Wednesday September 17th, 2014 - Lori Belilove and the Isadora Duncan Dance Company presented an evening of film, live performance and discussion in an intimate salon setting at the Company's home space on West 26th Street. A few days after marking the anniversary of Isadora's untimely death (on September 14th, 1927), Lori and her Company keep the spirit of 'the mother of modern dance' vividly alive.
For me, this week brought the unusual happenstance of back-to-back evenings of Martha Graham and Isadora Duncan. These two pioneering forces on the frontiers of modern dance seem to me to be twin goddesses: from them, so many blessings flow - even onto the present day.
Central to this Isadora evening was the showing of a silent film clip of brief fragments from Dance of the Priestesses, a 'lost' Duncan work. This film, made in 1963, features extremely rare footage of Anna Duncan, one of the original Isadorables. In the film, Anna dances with Julia Levien and Hortense Kooluris, two women who were the teachers of Lori Belilove: thus the direct line of passing the torch from generation to generation is maintained.
The film was entrusted to Lori Belilove and it inspired her to embark on a restoration of Dance of the Priestesses which, until now, had been little more than a legend. The dance is set to music by Christoph Willibald von Gluck from his opera IPHIGENIE EN TAURIDE. In the film, Anna, Julia and Hortense show a wonderful weighted quality. Lori was able to impart this to the dancers of her current Company and, after viewing the film, we were treated to a beautiful live rendering of the piece. Lori has set it for five women (Isadora's ensemble works can be danced by small or large contingents of dancers). The girls looked stately in their midnight-blue gowns, with Morgana Rose Mellett in a prominent role and Kim D'Agnese, Emily D'Angelo, Faith Kimberling, and Nicole Poulos as her sister/priestesses. Their performance evoked the ancient gods and the mythic rituals of times long vanished.
Also on film, we saw a full performance of Slow March (photo above) as performed by the Company last May.
Isadora created danceworks in several moods, stemming from her mental state at the time of creation. Joyous, celebratory dances gave way to dark, lamenting themes following the death of her two children. Lori Belilove performed two of these despairing solos tonight: Death and The Maiden (set to Chopin) and Mother (set to Scriabin). The mood was brightened by two Chopin mazurkas danced by Mlles. D'Agnese, Mellett, Kimberling and D'Angelo in signature pink-and-white Grecian tunics. Lori and the four girls joined in an extended finale: Dance of the Blessed Spirits and Orpheus' Lament, both drawn from themes from Gluck's opera ORFEO ED EURIDICE.
Pianist Melody Fader played all the selections for the evening, an enhancement to the atmosphere of the performance.
Watching the dances this evening, I couldn't help but think that today's young choreographers could benefit greatly in studying Isadora's work. In terms of musicality, structure and creation of mood, Isadora's instincts always seem spot-on. As dancer Miki Orihara wrote in her notes for her recent solo concert, we may look into the future of dance by investigating the past.