Modern Dance was born in America during the turn of the 20th century when a number of choreographers and dancers rebelled against the two forms of dance that were prevalent at the time, ballet and vaudeville. They rejected what they interpreted as the rigid and imperialistic nature of ballet, and they wanted to be taken seriously as artists rather than be seen simply as entertainers. Loie Fuller, Isadora Duncan, Ruth St. Denis, and Ted Shawn are considered to be the pioneers of modern dance in America.

Considered the founding mother of American modern dance, Isadora Duncan was largely self‐taught. She presented her first recitals in 1898, and by 1900 she was in Europe, where she would spend most of her remaining life and win the greatest acceptance. Duncan was truly revolutionary. She discarded the corset, slippers, and tutu of conventional ballet dress, adopting instead tunics that freed the body and revealed its movement. She used music by Chopin, Beethoven, Gluck, Wagner, and other first rank composers. She danced on concert stages and in opera houses. She spoke of her dancing not as entertainment but as art with a high moral purpose. Most of all, she insisted upon the essence of dance as movement. Her vocabulary was simple but performed with a musicality, dynamic subtlety, and charisma that made it powerfully expressive. In 1904, Duncan established her first school of dance just outside of Berlin, where she began to develop her theories of dance education and to assemble her famous dance group, later known as the Isadorables. Between 1904 and 1907, Duncan lived and worked in Greece, Germany, Russia and Scandanavia.

During the 1920s, a passion for interpretive dancing swept America. Isadora Duncan’s fame and Denishawn’s tours had introduced audiences and dancers alike to the concept of a new form of serious theatrical dancing. The ground work had been laid