"In the beginning there is nothing. It starts very small and becomes bigger." Pina Bausch creates epics, but they always retain that quality of having come from absence, of having been built piece by piece. Bausch's dances start with a single concept -- a kernel of movement, a memory -- which she bui

Bombast, Ecstatic, Epic, Euro-surreal expressionism, Repetition

Bill T. Jones's acclaimed multicultural dance company, Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane and Company, continues to relish a record of undimmed critical success. Jones has created a stunning corpus of pattern-driven, avant-garde pieces that explore life's journeys -- an intimate topic for Jones, who is the son

Body politic/identity dance, Homoerotic, Political, Queer literature, Sexy, Sublime, Technology

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