The Apotheosis of the Dance:

Re-Beginnings with Beethoven

Reconstructing Beethoven’s 7th Symphony, Movement II – Allegretto

Reimagining Beethoven’s 7th Symphony, Movement I – Poco Sostenuto Vivace

Certificate Program II in Isadora Duncan Studies: The Dances

Friday, November 8th – Sunday, November 10th

Available In-Person & Live Via Zoom from

Tempio di danza, High Falls, NY

Register Here!

About the Course:

If the highest goal of music is to connect one’s soul to one’s divine nature, then Isadora’s efforts to dance to the music of Beethoven neared that apogee. She discovered a sublime language for revelation unto dance above all others in Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, the ‘Apotheosis of Music’. In Beethoven, the maker, she heard the humming of heartstrings and spied the celestial spacing amidst heavenly spheres ordained by the Greeks and dreamt by musical giants of all time. In differing yet exquisitely harmonious forms, Beethoven and Isadora revolutionized the art of composition, originating lasting testaments to humanism broaching new octaves of human feeling. As thunderclaps in history, each defined the individual capacity for heroism in art leading all who follow. As ‘daughter of Prometheus’ on dancing grounds everywhere, courage became her – to summon, “Wisdom and Reason, Joy and Sorrow Eternal,” and to dare dance to this symphony.  Proceeding from Terpsichore to Euterpe’s lyric voice, Melpomene’s tragic chord and Polyhymnia’s sacred vigil, each of the Muses Nine join in indispensable accord.  We imagine no other of the choreographer’s masterworks reaching the explicit heights, depths and underworld schema of the Allegretto.  In unending precedent, before Isadora in time and everywhere in this opus, Beethoven asked, “convey to me your sorrow,” that you might redeem it through your joy.  Now, alas, we respond.

Let us enter these great works together: Movement I in reimagination and Movement II in reconstruction amidst a teeming throng of instruments, ideas, sparks and the flaming raiment of red drape. Therein, we shall chart the solemn movements and whirling motifs of the Allegretto as handed down to me by Maria- Theresa Duncan; and we shall search the memory store of beholding her deep listening to re-animate the Poco sostenuto – Vivace. The memory theater is loaded with utterance spoken, gesture expressed and movement made by the great dancer, Maria-Theresa, ever in vivid aliveness, bearing witness and reverence to her adoptive mother and mentor, Isadora.

Jeanne Bresciani, 2024