This article aims at a phenomenological reduction of the experience of modem dance. It starts from the polemics between traditional ballet and modem dance to the controversy between modem dance and postmodern dance. It is also a genealogical reduction along the clues of the phenomenology of body. Friedrich Nietzsche initiates the close relations between modem dance and modem philosophy and opens up a way of the philosophy of body. Through the experiences of modem dance, Sondra H. Fraleigh has elaborated a humanist interpretation of existential phenomenology of modem dance. We think it is a subjective expressionism version of dance aesthetics. It is criticized by Suzanne Langer who has provided a Cassirerian dance aesthetics as theory of symbolic form of feelings. Finally, we think Maurice Merleau-Ponty has paved a phenomenological way of dialogue with Fraleigh's and Langer's dance aesthetics. It upholds ”body as the third term” and ”vision as fundierung” to deepen the ontological meanings of Langer's concepts of ”virtual gesture” and ”virtual power” which Langer herself has neglected in her aesthetic theory.