George Balanchine, Agnes de Mille, Antony Tudor and Jerome Robbins pioneered American ballet. Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey, Katherine Dunham, Merce Cunningham and Alvin Ailey blazed unforeseen trails in modern dance. The uniquely New World tap terpsichore has had as its masters Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, John Bubbles, the Nicholas Brothers, Jimmy Slyde, and Gregory Hines. As for musical theater and vocal choreography, we are indebted to Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Michael Kidd, Bob Fosse and Cholly Atkins. And artists such as Twyla Tharp have worked in a variety of dance genres.

Then there are the generally anonymous contributors who brought the world such social dances as the Charleston, Lindy Hop and break dance, all of which developed into global crazes.

The first generation of dance masters has passed on, and the second is graying. Still, as a newer contingent comes to the fore, at a time of significant decline in vital U.S. government funding, dance in the United States continues to be innovative, with works of high quality. And, significantly, new forms are evolving as dance maintains its presence in the general globalization of culture.

Modern Becomes Classic

Modern dance in the United States, an established form for most of this century, has settled into the status of a classic. Yet it continues to generate new roots. Companies bearing the name and choreographic insignia of the likes of Merce Cunningham, Martha Graham and Alvin Ailey have been joined by such adventuresome stylists as Mark Morris and Bill T. Jones. Even in the aftermath of the death of the founding generation, today s prevailing troupes continue to honor those early artists through a devotion to dance that is seen as an expression of the individual body and soul, that hints at social and political ideals, and that employs the technical vocabulary of their elders. Most of all, they honor the pioneers by doing as they did rebelling against the concerns and modes of those who came before them.

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MARK MORRIS: MILLENNIAL ARTIST

A quick look at U.S. choreographer Mark Morris's current schedule of projects is cause for a double-take.

Indeed, the extraordinary range and omnipresence in an array of venues -- including ballet, modern dance, opera, musical theater, video and film -- does challenge belief. How is it possible for someone to stretch across the breadth, dynamism and unfettered creativity that is necessary to sustain this kind of one-person cultural empire?

By the time he was 35, Morris had produced so large and important a body of work as to make him a worthy subject for an acclaimed critical biography (Mark Morris, by Joan Acocella, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1993). Now, at 41, he continues to move from strength to strength, placing his uncommon choreographic and directorial stamp on new works.

More than any other choreographer working today, Morris deploys his dancers in intriguing spatial relationships and configurations, creating geometric patterns that are choreographic equivalents of the Renaissance concept of the music of the spheres -- the theory that the proof of God's existence resides in the beauty of the patterns of the heavens.

Known for the transcendent musicality of his works, which are grounded in his deep and imaginative understanding of musical structure, Morris has choreographed to seemingly every kind of music, using his dancers' movements to present a visual picture of the score. He is probably most noted for his deep affinity with Baroque vocal music, such as he employed in his 1988 work, L'Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato, set to the Handel score. A work for 24 dancers, a 30-member chorus, five soloists and full orchestra, L'Allegro won several awards at its world premiere in London and will have its U.S. debut in Washington late in 1998. Morris is regarded as a musician's choreographer and is engaged in significant ongoing collaborations with composer Lou Harrison and cellist Yo-Yo Ma. In celebration of Harrison's 80th birthday, Morris commissioned the score for Rhymes with Silver, his fifth teaming with the composer. Ma and the Morris troupe will tour together soon, presenting dances that include the new Harrison piece as well as Falling Down Stairs, a work set to Bach's Third Suite for unaccompanied cello.

Falling Down Stairs received its premiere on U.S. public television in April 1998, as part of a series of video documentaries focused on Ma's collaborations with artists in various media. The filmed version of Morris's Dido and Aeneas, which also had its inaugural showing on cable television in the United States in April, is scheduled to be broadcast worldwide throughout 1998.

The Mark Morris Dance Group has one of the most extensive national and international touring schedules of any dance company in the world. Morris has choreographed over 90 works for his company, but he receives commissions from other troupes as well. At present, he is working on a piece for the San Francisco Ballet, the fourth Morris work that will be entered in its repertory.

A considerable amount of Morris's energy recently has been devoted to musical theater, both popular and classical. He choreographed and directed the new musical, The Capeman, with music by Paul Simon, that had a short run on Broadway early in 1998. Morris also has directed and choreographed operas for the past ten years.

Despite this astonishing amount and variety of activity, until recently Morris and his troupe lacked a permanent base, a luxury that is, nonetheless, vital for growth and stabilization. That challenge has been met: He expects to move his company soon into a facility in central Brooklyn (a New York City borough) that will house the administrative and artistic staff and provide two studios for uninterrupted choreographing. In a real sense, this new home for Morris will also be a new home for U.S. dance.

-- Suzanne Carbonneau       

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This aesthetic break was most famously (and infamously) brought to the attention of the larger public and arts community in 1995, with the publication in The New Yorker of dance critic Arlene Croce's diatribe against Bill T. Jones as a representative of what she termed "victim art." Speaking for a portion of the arts establishment, Croce expressed a contempt for the work of Jones and others which ultimately demonstrated that Croce's real concern was that the modernist aesthetic the only one she recognized as legitimate no longer was guiding many younger choreographers. However, the trends against which Croce and others were railing had already been present in dance as a major force for at least a decade.

Social and Political Context

A cyclical trend that re-emerged in modern dance more than ten years ago and continues today has seen choreographers focusing on making art with social and political content. This work dealt with the "isms" of hatred (including racism, sexism and homophobia), on the politics of identity, and on issues surrounding the AIDS crisis. In addition to Jones (who, ironically, in his most recent work, has embraced formalist concepts), choreographers across the country are expressing similar concerns. David Rousseve in Los Angeles creates dances in which personal history is excavated for larger social issues. Stuart Pimsler of Columbus, Ohio, works with health caregivers in developing his dances. In Seattle, Washington, Pat Graney brings dance into women's prisons. In her choreography for Urban Bush Women, Jawole Willa Jo Zollar of Tallahassee, Florida, tackles issues associated with female African- American identity. And Ralph Lemon, whose most recent work explores how identity is created by race and culture, is among the many choreographers in New York City working in this arena.

Even in modern dance companies whose work focuses on more purely aesthetic concerns, there is evident a vastly different attitude about the body and gender roles. A growing recognition has emerged about the way that dance has been restricted by notions about physical perfection and "beauty," and an attempt is being made to open up professional dance companies to include those who would have been restricted from it even a few years ago. As the physical abilities of dancers seem to increase exponentially (as it does with athletes) with each passing year, there is now beginning to be room on American stages for a more heterogeneous range of physicality. It is becoming rare among younger choreographers to see dance that replicates traditional gender roles as they were idealized and promulgated in ballet and earlier modern dance. Today, women partner and lift men, and men can display softness and vulnerability.

Beyond this, however, there is a new trend in dance that is even more audacious in its challenges to the bodily aesthetic so-called wheelchair companies. These companies can consist entirely of dancers who are disabled or can include a mix of wheelchair-bound and "standup" dancers. American choreographer Victoria Marks, who is currently based in Los Angeles, first brought wide attention to the form with her 1994 film <.I>Outside In (created with director Margaret Williams), that featured the members of the British company CanDoCo. In 1997, Boston Dance Umbrella challenged its audiences with its presentation of an International Festival of Wheelchair Dance that featured eight wheelchair dance companies, as well as troupes from Europe.

Other artists are also confronting notions about who is allowed to dance by opening a place on their stages for previously unheard voices and experiences. Liz Lerman, artistic director of the Washington, D.C.-based Dance Exchange, has defied ageism in dance by expanding her company to include members over the age of 60, whom she has dubbed "dancers of the third age." Likewise, New York choreographer David Dorfman has created a series of projects that recruit untrained dancers in a variety of sites across the country to perform customized versions of dances that address their life experiences. The Everett Dance Theater of Providence, Rhode Island, also has blurred the lines between outreach and artmaking in its focus on creating work with social messages that is developed improvisationally and shaped by feedback from the community about which it dances. And New York-based choreographer Ann Carlson is known for her "Real People" series, in which she has created dances to be performed by people gathered together by a common profession or activity. So far, the project has included lawyers, security officers, basketball players, fly-fishers, fiddlers, corporate executives, a farmer and her dairy cow, schoolteachers, nuns and horse wranglers.

Dance with Jazz

One of the side benefits of modern dance s expansion has been the resurgence of interest in vernacular American music. While jazz largely bypassed modern dance in its heyday, this is no longer the case. There are enough collaborations currently in the works between modern dance choreographers and jazz composers for it to qualify as a bona fide trend. Garth Fagan, choreographer of the hit Broadway musical The Lion King, first collaborated with Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Wynton Marsalis on Griot New York in 1991. Fagan and Marsalis are at work again on a dance, as yet untitled, that Fagan describes as "a yellow brick road to the Millennium." Choreographers Dianne McIntyre, Bebe Miller, Bill T. Jones, Danny Buraczeski and Donald Byrd have commissioned scores from jazz composers that bring this music to a new generation of dance artists. And joining forces are the American Dance Festival and the Kennedy Center. They are seeking to match choreographers with jazz composers, including Billy Taylor who is creating a new score for choreographer Trisha Brown. Even the ballet world is adapting the trend: Peter Martins, artistic director of the New York City Ballet (NYCB), has commissioned Marsalis to compose his first full work for a symphony orchestra, for the company's 1999- 2000 season., with the composer conducting the ballet orchestra. It will be Marsalis's first composition for a full symphonic orchestra.

Despite those who feared the worst for American ballet following the death of NYCB director-choreographer George Balanchine in 1983, American ballet, as a whole, is in a singularly healthy state under Peter Martins direction, commissioning a string of new ballets from other choreographers, adding to the tradition etched by Balanchine, Jerome Robbins and others. American Ballet Theater, the United States premier ballet repertory company, has assumed the mission of spreading ballet across the nation by establishing a presence and community roots in such far-flung locales as Newark (New Jersey), Detroit (Michigan), Washington, Costa Mesa (California) and Los Angeles. And Dance Theater of Harlem, founded by performer Arthur Mitchell in 1968 following the death of Martin Luther King, Jr., has long been acknowledged as among the most important international companies, as evidenced in its having the clout to insist upon performing before racially-mixed audiences in South Africa during the era of apartheid.

Another recent bright spot has been the significant maturation of regional ballet troupes in cities across the United States. Indeed, several companies outside of the dance hub that is New York City have transcended the regional label by establishing a national and global presence.

One of these is the Miami City Ballet, founded in the late 1980s in the rapidly expanding ethnic Florida city. The company is headed by Edward Villella, whose virile presence as a New York City Ballet soloist from the 1950s to 1970s had a significant impact in eroding negative stereotypes about the male dancer. As artistic director, Villella has created a world-class company from the ground up. Reflecting its regional roots, the troupe is imbued with a Latin style as evidenced in the verve and spirit of its dancing, and in the large number of Hispanic dancers in its ranks, as well as in the contributions of its resident choreographer, Jimmy Gamonet De Los Heros, a native of Peru.

Another notable company which has recently come to prominence under a Balanchine alumnus is the San Francisco Ballet. While it is the oldest continuously existing ballet company in the United States (founded in 1933), it was given a new lease on life when Icelandic native Helgi Tomasson assumed directorship of the company in 1985. The company performs masterworks of the 20th-century repertory, as well as full- length 19th-century classics in updated versions by Tomasson.

The creative ecosystem of U.S. ballet is kept in balance by smaller independent companies that exist to serve the vision of a single choreographer, a model that is more familiar in modern dance. Probably the most notable example is Eliot Feld, who continues to challenge himself and his audiences to find the relevance of classical ballet in this time and place. Feld, who first burst onto the scene in 1967 with his choreographed pieces Harbinger and At Midnight, has gone on to head a series of companies devoted to presenting his own aesthetic. Established just a year ago, Feld's newest company, Ballet Tech, is composed exclusively of young dancers trained at his tuition-free school of the same name. Drawing all of its students from New York City public schools, Ballet Tech democratizes and diversifies an art that had its origins in the European courts. Presenting dances such as Yo Shakespeare, the company reflects the culture, look, texture, zeitgeist, and rainbow of ethnicities of contemporary urban America. An increasing number of ballet troupes are acknowledging their responsibilities to the communities in which they reside, developing significant educational and outreach programs that focus on serving those who traditionally never would have had access to ballet training or theatergoing. Based on the model established by Eliot Feld in New York City, the Boston Ballet, Pacific Northwest Ballet in Seattle (Washington), Hartford (Connecticut) Ballet and others have begun to devote significant resources to the establishment of tuition-free schools and programs. Other companies are saluting their communities by commissioning works focused on their home locales. For example, Ballet Arizona, based in Phoenix, is preparing a new work on Native American themes and stories developed through dialogues with members of the area s Native Americans, so as to bridge the Anglo and Indian worlds.

Corporeal Noise-making

The most ubiquitous trend in contemporary dance seems to be the enormous popularity of various forms of percussive dance Irish step dance, tap dance, flamenco and other hybrid forms of corporeal noise-making. Dance has not been this popular in the American commercial theater since the early years of this century, when social dance dominated Broadway and vaudeville stages. Today various forms of percussive dance have made themselves known in the New York City theater and elsewhere, in touring versions of the shows. Riverdance and Lord of the Dance, Bring in 'da Noise! Bring in 'da Funk!, Tap Dogs, and Stomp, -- some from abroad and some homegrown -- all attest to the sudden and seemingly insatiable mania for these aural dance forms that are accessible and highly theatrical. This passion may have emerged from the tap revival of the 1970s, which introduced a new generation to dance that carries its own beat with it. While the aesthetics range from the unabashed pop commercialism of Riverdance and Stomp, which rely on glitzy lighting, smoke machines and deafening unison clamor for their effects, to the more subtle and complex use of tap to embody the history of the African-American experience in Noise/Funk, all of these shows find their appeal in their re-definition of what contemporary audiences were brought up to think of as dance.

Noise/Funk has brought Savion Glover, a 24-year-old wunderkind, the attention that he deserves. Almost single-handedly, Glover has made tap relevant to the newest generation by updating its jazz rhythms to embrace those of the hip-hop sensibility. Glover's astonishing technique has led older tap masters under whom he served his apprenticeship to declare him potentially the greatest tap dancer who has ever lived.

The percussive dance mania is nothing if not global, bringing attention to forms of dance that have their roots in other cultures. While dance has always existed in the United States as a "folk" form a means of celebrating ethnic roots within this nation of immigrants there has been a recent tendency toward the professionalization of traditional dances in companies that follow models of modern dance and ballet. This movement reflects the change in the governing immigrant metaphor in the United States, as it turns away from the melting pot toward the idea of a savory stew in which the ingredients coexist and complement rather than blend.

Preserving Cultural Traditions

Outstanding models of professional folk companies include DanceBrazil, based in New York, and directed by Jelon Vieria. This country's leading exponent of capoeira, the martial arts-dance form that originated in Brazil during slavery, DanceBrazil aims at a fusion of the traditional and the modern. Recently, DanceBrazil completed an extended residency in San Antonio (Texas) where it worked with gang members in the poorest neighborhoods of that city. Celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, the Caribbean Dance Company, based in St.Croix, Virgin Islands, also aims at preserving the region's heritage while using the discipline inherent in dance to offer skills and hope to impoverished island youth.

A strong African heritage movement that has been gaining momentum over the past 30 years has also been abetted by the establishment of DanceAfrica, a two-decades-old annual festival of performances and workshops at eight sites across the United States that brings together companies whose work celebrates African roots within the diaspora.

Another kind of cultural enrichment is being brought to the United States by newer immigrant populations seeking refuge, which has resulted in the preservation of dance forms threatened by contemporary political events. A prime example is classical Cambodian dance, a thousand-year-old tradition which, as a potent symbol of national identity, was targeted by the Khmer Rouge for eradication. A number of the survivors of the killing fields found their way to the United States where they made a systematic effort to establish a home-in-exile for Cambodian dance. Groups such as Sam Ang Sam's Cambodian Network Council in Washington, D.C., have kept this form alive, training a new generation in the art. A similar effort is currently being conducted for the performance traditions of the former Yugoslavia. Based in Granville, Ohio, the Zivili Kolo Ensemble, specializing in Balkan dance, is currently concentrating its energies on dances from areas that are changing their borders and populations, particularly the regions of Slavonija, Vojvodina, the Posavina corridor, and Lika.

Another trend in the professionalization of dance forms is occurring in the transfer of street, social and club styles to the stage. While break dance as a street phenomenon is now more than twenty years old, it is only recently that it has begun appearing in concert venues. It is inevitable, too, in this era of cultural sampling, that break dance would be assimilated into the vocabulary of other dance forms. Hip-hop is a strong influence in the current form taken by bhangra, an exemplar of a peculiarly American dance phenomenon that is, at the same time, truly global in its roots. Originally performed by Punjabi farmers, bhangra has emerged as an exciting new force on American college campuses. A recent national intercollegiate bhangra competition filled a 3,700-seat auditorium in Washington.

While the astonishing variety and fecundity of American dance can only be outlined here, it becomes clear that despite shortages of funds in both the public and private sectors this art form continues to reflect American culture in a lively, vital, and socially-conscious manner. Well into the next century, dance can be expected to continue to be a mirror for our deepest concerns, our fondest hopes, our crassest dreams, our most starry-eyed idealism, and, ultimately, our truest selves.

As Martha Graham fondly quoted her father, "Movement never lies."

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Suzanne Carbonneau has written extensively on dance for The Washington Post and other publications.