THE HISTORY OF MODERN AMERICAN DANCE
A The birth of modern American dance occurred in the first years of the twentieth century. And, perhaps unusually for academics, dance historians hold remarkably similar views when it comes to identifying the early 1900s, we can see that dancers quite deliberately moved away from previous approaches. This included rejecting both the formal moves of ballet dancing and the entertainment of vaudeville dancing. As a result, dancers began the new century with a fresh start. One important figure at this time was Loie Fuller, who performed largely with her arms, perhaps because she had limited dance training. Fuller emphasized visual effects rather than storytelling, and pioneered the use of artificial lighting to create shadows while dancing.
B Perhaps most influential in the early years was Isadora Duncan, who was well known in both America and Europe. Duncan refused to wear elaborate costumes, preferring to dance in plain dresses and bare feet. She is also notable for preferring music written by classical composers such as Chopin and Beethoven, rather than contemporary compositions. At a similar time, Ruth St Denis was bringing the dance training academy with her husband with the intention of passing on her approach and style to the next generation of American dancers.
C By the 1920s, the modern dance movement in America was well established. Audiences were enthusiastic and dancers were increasingly prepared to experiment with new ideas. Martha Graham was one of an important group who emerged in New York. Graham looked within herself to find her dance style, examining how her body moved as she breathed, but also observing the patterns made by her limbs when walking in order to find a new, naturalistic approach to dance. Doris Humphrey wanted her dance to reflect her personal experience of American life. She explored the concept of gravity, allowing her body to fall, only to recover at the last moment. Her book The Art of Making Dances, which detailed her approach to dance composition, was highly influential with later generations of dancers.
D By the 1930s, modern dance was becoming an accepted, respectable art form. Universities such as Bennington College included modern dance in their performing arts programmes for the first time. In the 1940s, German-born dancer Hanya Holm embraced the changing times by including modern dance in mainstream musicals on the Broadway stage. Among Holm's many other innovations was bringing her own humour to these performances – audiences adored it.
E Modern American dance has seldom stood still. Each new generation of dancers either developed the techniques of their teachers or rejected them outright. So by the 1950s the techniques of traditional European ballet dancing were again influential. This was certainly true of Erick Hawkins, who also incorporated Native American and Asian styles. Similarly, Merce Cunningham emphasized the leg actions and flexibility of the spine associated with ballet moves. Paul Taylor preferred his dance to reflect the experiences and interactions of ordinary people going about their everyday lives. Taylor's career was the subject of a documentary that provided valuable insights into this period of dance.
F The middle decades of the 20th century were certainly a dynamic time. Increasingly, the modern dance movement recognized and reflected the fact that America was a multi-racial, multi-cultural society. Katherine Dunham, an anthropology graduate, used movements from Pacific, African and Caribbean dance to create her unique style. Pearl Primus was another champion of African dance, which she passed on through her dance school in New York. After retirement she travelled widely to universities throughout America lecturing on ethnic dance, which became her main priority.
G Modern dance since the 1980s has become a mix of multiple forms of dance, as well as art more generally. For example, Mark Morris's hugely popular work The Hard Nut includes sensational costumes and a stage design inspired by the comics he'd always enjoyed. Another innovator has been Ohad Naharin, who studied in New York and has worked internationally. Naharin's 'Gaga' style is characterized by highly flexible limbs and backbones, while in rehearsal his dancers have no mirrors, feeling their movements from within themselves, a break from traditional dance custom. In many ways it was a fitting end to a 100-year period that had witnessed a transformation in dance. The emergence of the modern American dance was very much a 20th-century phenomenon. The style drew on influences from home and abroad and in turn, went on to influence global dance culture.
Fragrant memories
The scent of perfume or the musty smell of an old suitcase can set off powerful childhood memories, and now we are closer to knowing why, writes Alexandra Witze.
Readers probably pay more attention to a newspaper with their eyes than with their noses, but they may find that if they lift the paper to their nostrils and inhale, the smell of newsprint might carry them back to their childhood, particularly if their parents were in the habit of reading the newspaper on Sunday mornings. Smells can take us back in time: the aroma of baking bread, the pungency of a driftwood campfire on a beach, the salty tang of the sea can imitate a flood of reminiscences. Psychologists call it the 'Proustian phenomenon', after the French novelist Marcel Proust. Near the beginning of the masterpiece In Search of Lost Time, Proust's narrator dips a madeleine cake into a cup of tea, and the scent and taste release a torrent of childhood memories, enough to fill 3,000 pages. This phenomenon is now getting scientific attention.
Psychologists such as Rachel Herz, a cognitive neuroscientist at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, have demonstrated that memories triggered by smells can be more emotional than memories related to other senses. When we inhale, odour molecules activate the brain cells in the amygdala, a part of the brain that helps control emotion. In contrast, the other senses, such as taste or touch, get directed through other parts of the brain before reaching the amygdala.
The direct link between odours and the amygdala may help explain the emotional potency of smells. There is this unique connection between the sense of smell and the part of the brain that processes emotion,' says Herz.
In one recent study Herz recruited five volunteers who had vivid memories of people and events associated with a particular perfume. She took images of the volunteers' brains as they sniffed that perfume and also another perfume without knowing which was which. Next, the volunteers were shown photos of both people and further brain images were taken. Herz found that smelling the specified perfume activated the volunteers' brains far more than the visual images did.
To make sure the other senses would not also elicit a strong response, Herz compared smells with sounds and pictures in another study. She had 70 subjects compare smells with sounds and pictures in another study. She had 70. subjects describe an emotional memory involving items such as popcorn and grass that had been freshly cut. They then compared the items through sights, sounds and smells. For instance, the person might see a picture of a lawnmower, then sniff the scent of grass, then finally listen to the lawnmower's sound. Memories triggered by smell were recorded as evoking more emotions than those sparked by sights or sounds.
Herz's work is just one of many studies now delving into the link between smell and memory. Other researchers are exploring how this powerful connection forms in the first place. Some believe that the key to the Proustian phenomenon is that smells serve as effective contextual cues. When we first encounter an odour, we tend to associate it with a specific event or moment. Later, when we smell that same odour again, it helps us recall the original context with surprising clarity.
This process is thought to be highly effective because, unlike other senses, our olfactory system has a strong and direct anatomical connection to the hippocampus and the amygdala, brain regions deeply involved in emotion and memory formation. This direct pathway allows scent to act as a potent trigger, unlocking memories that might otherwise remain dormant.
Understanding symbols
Judy DeLoache describes her research into the difficulties children experience with symbols
A About 20 years ago I had one of those wonderful moments when research takes an unexpected but fruitful turn. I had been studying toddler memory and was beginning a new experiment with two-and-a- half- and three-year-olds. For the project, I had built a model of a room that was in my laboratory. The real space contained basic furniture such as a couch and table. The miniature version was as similar as possible to its larger counterpart: the furniture was the same shape and material and was arranged in the same position. For the study, a child watched as we hid a miniature toy - a plastic dog we called Little Snoopy* - in the model. We then encouraged the child to find 'Big Snoopy, a large version of the toy hiding in the same place in his big room.'
B The three-year-olds were very successful. After they observed the small toy being placed behind the miniature couch, they ran into the room and found the large toy behind the real couch. But the two-and-a-half-year- olds failed abysmally. They cheerfully ran into the room to retrieve the large toy, but most had no idea where to look, even though they remembered where the tiny toy was hidden in the miniature room and could readily find it there.
C Their failure to use what they knew about the model to draw an inference about the real room indicated that they did not appreciate the relation between the model and the room. I realised my memory study was instead a study of symbolic understanding and that the children's failure might be telling us something about how and when children acquire the ability to understand that one object stands for another.
D The first type of symbolic object that infants and young children master is the picture. No symbols seem simpler to adults, but infants initially find pictures perplexing. The problem stems from the duality inherent in all symbolic objects: they are real in themselves and also representations of something else. A few years ago I became intrigued by anecdotes suggesting that infants do not appreciate this duality-stories of a baby trying to pick up a depicted object or to put on a hat from a picture book, for example.
E My colleagues and I decided to explore infants' understanding of pictures. In one study, we presented nine-month-olds with a brightly coloured picture of a toy and then tested their manual search for the toy. We placed the picture on the floor of a small room, and the infants sat on their parents' laps in front of the picture. We showed them the toy and then slid it behind the picture. The infants were then encouraged to retrieve the toy. Surprisingly, they consistently reached for the picture instead of the actual toy. They did this even though they were quite capable of picking up the toy when it was not behind the picture. It was as if the picture, as a representation, interfered with their ability to see it as a real object.
F We have since replicated this finding in several studies, and it seems that infants' difficulty with pictures is quite robust. It is not until about 18 months of age that children clearly understand that a picture is both an object and a representation of something else. This developmental progression is similar to what we observed with the scale model. The younger children treated the model as an interesting object in its own right, but they did not see it as a symbol for the room. The older children, in contrast, immediately understood the relation and used it to find the hidden toy.
G What, then, allows children to begin to understand symbols? We believe that a key factor is something called dual representation. To understand a symbol, a child must mentally represent both the symbol itself and its relation to the thing it stands for. For younger children, the concrete object is so salient that it overwhelms the child's ability to represent the abstract relation. As children develop, they become better at holding two representations in mind at once, which allows them to appreciate the symbolic nature of objects like models and pictures.
