Isadora & Maria-Theresa in Panoply of Womankind

Led by Jeanne Bresciani, Ph.D. with Word Dance Theater

Friday, November 17th – Saturday, November 18th, 2023 Dumbarton United Methodist Church, Washington, D.C.

Day I

Friday, November 17th | 7pm – 9pm Eastern

Cost: $50 (In-Person) /  $40 (Zoom)

Day II

Saturday, November 18th | 10am – 4pm Eastern

Cost: $150 (In-Person) /  $120 (Zoom)

In-Person Attendance Shall Take Place At: 3133 Dumbarton St NW, Washington, DC 20007

Register Here

About the Course:

Isadora is revered as lodestar for feminism and likewise is esteemed for ‘intense womanliness’.  Goddess-like stature aside, one wonders of these emblematic energies and greater contradictions co-existing within divinely human Isadora.

Without a coup de foudre at a tender age upon meeting ‘the last dancing Isadorable’, Maria-Theresa Duncan, I would have doubted an invincible female self-possession possible to hold the tension of such opposites. Isadora’s adopted daughter, was a red-haired, septuagenarian font of beauty and wisdom, freedom and strength with no expiration date.  ‘The last dancing Isadorable’ disarmingly revoked all prohibitions versus the existence of a multi-dimensional, complete woman. In powerful artistry via immersive techniques and teachings – a movement of the soul, a religion of love and a treatise on living were unveiled. The collage of inspirations, insights, instincts and intuitions revealed the unsayable but never the undanceable, to become the unassailable force field of androgyny.

The genius expression of personal and collective feeling, thought and action has been passed down from Isadora, to Maria-Theresa and on to each of us.  No one teaches us to be a woman, but we are chiseled by the movement and stillness, the music and silence, the role, the costume, the mirror, the magic to be freed into the full embrace of life.  May we meet to dance and discern, never relinquishing our personal authority.  Let us heftily reconcile the feminine to the masculine, shaping our own story, exploring it, dissecting it while keeping it alive, mystery intact.

With gratitude to Cynthia Word, Founding Director of Word Dance Theater, for this call to meet and experience in movement the magnificent array of woman.  Presenting on this subject in the company of WDT in its wide-reaching breadth is of particular meaning as Cynthia is one of only two recipients of the Isadora Duncan International Institute Maria-Theresa Duncan Award, presented at the Lansburgh Shakespeare Theater, D.C. in 2010.

Jeanne Bresciani, Ph.D.