Isadora. .. No Apologies (review)

The dances of Isadora Duncan, a woman credited with founding modern dance, have often been considered the spontaneous expression of her life and being, therefore, impossible to reconstruct by another dancer. Yet, her life story has frequently been retold with exaggerated emphasis on her love affairs and tragedies. Lori Belilove's evocative dance-theatre piece, Isadora . . . no apologies, attempts to pare away both the sensationalized life and the myth of the lost dances. However, by dividing Duncan into Isadora, the Woman and Isadora, The Dancer played by different performers, the production presents a version of Duncan that claims the impossibility for one woman to represent her. It also replicates the familiar problem of representing her speaking and dancing body on stage.

Belilove plays the dancing Isadora. The dance reconstructions, based on the teachings of Duncan's students, demonstrate the diversity of Duncan's repertory from ca.1900 to 1924. Belilove captures the undulating wave-like rolls of the torso in "Waterstudy" (ca. 1900)and the lightness of limbs that seem to float from the body in "Blue Danube" (ca. 1902). These joyful, nature-inspired solos characterize Duncan's early choreography. Belilove's unique talents are evident in "Dance of Furies" (ca. 1902) in which she evokes the fear and suffering of an ill-fated soul. In "Revolutionary" (ca. 1924), she reveals how the body of the worker is marked and mechanized by labor. These pieces represent Duncan's experimentation with angular and grotesque movements, as well as the innovative falls and floor work so influential on later choreographers. In the political and patriotic group dances that characterize Duncan's choreography during the First World War, Belilove is joined by her company of dancers who also play the ballerinas, chorus girls, and vaudeville dancers against whom Duncan defined her art.

The dances are woven into a biographical script consisting mostly of quotations from Duncan's autobiography, My Life (1927), and newspaper clippings. Hope Garland's portrayal of Isadora, the Womanattempts to avoid the usual emphasis on Duncan's sex life and penchant for champagne by depicting her as a strong, educated woman. The audience learns that she developed her theories on dance and culture by studying Nietzsche and Darwin in addition to her correspondence with German naturalist, Ernst Haeckel, and studying Walt Whitman's poetry. Although Garland does not dance, her performance is compelling, as she evokes a strong, physical presence on stage. The bodies of the speaking Garland and dancing Belilove fuse in captivating moments when they join together in an opening or closing shape. However, these fine instances fail to bridge successfully the gulf between the drama and dance or the performance of the text and movement.

The script of Isadora . . . no apologies offers the audience a biographical context for the dances and renders pieces like "Mother"(ca. 1924) particularly poignant. This dance of sorrow, choreographed after the deaths by drowning of Duncan's two children, incorporates recognizable gestures of motherhood—the emptiness of the cradle that the dancer sculpts with her arms suggests their unbearable weight. Garland remains onstage and mirrors Belilove's opening prostrate position, then joins the dancer again in the last moments of the piece as she struggles to rise and wave a parting with one hieratic arm. While this is a powerful performance, the text forces Duncan's choreography into a narrative and autobiographical framework. Modern choreographers from Duncan to Merce Cunningham have refuted the assumption that dance must tell a story or refer to anything outside of itself. The binding of art to biography risks the aestheticization of historical life—a critical practice that is more prevalent in discussions of women artists and often suggests that their suffering can be compensated by artistic inspiration.

Garland's Duncan sometimes approaches the stereotype of the madwoman artist incapable of surviving without men. While two performers represent Duncan, one actor (Daryl Boling) plays all of...