The German dancer, choreographer, and teacher Mary Wigman (1886-1973) is considered one of the founders of the modern dance movement.

Mary Wigman was born Marie Wiegmann on November 13, 1886, in Hanover, Germany. The daughter of a manufacturer, Wigman obtained her secondary education at schools in Germany, England, and Switzerland. During a visit to Amsterdam she attended a dance performance by students of Emile Jaques-Dalcroze, originator of the system of musical instruction known as eurythmics. The experience instilled in Wigman an awareness of dance as an expression of life.

Despite the objections of her parents, Wigman enrolled in Jaques-Dalcroze's school in Dresden-Hellerau in 1911. The system of rhythmical gymnastics taught there became too rigidly academic and too confining for her because it forced dance to play a secondary role to music. On the advice of the German expressionist painter Emil Nolde she went to Ascona, Switzerland, in 1913 to enroll in the...