"I salute Antonin Artaud," wrote Andre Breton, "for his passionate, heroic negation of everything that causes us to be dead while alive." The French actor, director, poet, and theorist was an enraged man of arguable genius; nevertheless, his writings are seminal influences on experimental theater. Ar

Absurd, Experimental, Literature of transgression, Severe, Surreal, Surrealist theater, Theater of cruelty, Theater of the absurd

Considered the modern mistress of complex movement, Twyla Tharp takes Merce Cunningham's structural bylaws to their Postmodern conclusions. Tharp's propensity toward permutation and highly abstract schemes has renewed the maverick spirit of Modern Dance. An affluent child of suburbia, Tharp enjoy

Collage, Kinetic, Loose, Pure movement, Quirky

As a dancer, teacher, and choreographer of almost mythic stature, Martha Graham loomed over American dance. She created a technique that married energetic force to form; an entire new dance vocabulary resulted from her study of the dynamics of breath. Calling her dance creations "a graph of the heart

Biomorphic, Geometric, Moody, Mythic, Pioneering, Religious, Spare, Tense

Isadora Duncan liked to say she first danced in her mother's womb -- and she may have been right. Her art seems to have been fueled by a combination of instinct, intuition, and irresistible calling. Her bohemian childhood nurtured her free spirit, and she flirted with dance classes and techniques, al

Euphoric, Expansive, Feminine, Formless, Political, Rebel, Visceral