German choreographer Kurt Joos

An associate of German choreographer Kurt Joos was so impressed by Duncan s ideas that she permanently abandoned the Joos Ballet Company and took up a lifelong exploration of modern dance. Her name was Mary Wigman and, along with Isadora Duncan, she gave substance to the wholly new idiom of dance which has dominated this century and which is one of the few generic arts produced in America. Also important as forerunners of modern dance was the American theatrical dancer Loie Fuller and the team of Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn, whose exotic productions suggested to a worldwide public that there were dance idioms besides ballet which deserved the designation of "art." It was from the school of the illustrious American couple — Denishawn — that Martha Graham, Charles Weidman, and Doris Humphrey emerged to become the Holy Trinity of dance in the United States and the first true exponents of a revolutionary form which has been called modem dance, expressionistic dance, contemporary dance, and — by its detractors — barefoot ballet.