Isadora ... No Apologies.

The Duke on 42nd Street New York, New York January 22-26, 29-February 2, 2003

Isadora Duncan was not just a great artist with a vision who revolutionized dance. SHE WAS ALSO A WOMAN, ONE WHOSE LIFE WAS FILLED WITH ROMANCE AND PASSION, TRAGEDY AND DESPAIR. Isadora ... No Apologies, a new dance-theater work conceived by Loft Belilove, attempts to integrate the story of Duncan's sensational life with her art. The evening-length work, written and directed by Andrew Frank and produced and developed by Fran Kirmser, weaves together dramatic scenes, voice-overs, and dances from the Duncan repertoire. The role of Isadora was split--actress Hope Garland did talking parts, while Belilove performed the dances. Daryl Boling assumed the roles of Duncan's (major) lovers. The east was also graced by four dancers portraying the "Isadorables" (Duncan's followers) and some of Belilove's young, very small students.

The evening had the feel of a well-constructed lecture-demonstration rather than a truly dramatic production. The narratives set the dances in their historical and personal contexts. Reciting Duncan's high-minded ideas about dance, Garland seemed perpetually indignant and outraged. Belilove, though, who has spent decades breathing life into Duncan's dances, displayed a broader range of expressivity. In "Blue Danube," which appropriately greeted the audience after they'd heard of Duncan's youthful triumph in Budapest, Belilove captured the Strauss waltz's breezy levity. Prancing forward,' she seemed to lightly mount each swing of the melody. When she tossed her arms and head sideways, they floated as if caught by a passing note.

In sharp contrast, Belilove moved slowly and with great weight in "Les Funerailles," a somber portrait of grief to Lizst's Sonata in B Minor for Piano. Her arms lifted upward and outward with great effort, as if connecting her body to a universal pain. The death of Duncan's two children served as the backdrop for this dance and for the similarly heavy "Mother." For "The March Heroique,' Belilove was joined by "Isadorables," who accumulated onstage one by one, like they were blown by the same fierce gale. The audience followed Duncan from Paris, to communist Russia, to her controversial return to the U.S. There they encountered her solo "Revolutionary (Ode to the Oppressed)," set to Scriabin, a dance about labor, bondage, and breaking shackles. Belilove worked up a suitable righteous frenzy. Half-kneeling, she pressed her fist into the ground, then defiantly upraised it.

It's hard for a contemporary viewer to imagine the impact that Duncan had on audiences in her lifetime. Movement that seemed abandoned and naturalistic a century ago can appear restrained and stylized today. By putting the dances into a narrative context, which included voice-overs of historical reviews, the format of Isadora ... No Apologies helped communicate how the dances were received when they were made. A harder, perhaps impossible task, would be to make us feel as they did then.