Contemporary Dance is the latest trend all over the world today. The literal dictionary meaning of the word Contemporary is ‘living or occurring at the same time’. This word has now become very closely associated to all art forms like music, dance, art or theatre. It began as an inspiration or sometimes as improvisation of the traditional art forms. Highly acclaimed artists all over the world have taken to this art form to reach out to the lay man in a simpler way.

Contemporary art is the art of today and was produced during the later part of the 20^th century or the beginning of the 21^st century where the artists work in a globally cultural diverse and technologically advanced world. Similarly contemporary music has come into existence since the beginning of the 20^th century by classical music composers to experiment on different sounds and pitches to incorporate tunes from different parts of the world. Contemporary dance is a genre of dance form that became popular in the mid twentieth century .It developed to become one of the dominant genres for formally trained dancers throughout the world with popularity in U.S and Europe. It  was originally borrowed from classical, modern and jazz styles and has seeped through other dance styles too. In terms of focus on technique the contemporary dance form tends to combine the strong but controlled legwork of the ballet combined with movements of the torso. It also involves a lot of usage of the floor, fall and recovery movements thereby improvising the characteristics of modern dance.

Contemporary dance became popular in India attracting  more audience to dance because of their dwindling interest in the classical forms but were unable to comprehend pure classical dance. It was actually a way of breaking free from the rules and regulations of the classical forms:  a radical way of thinking and combining the varied dance forms that are special only to our country. Uday Shankar was the first to lay the foundation for the contemporary dance form in India in the 1920’s. He is called The Father of Modern dance in India. His world famous ballets were unique.They were a combination of classical Indian dance forms, tribal dances and inspired elements from the West.

Astad Debu, Terrence Lewis, Ashley Lobo, Preethi Athreya are just few names who are doing great work in the field of contemporary dance.

Contemporary dance is not static but it is rather inclusive and malleable. It adapts itself to changes in the social and cultural set up of the world.It also includes new experiments and discoveries in dance. Contemporary dance claims to have no boundaries.Though an offshoot of the classical style it has its own set of rules and regulations which  is not chaotic. Thus the audience comprehend and enjoy this form of dance as any other dance being modern ,classical or contemporary. The artiss also respect it as an art form.