Isadora Duncan
In 2004, I picked up the book Sacred Woman, Sacred Dance by Iris Stewart, which activated a long-term fascination with the legendary Isadora Duncan. For the next year, I read more books about her life and art, then launched my Duncan studies in 2005 at Delphi, Greece.
Under the tutelage of Jeanne Bresciani at the Festival of the Delphic Games, we danced through the Mysteries of Delphi in the sacred landscape and ancient temples. Those ten days – “Myth, Movement and Metaphor” – set into motion a most inspiring and healing personal transformation as artist and human being.
I had finally found a window to the Universal essence of dance, something I had glimpsed through other idioms, but in fuller, more vivid focus through Isadora’s vision.
I expanded my studies in New York (2006-2009) with Lori Belilove and Co. and eventually at the Isadora Duncan Symposium in 2013, where I met the Duncan teacher and founder of the Duncan Archive Janaea Rose-Lyn. I went on to produce an intensive with Janaea in Brazil in 2016.
At the Symposium in Georgetown University, I was honored to study and dance with a constellation of Duncan scholars who welcomed my theory on Duncan technique as a foundation for Universal Sacred Dance. The class I taught there was a bridging of the Ceremonial Arts with Duncan Dance, which imbued Duncan forms and dynamics with Spiritual intent.
My research was published in Dr. Andrea Mantell-Seidel’s book Isadora Duncan in the 21st Century: Capturing the Art and Spirit of the Dancer’s Legacy.
Since then, the dancing path has led me around the world inspired by Isadora’s unique vision of the Dance and Dancer of the Future. I've traveled around the world carrying the Isadorean torch and helping dancers discover that "natural language of the soul" which "becomes the movement of the body”. In Europe, South Africa, Australia, Asia, the Americas...the Universal dance opens a portal to understanding the divine, expressive power of our bodies' movement.
From 2010 to 2017 in Brazil, I ran a Duncan study group dedicated to classes, workshops and performances in Rio, São Paulo and its Atlantic Coast.
I was then honored in 2017 by the invitation to write the Portuguese-language preface to the Brazilian release of Sacred Woman, Sacred Dance, and things came full circle.
Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come, and the future that Isadora dreamed of has arrived. The dance of the future is the dance of the present, past and eternal now. And it beckons us towards the Universal principles of motion, harmony, truth and beauty for all beings, regardless of background.
Since 2017, I've been living and teaching dance in Ashland, OR.
