Word: moderns
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Smith's recorded performances reflect hints of the multi-layered meanings, beyond the literal content of the lyrics, with which blues women often endowed the songs they sang. In fact, looking at early women's blues from a modern perspective, we can detect emerging feminist themes...
...Henson can be credited with many accomplishments: he had the most profound influence on children of any entertainer of his time; he adapted the ancient art of puppetry to the most modern of mediums, television, transforming both; he created a TV show that was one of the most popular on earth. But Henson's greatest achievement was broader than any of these. Through his work, he helped sustain the qualities of fancifulness, warmth and consideration that have been so threatened by our coarse, cynical...
...were cuddly but not too cuddly, and not only cuddly. There are satire and sly wit; Bert and Ernie quarrel; Miss Piggy behaves unbecomingly; Kermit is sometimes exasperated. By adding just enough tartness to a sweet overall spirit, Henson purveyed a kind of innocence that was plausible for the modern imagination. His knowingness allowed us to accept his real gifts: wonder, delight, optimism...
Graham was far from the first dancer to rip off her toe shoes and break with the rigid conventions of 19th century ballet. America in the 1910s and '20s was full of young women (modern dance in the beginning was very much a women's movement) with similar notions. But it was her homegrown technique--the fierce pelvic contractions, the rugged "floor work" that startled those who took for granted that real dancers soared through the air--that caught on, becoming the cornerstone of postwar modern dance. Merce Cunningham, Paul Taylor, Twyla Tharp, Mark Morris--all are Graham's children...
...long series of angst-ridden dance dramas--enacted on symbol-strewn sets designed by the sculptor Isamu Noguchi and accompanied by scores commissioned from such noted composers as Aaron Copland and Samuel Barber--on which her reputation now chiefly rests. Cave of the Heart (1946), one of her many modern recastings of ancient Greek myth, contains a horrific solo in which the hate-crazed Medea gobbles her own entrails--perhaps Graham's most sensational coup de theatre and one recalled with nightmarish clarity by all who saw her bring...