is the staple when it comes to improving performance. Culturally, specific strength training has not always been a part of dance training due to stigmas in the performing arts community. Strength training helps dancers in many different ways. Training in strength as a dancer can help you leap higher, control your movements, and perform more consistently. Most importantly strength training helps prevent injury. 


Why is important for dancers to strength train? 

Dancers are required to jump, leap, catch partners, incorporate floor work, move down to the floor swiftly, and perform other explosive movements. All of these movements require muscular strength and power. Although technique classes can help improve muscular strength, power, and proper execution they don’t always focus on increasing strength and power as one of the main goals.

 

What happens when we strength train?

When we add strength training to our daily dance training everything changes. Not only do you see the results physically, you can see them within your technique. Every movement and trick becomes more substantial. You begin to have more power within your dancing. The more you train your strength along with your technique the safer your dancing becomes. You will be able to achiever harder movements and tricks. Most importantly your body with be protected, and you chances of injury lessen. 

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July Blog Series: Summer Self-care Essentials, Pt. 1: MOVEMENT

We’re half-way through the summer, and even though school’s out, life certainly hasn’t slowed down. Packed with vacations, summer camps, parties, and outdoor activities, summertime can be one of the busiest, most active time of the year- and also, the hottest. These elements combined have a powerful effect on the body, which makes practicing self care during this season not only paramount, but also, potentially life-saving.

This is where our new July blog series steps in: Summer Self-Care Essentials. Each week, we highlight an area of health & wellness to inspire you to connect with your physical wellbeing and ultimately, ensure that your ideal “summer bod” is one that is balanced, nourished, and healthy.

But first, let’s take a look at how the hotter temperature during summer months can affect our bodies.

As humans, its built into our biological make-up to experience physical changes alongside seasonal ones. While winter time is the more severe season on average, summer offers its own set of challenges for our physiological climate to accommodate, including changes to the functionality of the heart, lungs, gastrointestinal and nervous systems. Due to the increase in temperature, studies suggest our bodies are more vulnerable to dehydration, heat stroke, decreased lung function, and, especially, an impaired mental state with summer months usually boasting more admissions to the ER for mental healthcare services than winter.

Keeping this in mind, let’s jump into this week’s first summer self-care essential: MOVEMENT.  
No matter the time of year, implementing a physical activity into one’s self-care routine empowers one to have awareness of and take responsibility for one’s physical wellbeing. Depending on the activity, integral functions of the body, such as the cardiovascular, nervous, and respiratory systems, are engaged, leading to benefits like stronger muscles, reduced stress, increased mobility, and the release of certain brain chemicals- like endorphins- which promote positive feelings and also combat depression.

 

Without further ado, let’s dive into some summer movement tips for your summer self-care routine:
  • Hydrate- Before, during, and after your workout, be sure to drink water! Its our number 1 tip for a reason. As mentioned above, when the environment warms up, it makes the body more vulnerable to heat related afflictions that can take a serious, sometimes fatal toll on our bodies. Among a number of benefits, water helps regulate body temperature, maintain blood pressure, protects joints during movement, prevents dehydration, and boosts energy to stave off lethargy.*More on water and it’s benefits in our next blog post, but keep reading along for more movement related tips below!*
  • Cool off- Consider indoor/outdoor activities that will not only help you break a sweat, but will also keep you cool. Below are a few of our favorites:
    Indoor activities: dance class, barre classes, yoga, pilates, gymnastics, strength training at a gym, stationary bike, treadmill, indoor rock climbing, racquet ball, basketball, at-home workout
    Outdoor activities: swimming, surfing, hiking, walking/running, jump-roping, soccer, baseball, softball, golfing, cycling, inline skating, skateboarding
  • Slow down- No need to stack your routine with long, high intensity workouts to achieve your summer fitness goals. The one thing you DO NOT want to do is overexert yourself.
    To start, try peppering your workout routine with shorter, lower intensity exercises to accommodate both the physiological and seasonal change (see above for ideas and inspiration). It’s usually recommended to commit to 20-30 mins, 3 x a week, and practice consistency in whatever activity you choose to do.
    Also, consider dedicating 5 -10 min of your routine specifically to cooling down after exercising; this helps with easing your body back into a regulated state by decreasing the heart rate, expanding your intake of oxygen, and enhancing relaxation.
Hope you enjoyed the first of our Summer Self-Care Essentials series! Stay tuned for next week’s post, and be sure you’re signed up to receive our newsletter, so you don’t miss a beat!