One of them is the Lori Belilove & The Isadora Duncan Dance Company. Though most history books say she leaves no direct legacy, there are currently groups of women who perform and teach according to her style and ideas. She founds a third while in Moscow in the wake of the Russian Revolution. The second school is short lived prior to World War I at a castle outside Paris. The first, in Germany, gives rise to her most celebrated troupe of pupils, dubbed the Isadorables, who takes her surname and subsequently performs both with Duncan and independently. She founds several schools dedicated to teaching her dance philosophy to groups of young girls. Though, it is written that she does not like the commercial aspects of public performance, as her real mission is the creation of beauty and the education of the young. She is famous for dancing to the music of Chopin, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Beethoven and Bach, dressed with light Greek tunics and barefoot. For her, dance is an expressive result of personal life. This is why the importance of this woman for modern dance lies less in the contribution of a technique than in the width and opening of her thought: her art is a spiritual expression that finds its sources in human soul. Rather than defining shapes for her dance, she searches for stimulation in music, poetry and nature, which are supposed to induce the inner impulse to move. She doesn’t base her art on a search for physical skills but on a connection between her own thought and feelings with the movement they can generate. That is one of her radical innovations and differences from the classical dance of the time. Isadora consults works about all types of dance carefully before declaring that her only dance masters would be Jean Jacques Russeau, Walt Whitman and Friedrich Nietzche. It is said that her dancing style should not be associated with a lack of study or reflection about her art. Among what is easily available, the following might be the only sample in which we can see her actually dancing: It is difficult to find videos of Isadora. There were neither strong contrasts nor shrillness in the dynamics of movement” (personal translation from the Spanish in the book: Danza moderna y contemporánea. She’d lean, kneel and fall with lilting movements. The face and neck were mobile and expressive the torso was freed completely and flexible. Her hands and fingers could take many different positions, according to the intensity of the expression, but would never follow preconceived or artificial shapes. There were no poses and movement was mainly undulating and fluid, round and more symmetric than asymmetric. The arms were extended freely without any defined position. She’d raise legs forwards with bent knees, the foot without extension of the instep, the head tilted. She based her dancing experience in a slight intensification of natural movements: slight runs, no big extensions of the legs, no big jumps. “Her dance lacked of all kind of technical virtuosity, as well as of any traditional ballet steps. History tells us that her lyricism, vitality, charismatic personality and own sense of the ‘natural’, gain her to be taken in by Europe as a fresh and new message. Visiting London, Paris, Berlin, Greece and Russia, she performs, creates schools and dedicates herself to the contemplation and study of the ancient Greece collections displayed in museums. She travels to Europe, where she’ll be more celebrated than at home and lives the essential part of her career. This is how she starts an artistic research and journey that will last till the end of her life. She takes ballet classes but rejects them soon, arguing that she wants to create a different dance, free from the conventions of classical ballet and closer to her temperament. She expresses her inclination for dance from the very early age of five and since then she achieves to gather other kids to give them dance lessons. Isadora is born in San Francisco and grows up within a family for which playing music, reading poetry and dancing are common activities. Isadora Duncan Photos Courtesy of the Isadora Duncan International Institute, Inc., New York, New York.
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