Cast

• Sharni Vinson as Natalie
• Rick Malambri as Luke
• Alberto Zuniga as Junior Zuniga
• Alyson Stoner as Camille Gage
• Adam Sevani as Moose
• Harry Shum, Jr as Cable
• Ally Maki as Jenny Kido, Kido joins the MSA Crew in order to express herself. In Step Up 2: The Streets Kido was portrayed by Mari Koda.
• Harriet Maclennan as Lil' Rogue
• Bailey Hanks as New York tour guide
• Lil' Demon
• Anna-Jane Johnston
• Brooke Mildenhall
• Earlier So You Think You Can Dance finalists, including:

* Ivan Koumaev
* Katee Shean
* Joshua Allen
* Stephen "Twitch" Boss
* Amar Muminović "Smell me" as Bighead

Briana Evigan (Step Up 2: The Streets) will not be in Step Up 3D as rumored. She confirmed it via Twitter.

Step Up 3-D (2010)

Watch Step Up 3-D Online

Step Up 3D is the upcoming third installment in the Step Up film series. The film was directed by Jon Chu, who also worked on the previous film Step Up 2: The Streets. Step Up 3D is scheduled to be released in conventional 2-D, Real D 3D and Disney Digital 3-D formats on August 31st.

Overview


Director: Jon Chu

Writers (WGA): Amy Andelson,Emily Meyer

Release Date: 6 August 2010 (USA)

Genre: Drama | Music | Romance

Tagline: Take the biggest step of all in 3D

Plot: A tight-knit group of New York City street dancers, including Luke (Malambri) and Natalie (Vinson), team up with NYU freshman Moose (Sevani), and find themselves pitted against the world's best hip hop dancers in a high-stakes showdown that will change their lives forever. Written by Walt Disney Pictures.

Katherine Dunham (born 1910)

Boris Chaliapin (1904-1979)
Sanguine and charcoal on illustration board, 1962, T/NPG.89.75
National Portrait Gallery,
Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
Gift of Mrs. Boris Chaliapin and Irina Chaliapin Murphy, 1989

Katherine Dunham pioneered the use of folk and ethnic dance as a basis for modern theatrical compositions. She built her distinguished career as both a dancer and choreographer, and on her academic research into the role of dance in African, Caribbean, and African American societies. Dunham pursued her interest in the origins of black dance at the University of Chicago where she earned a Ph.D. in anthropology. In 1935 she received her first grant to study ethnic dance in Jamaica, Martinique, Trinidad, and Haiti. She especially loved Haiti and returned there many times. Participation in the depression-era Federal Theatre Project in Chicago offered Dunham an invaluable opportunity to experiment with her own folk ballets, such as L'Ag'Ya (1938), a dramatized version of a fighting dance from Martinique. Her company's New York debut in 1940 was an unqualified success, and her compositions were recognized as the first uniquely African American concert dance. Thereafter, Dunham enjoyed a long and varied career, choreographing and starring in numerous concert, theater, and film works. In 1965-66 she served as the technical cultural adviser for the First World Festival of Negro Arts in Senegal. Upon her return, she settled in East St. Louis, where she founded a combined cultural center, anthropological museum, and dance studio. The center offered local residents a curriculum of dance, psychology, anthropology, and languages. Dunham's legacy, however, is greater than any one neighborhood or culture. In her own words, "I would feel I'd failed miserably if I were doing dance confined to race, color, or creed. I don't think that would be art, which has to do with universal truths."

José Limón (1908-1972)

Philip Grausman (born 1935)
Bronze, 1969, NPG.75.31
National Portrait Gallery,
Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
Gift of an anonymous donor

By World War II, American dance had evolved in several directions. However, the spirit of the early modern dance pioneers lived on in the work of José Limón, whom many consider the greatest performer in the history of modern dance. Limón was born in Mexico, in the state of Sinaloa. His family, displaced by the Mexican Revolution, moved to the United States when he was seven years old. As a young man, Limón enrolled in art school in New York but later dropped out, complaining that he was not free to develop his own style. After going to a dance concert with some friends, Limón felt that he had finally found his calling, and he immediately began to study dance with Charles Weidman and Doris Humphrey. From 1930 to 1940, Limón danced with their company in concert works and Broadway shows, beginning with Irving Berlin's As Thousands Cheer in 1932. During those years he also began to choreograph his own works. Many of Limón's dances, such as Danzas Mexicanas (1939), had Mexican or Spanish themes. After serving in World War II, Limón formed his own company and enjoyed great success both in the United States and abroad. Today he is remembered for his commanding stage presence and for the seemingly effortless use of his body to communicate subtle ideas and emotions.

Martha Graham (1894-1991)

Paul Meltsner (1905-1966)
Oil on canvas, circa 1940, T/NPG.73.41
National Portrait Gallery,
Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

Martha Graham was one of the leading dancers and choreographers of the American modern dance movement. In 1916 she began her training at the Denishawn School in Los Angeles, under the tutelage of Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn. There, Graham learned to discard the strict forms and gestures that had traditionally governed choreography. By the time of her New York debut in 1926, she had developed a style that was both revolutionary and controversial. Graham intended her dances to provide insight into the human condition, as in Letter to the World (1940), inspired by Emily Dickinson's life and poetry, or Appalachian Spring (1944), a celebration of America's pioneer spirit. While early modern dance did not use characters or tell stories, Graham had a theatrical bent that surfaced increasingly in her later works. Her modern-dance ballets, beginning with Clytemnestra in 1958, used the free-form techniques of modern dance to present classical literary works. Included in Graham's legacy are several monumental dance scores written for her by composers such as Samuel Barber, Paul Hindemith, and Aaron Copland.

Some Modern Dance

Traditionally, European and American theatrical dance centered on ballet. However, in the early twentieth century, it became fashionable in dance circles to rebel against the strictures of tradition. The first two well-known American dancers to break away from classical ballet were Isadora Duncan and Ruth St. Denis. Although their styles differed, Duncan and St. Denis's unconventional approaches opened the door to a new era in dance history: the American modern dance movement of the 1920s. Leaders of this movement, some of whom are listed below, based their works on personal experience, using their bodies as instruments to express such emotions as passion, fear, joy, or grief. Rather than adhering to a set form and a limited range of gestures, as in ballet, the dancer created form as an outgrowth of his or her own communicative impulses.

Over time, modern dance has reconciled itself to other traditional dance forms. Perhaps nothing has helped to integrate various styles of dance more than American musical comedy, which draws on ballet, modern, tap, and ethnic folk dancing. In addition, with the advent of television and improved transportation after World War II, audiences and dancers alike have benefited from a greater exposure to dance styles from all over the world. Dancers today use a broader range of techniques, styles, and source materials than ever before.

Legacy Of Modern Dance

The legacy of Modern dance can be seen in lineage of 20th century concert dance forms. Although often producing divergent dance forms, many seminal dance artists share a common heritage that can be traced back to free dance.


Postmodern And Contemporary Dance

Both Postmodern dance and Contemporary dance are built upon the foundations laid by Modern dance and form part of the greater category of 20th century concert dance. Where as Postmodern dance was a direct and opposite response to Modern dance, Contemporary dance draws on both modern and postmodern dance as a source of inspiration.

The social and artistic upheavals of the late 1960s and 70s provoked even more radical forms of modern dance. Modern dance today is much more sophisticated in technique and technology than when modern dance was founded. The founders composed their dances entirely of spirit, soul, heart and mind as opposed to today's modern which has more technical aspects.

The concern with social problems and the condition of human spirit is still expressed, but the issues that are presented would have appalled many early modern dancers. The essence of modern dance is to look forward, not back. Ballet and modern sometimes fuse together and enrich both forms, but neither is likely to lose its identity in the process. It is impossible to predict what directions modern dance will take in the future. Each style could go in so many different directions and are usually very radical. If this trend keeps up, future audiences can look forward to an interesting forum of dance.