Isadora Duncan - Legacy

Legacy

Duncan restored dance to a high place among the arts. Breaking with convention, she traced the art of dance back to its roots as a sacred art. She 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.

Duncan's work has been moved forward through Anna Duncan and Irma Duncan, two of her six adopted daughters. This coaching and repertory has been passed to third generation Duncan dancer Lori Belilove whose lineage and performing career have earned her an international reputation as the premier interpreter and ambassador of the dance of Isadora Duncan. She founded The Isadora Duncan Dance Foundation in 1979 and The Isadora Duncan Dance Company in 1989. The Company is the premier Duncan Company performing in the world today and has performed to national and international acclaim in dance festivals around the world and in such prestigious New York venues as the Sylvia and Danny Kaye Playhouse, Whitney Museum of American Art's Equitable Series, 92nd Street Y, Carnegie Hall, Duke Theater on 42nd Street, Judson Dance Theater and Symphony Space. Photographs and articles of the Isadora Duncan Dance Company have appeared in numerous international dance publications and periodicals including The New York Times, The New Yorker, Dance Magazine, Time Out, Backstage, Ballet Internationale, Korean Times, Dancar Magazine (Brazil), Dance Magazine Australia, The Greek-American, and the book, Dance Photos, published by Dance Ink, as well as a photo layout in Fitness Magazine. The Foundation and Company's performances, master classes, workshops, and teacher training certifications enable children, college students and professional dancers to truly experience the purity, timelessness, authentic phrasing, and musicality that has been passed down to Lori Belilove and so to her dancers through the direct line of Isadora Duncan's legacy.

While her schools in Europe did not survive for long, her work had impact in the art and her style is still danced by a new generation of loyal followers based on the instruction of Maria-Theresa Duncan, the last of the Isadorables.

In 1977, Maria-Theresa co-founded the Isadora Duncan International Institute (IDII) in New York. Although Maria-Theresa died in 1987, IDII continues to educate and instruct in the original choreography, style and techniques of Isadora Duncan. Maria-Theresa personally passed on the choreography to one of her pupils, Jeanne Bresciani, who is now the artistic director and director of education of the Institute. Graduates of the IDII certification programs also perform Duncan's choreography and hold classes in the Duncan technique.

Carl Sandburg, a poet and writer, in his poem Isadora Duncan wrote: "The wind? I am the wind. The sea and the moon? I am the sea and the moon. Tears, pain, love, bird-flights? I am all of them. I dance what I am. Sin, prayer, flight, the light that never was on land or sea? I dance what I am."

Already in 1913, when the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées was built, Duncan's 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.

In 1987, she was inducted into the National Museum of Dance's Mr. & Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney Hall of Fame.