Modern dance is a dance form which was started in the early 2oth century. It was breakthrough style of dancing than the traditional ballet and theatrical dance forms of ballet. It was a dance introduced by two young people with the name Isadora Duncan and Ruth St. Denis. These people wanted to shed the classical ballet patterns and all the things associated with it. They wanted to change the pattern of costumes, shoes and all types of postures and patterns as well. This type of dance form expresses the emotions and feeling in a person's heart while they are dancing. It is a more free style dance form in which a dancer can make his/her patterns and postures.

Emotions like fear, joy, hurt, excitement all could be expressed through the medium of this modern form of dance. This dance form started like a movement in America in the early 20th century and went on to become a favorite of many youngsters. In this dance one does not have stereotyped dance steps, or any fixed choreography, one can dance the steps he/she wants as per their mood and wish. All they needed to do was express their feeling through the dance.

The music required for dancing in such a way also has to be suited to the mood of dancer. Usually this dance form is danced in a pattern of themes. Themes like eternal love, lost love, relationships, joy and many more are used to express the dancer's abilities and ways of dancing.

This kind of modern style is usually performed with no shoes and no specific costumes. Ballet dancers wore very typical clothes and shoes in which were standard however this kind of dancing does not have any such restrictions. Unlike ballet, where the body weight is not put on the feet so much, this dance form dancers will deliberately put their entire body weight on their feet.

This is just an example of how the modern style of dancing was a complete change over from the traditional ballroom and ballet dancing. Modern dance was modified in the late 20th century and it changed its name too, to contemporary dancing.

This kind of dancing was again based on the same theme based dancing and had the expression of feelings in it too, however the way to express these feelings changed. The dance patterns changed with changing times and become more bold and unique.