Discuss antitraditional forms of expression in music and dance

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

The music of the early twentieth century shared the Modernist assault on tradition, and most dramatically so in the areas of tonality and meter. Until the late nineteenth century, most music was tonal; that is, structured on a single key or tonal center. However, by the second decade of the twentieth century, musical compositions might be polytonal (having several tonal centers) or atonal (without a tonal center). Further, instead of following a single meter, a modern composition might be polyrhythmic(having two or more different meters at the same time), or (as with Imagist poems) it might obey no fixed or regular metrical pattern. Modern composers tended to reject conventional modes of expression, including traditional harmony and instrumentation, choosing to explore innovative effects based on dissonance, the free use of meter, and the inventive combination of musical instruments, some of which they borrowed from non-Western cultures.
Similarly, changes in modern dance occurred alongside the musical experiments taking place. Choreographer Vaslav Nijinsky aroused great controversy with his choreography for Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring. He took the raw, rhythmic complexity of Stravinsky's score as inspiration for a series of frenzied leaps and wild, wheeling rounds that shocked the audience. The American Martha Graham also rejected the rules and conventions of classical ballet, preferring to explore the expressive power of natural movement. Her dancers were trained to expose the process and techniques of dancing, rather than to conceal displays of physical effort, as was expected in classical dance.