So, why did what is now called "modern dance" begin in the United States To answer this question, I"ll need to 1 a little bit and talk about classical ballet. It has been said that by the late 1800s, ballet had lost a lot of its popularity. Most of the ballet dancers who performed in the United States 2 from Europe. They performed using the rigid 3 that"d been passed down over centuries. Audiences and dancers in the United States were 4 for their own contemporary dance form and so around 1,900 dancers 5 one.Then how was this modem dance so different from classical ballet Most notably, it wasn"t 6 choreographed. Instead the dance relied on the improvisation and free personal expression of the dancers. Music and 7 were of little importance to the modem dance. And lightness of movement wasn"t important either. In fact modem dancers 8 at all to conceal the effort involved in the dance step. But even if improvisation appeals to audiences, many dance critics were less 9 about the performances. They questioned the dancers who were not professionally trained and the value of works that had no formal structure. Yet the free 10 expression of the pioneer dancers is the basis of the controlled freedom of modem dance today.