Students in the Summer Study intensive of the Isadora Duncan International Institute rehearse for tonight’s performance at Tempio di Danza in High Falls under the direction of Artistic Director Jeanne Bresciani. (Photo by Diana Chesmel)Defined in her lifetime, more by her dramatic death and extravagant lifestyle than her art, Isadora Duncan — the legend, the ethos and the mythos — lives on joyously at the Tempio di Danza in High Falls.
Duncan, revered in Europe, reviled in her American homeland, died in 1927 at only age 49. She became so famous that she inspired artists and authors to create sculpture, jewelry, poetry, novels, photographs, watercolors, prints and paintings of her.
When the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées was built in 1913, her likeness was carved in its bas-relief over the entrance by sculptor Antoine Bourdelle and included in painted murals of the nine muses by Maurice Denis in the auditorium.
Duncan’s philosophy and her life’s work have continued unabated in the local area for the past 20 years through the Isadora Duncan International Institute.
A performance of her dances, and dances inspired by her art, will be performed today at 8 p.m. at Tempio di Danza as part of the Institute’s educational Summer Study programming that includes the Duncan technique, choreography, composition, improvisation, pedagogy, rehearsal and performance in an intensive immersion.
“The incorrect notion still persists that when Isadora died, her dancing died with her,” said Jeanne Bresciani, artistic director, director of education and artist-in-residence of the Institute.
“Through the dancers in her school and performing companies throughout the world, Isadora’s art continues today, reaching far beyond her own lifetime,” she said.
Founded in 1977 in New York City by Maria-Theresa Duncan, one of Duncan’s six adopted “Isadorables,” and Kay Bardsley, the Institute is an international not-for-profit organization committed to the enhancement of education through movement and the arts, drawing from the ideals and principles of Isadora Duncan, Bresciani said.
The Institute is located at the Harkness Dance Center at the 92nd Street Y in New York City and at the Tempio di Danza in High Falls.
“Maria-Theresa was the last of the original dancing ‘Isadorables,’ as they were called — young, homeless girls whom Isadora adopted following the devastation of World War I in Germany,” said Bresciani.
Bresciani said the Hudson Valley, through the “Isadorables,” has its own direct connection to Duncan. She said the six young girls were housed in various homes up and down the river valley, including Brydcliffe, when Duncan was touring.
“Isadora inhabited a different kind of world,” Bresciani said during an interview in her warm and charming High Falls home where Tempio di Danza is located. “She was inspired by literature, poetry, drama, music – using imaginal means that are housed in her work,” she said.
“Isadora believed in teaching from the School of Life, of Living,” she said.
“Let us first teach little children to breathe, to vibrate, to feel and to become one with the general harmony and movement of nature. Let us first produce a beautiful human being, a dancing child.”
– Isadora Duncan, “The Art of The Dance”
A former Kress scholar in the History of Art from Williams College and Fulbright scholar in dance, Bresciani founded and leads three teaching and performance training programs at Tempio di danza: The Certificate Program in Isadora Duncan Studies I; The Advanced Diploma in Performance and Choreography II; and The Certificate Program in Myth, Movement and Metaphor.
In addition, she teaches intensives in choreographic research, entitled Movement in the Mountains and a study abroad program, Sacred Topographies: The Body and The Land.
The Institute is comprised of three divisions reflecting its triple goals: educational, consisting of the “Isadora for Children” and “The Isadora for Adults” programs based at The Harkness Dance Center, an M.A. specialization in Isadora Duncan Studies at New York University’s Program in Dance and Dance Education, as well as the programs above; theatrical, consisting of The Isadora Duncan International Institute Dancers and The Isadora for Children Performing Group; and historical, consisting of a Duncan Archive of original source materials, works of art, letters, photographs, books and programs with Historian and Archivist, Kay Bardsley.
Bresciani is a solo performer, teacher, lecturer, reconstructionist, choreographer and creator of festivals, specializing in the dance of Isadora Duncan and myth and movement studies.
Bresciani said that Duncan, almost single-handedly, restored dance to a revered place among the arts. She scorned ballet as too rigid and was horrified at the depiction of “dance” in vaudeville. She is considered by many to be the founder of modern dance. Breaking with convention, Bresciani said Duncan traced the art of dance to its roots as a sacred art.
“The true dance is an expression of serenity; it is controlled by the profound rhythm of inner emotion. Emotion does not reach the moment of frenzy out of a spurt of action; it broods first, it sleeps like the life in the seed, and it unfolds with a gentle slowness. The Greeks understood the continuing beauty of a movement that mounted, that spread, that ended with a promise of rebirth.”
-Isadora Duncan, “The Art of the Dance”
Bresciani said Duncan developed within this idea, free and natural movements inspired by the classical Greek arts, folk dances, social dances, nature and natural forces as well as an approach to the new American athleticism which included skipping, running, jumping, leaping and tossing.
“The Dance – it is the rhythm of all that dies in order to live again; it is the eternal rising of the sun.”
-Isadora Duncan, “The Art of the Dance”
Bresciani said Duncan was the first to recognize the solar plexus, what training coaches now call the “core,” as the center of the body, from which strength flows. With her 5’6″ height (tall for her time) and with free-flowing costumes, bare feet and loose hair, Bresciani said Duncan restored dancing to a new-found vibrancy using the solar plexus and the torso as the generating force for all movements to follow.
“Natural’ dancing should mean only that the dance never goes against nature, not that anything is left to chance.”
-Isadora Duncan, “The Art of the Dance”
Tonight’s performances by Summer Study students’, “Isadora Duncan and the Earthly Garden of Delights,” will be their fanciful depictions of art as a garden, inspired by Duncan, Bresciani said.
“We go to the garden for nourishment for our bodies and inspiration for our souls,” she said, because, she said, ultimately, Isadora’s approach was about the soul.
“The dancer’s body is simply the luminous manifestation of the soul.”
-Isadora Duncan
“An artist’s work is alchemy,” Bresciani said. “There is art, science, nature – and magic!”she said.
Bresciani said the garden is a synonym for paradise, for innocence and for the natural source of the art of the dance.
Or, as Duncan said:
“If we seek the real source of the dance, if we go to nature, we find that the dance of the future is the dance of the past, the dance of eternity, and has been and always will be the same.
The movement of waves, of winds, of the earth is ever the same lasting harmony.”
Tonight’s performance at Tempio di Danza, 20 Clovewood Road, High Falls is free. Reservations (and directions) are recommended and may be obtained by calling (845) 687-4183.