11 FAMOUS DANCERS FROM HISTORY AND TODAY - ART - 2025

There are famous dancers who have excelled throughout their careers by technology they have achieved and the beauty of their movements. In our history, we could say that dance has been conceived as the ability to compose with the movement of the body. With these movements dance figures are created, which in turn create the work itself, a defined choreographic composition.

Since ancient times, Greek culture had the concept of art linked to the movement of the body with a natural inertia, in turn motivated by the auditory perception of the individual. With this idea, the dancers were also taken as representatives of the human being in relation to religion or spirituality.

Later, around the seventeenth century, Louis XIV of France officially introduced and ratified ballet as a dance for entertainment for the upper classes and as a very representative part of the fine arts in Western Europe.

Since then, the concept and meaning with which dancers entertained their spectators remained unchanged until, at the beginning of the 20th century, contemporary dance and modern dance appeared as new disciplines based on ballet. These unleashed a large number of free dance styles, giving rise to an expressionist current of this art.

Here is a list of 20 dancers (men and women), including some of the most famous in history and today-

Marie Louise Fuller (1862-1928)

Known as Loïe Fuller, she began in the art world with the theater and later as a burlesque dancer.

She is one of the many women of the early twentieth century considered forerunners of modern dance and stood out for her colorful choreographies marked by large and loose dresses made of silk.

Isadora Duncan (1877-1927)

It could be said that she is one of the creators and forerunners of modern dance. Some have even baptized her as "Mother of Modern Dance". She was a woman activist and defender of women's rights, a thinker, a great choreographer and dance teacher.

He did not want to follow the steps and forms of classical dance, developing a new type of dance, natural and with fresh and free movements. He defended the pure expression of feelings through dance.

Hanya Holm (1893-1992)

This dance teacher, one of the best known dancers in modern dance, was a native of Germany, where she studied with Mary Wigman. She lived in New York since the early 1930s, and there she was in charge of the management of one of the first dance schools, dedicated to teaching the Wigman technique and the principles and theories of Laban.

Thanks to loose movements of the back and torso, he highlighted the fluidity and freedom of his dances, with a technique born of physical movement and improvisation.

Martha Graham (1894-1991)

Of American origin, he defended that modern dance was not pure inventiveness, but discovering the development of original and primitive principles.

The different and pronounced way in which she contracted and relaxed her muscles, coupled with the control with which she landed on the ground, was the personal signature for which she was recognized.

Charles Weidman (1901-1975)

Being one of the North American “Big Four”, he was able to develop his work focused on the expression of gravity, thanks to the company he founded in 1929 together with the choreographer and dancer Doris Humphrey.

His new personal style did not match what he had learned at the Denishawn school where he learned, nor did it have much to do with the classical ballet from which he was moving away as he established his own way of expression.

Erick Hawkins (1909-1994)

Creator of a current known as "free flow", he is one of the dancers and choreographers who still influences modern dance in modern times. He was the husband of one of the greats of that time, Martha Graham, with whom he joined in the dance company where they both performed for several years.

In the 1950s, Erick created his own dance school and dance company, where he unleashed his creative fantasies, including mind, soul and body in shows without muscular load, with which he saw meditation possible through this art.

Katherine Mary Dunham (1909-2006)

Anthropologist and known as "Matriarch and Queen of the Black Dance", she was the creator of the African-American dance. She studied different dances from the Caribbean, specifically from Haiti. By incorporating these ramifications into her works, they were described as pioneering modern African American dances.

Victor Ullate (1947)

Víctor Ullate (Zaragoza, May 9, 1947) is a dancer, choreographer and director of Spanish dance shows. He has directed works since 1988 and won various dance awards in Spain.

Fred Astaire (1899-1987)

Frederick Austerlitz, better known as Fred Astaire, was an American actor, singer, choreographer, stage and film dancer, and television host.

Michael Jackson (1958-2009)

Modern in style, Jackson's choreographies are remembered as some of the most influential in pop culture.

The most famous dances in history

Let's now review some of the most famous dances and choreography in history:

• The Nutcracker: the choreography is by Petipa and Ivanov and the music by Piotr Tchaikovsky. It premiered in Saint Petersburg in 1892.
• Romeo and Juliet - This classic work based on one of Williams Shakespeare's hits, premiered in Czechoslovakia in 1938, with choreography by Leonid Lavrovsky and music by Sergei Prokofiev.
• The Sleeping Beauty: the choreography is by Marius Petipa and the music by Piotr Tchaikovsky. A story known through Walt Disney and performed for the first time in 1890, in Saint Petersburg.
• Don Quixote: choreography by Marius Petipa and music by: Ludwig Minkus. It is basically based on the history of the Hidalgo, by Miguel de Cervantes. His first pass was in 1869, in Moscow.
• Swan Lake: premiered in Moscow in 1877, and with a choreography by Julius Reisinger together with the music of Pyotr Tchaikovsky, it is one of the most famous and well-known.
• Giselle: music by Adolphe Adam and choreography by Coralli and Perot. Based on the poem by Heinrich Heine, it tells the love story between a young peasant girl and a gentleman dressed as a commoner with whom she falls in love before learning his true title.
• Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring): is a short ballet, only thirty minutes long. However, it is also one of the most important in history. It was premiered for the first time in Paris, France, in 1913. Don Vaslav Nijinski took care of the choreography, and Don Igor Stravinsky did the music.
• A Midsummer Night's Dream: Born in 1962, one of the most recently created ballets of this capitulation, features choreography by Frederick Ashton and music by Felix Mendelssohn. It has become one of the best known North American ballets of all time.
• Cinderella: there are very different versions of this ballet, the original was presented in Moscow in 1945, with the choreography of Rostislav Zakharov and the music of Sergei Prokofiev.
• The Bayader (The Dancer of the Temple): premiered in 1877, in Saint Petersburg, it is considered the best work of the choreographer Marius Petipa. It is a four-act ballet and the music was provided by Ludwig Minkus.