But what is modern??

An example of a modern dance class

I am not very knowledgeable about different art forms. When asked the question what is modern and what does it mean and how it is applied I am not really sure what to say. I think that modern is a term used for things that happen now. How that applies to art I am not really sure. Drawling from my own experience, I have seen a type of dance that is called 'modern dance'. I was a ballerina from many many years and one year at my dance studio they introduced a modern class. Curious, I tried it out and went to see what it was all about. The typical dance class as a ballerina normally consists of drills upon drills upon drills about the foundations of ballet and the positions and the preciseness that it entailed. In my modern class I was astonished to see the other girls without the standard leotard and tutu but in shorts. We begun our class with a stretching exercise, not at the barre. It was odd to me that all of a sudden, in this modern class, we were foregoing the traditional seriousness of dance and began experimenting with what we could do. We added in new elements like stretchy elastic and gymnastic style rolls tucks and lifts. It was a complete turn around from the ballet that I had been doing all of my life. We didn't even wear ballet slippers, instead we went barefoot. In my experience with modern dance I think that I ended up with the idea that modern is something that breaks traditional rules and makes its own new ways of going about something. I don't know if it is that same way with other art forms but for me, modern dance was something that took everything I had learned as a traditional ballet dancer and twisted and warped it into something completely new and different.