Dance History

Mikhail Baryshnikov

1977 BCE

In 1977, Mikhail Baryshnikov received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor and a Golden Globe nomination for his work as "Yuri Kopeikine" in the film The Turning Point. He also had a significant role in the last season of the television series Sex and the City.

Mikhail Baryshnikov

1974 BCE

Mikhail Baryshnikov defected to Canada in 1974 for more opportunities in western dance. After freelancing with many companies, he joined the New York City Ballet as a principal dancer to learn George Balanchine's style of movement. He then danced with the American Ballet Theatre, where he later became artistic director.

Merce Cunningham

1953 BCE

In 1953, Merce Cunningham creates a group in the Black Mountain College (North Carolina) that allows him to develop a method full of new artistic postulates. He innovates from almost all of the possible perspectives: choreographic, compositional, technical-interpretative, musical, philosophical and others.

Merce Cunningham

1943 BCE

Since 1943, accompanied by John Cage, Merce Cunningham starts a series of concerts and tours with the purpose of exposing his new ideas concerning dance.

Merce Cunningham

1942 BCE

Merce Cunningham is a student of Martha Graham. After being a main dancer in her company for several years, he starts an independent career as a choreographer in 1942. Accompanied by John Cage’s music, he presents a solo entitled “Totem ancestor”, which opens his period of individual research.

Gene Kelly

1942 BCE

Gene Kelly’s first film was For Me and My Gal is a 1942 American musical film directed by Busby Berkeley. The film was written by Richard Sherman, Fred F. Finklehoffe and Sid Silvers, based on a story by Howard Emmett Rogers inspired by a true story about vaudeville actors Harry Palmer and Jo Hayden, when Palmer was drafted into World War I. The film was a production of the Arthur Freed unit at MGM.

Fred Astaire

1933 BCE

Fred Astaire headed to Hollywood. Signed to RKO, he was loaned to MGM to appear in Dancing Lady (1933) before starting work on RKO's Flying Down to Rio (1933). In the latter film, he began his highly successful partnership with Ginger Rogers, with whom he danced in 9 RKO pictures.

Ginger Rogers

1929 BCE

Ginger Rogers's first film was in 1929 in A Night in a Dormitory (1930). It was a bit part, but it was a start. Later that year, Ginger appeared, briefly in two more films, A Day of a Man of Affairs (1929) and Campus Sweethearts (1930). For awhile she did both movies and theatre. The following year she began to get better parts in films such as Office Blues (1930) and The Tip-Off (1931). But the movie that enamored her to the public was Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933).

Martha Graham

1926 BCE

In 1926, the Martha Graham Center of Contemporary Dance was established. On April 18 of the same year Graham debuted her first independent concert, consisting of 18 short solos and trios that she had choreographed. This performance took place at the 48th Street Theatre in Manhattan. She would later say of the concert: "Everything I did was influenced by Denishawn.

Martha Graham

1926 BCE

Martha Graham was recognized as one of the greatest artists of the 20th century. Martha Graham created a movement language based upon the expressive capacity of the human body. It all began in 1926 when Martha Graham started teaching a group of dancers who had been drawn to her creative work. Thus began the Martha Graham Studio, to remain under her personal guidance for the next 66 years.

Anna Pavlova

1926 BCE

In 1926, Anna Pavlova finally took that journey, breaking it in South Africa, and her first Australian tour commenced in Melbourne. The company comprised approximately 45 dancers, her partners being Laurent Novikoff and Algeranoff, and even though His Majesty’s Theatre in Melbourne was the venue for the first season, which ran from 13 March to 14 April, the Sydney Daily Telegraph published a photograph of her arrival in Australia on 12 March.

Martha Graham

1926 BCE

On November 28, 1926 Martha Graham and others in her company gave a dance recital at the Klaw Theatre in New York City. Around the same time she entered an extended collaboration with Japanese-American pictorialist photographer Soichi Sunami, and over the next five years they together created some of the most iconic images of early modern dance.

Anna Pavlova

1913 BCE

In 1913, Anna Pavlova toured America, and for the next fifteen years, countless other countries--a total of 300,000. miles and 4,000 performances.

Isadora Duncan

1902 BCE

In 1902, Loie Fuller invited Isadora Duncan to tour with her. This took Isadora Duncan all over Europe as she created new works using her innovative technique, which emphasized natural movement over the rigid technique of ballet. She spent most of the rest of her life touring Europe and the Americas in this fashion.

Anna Pavlova

1891 BCE

In 1891, Anna Pavlova was accepted at the age of 10. She appeared for the first time on stage in Marius Petipa's Un conte de fées (A Fairy Tale), which the ballet master staged for the students of the school.