Isadorables

"Butterfly Etude:" Emily D'Angelo, Hayley Rose, Faith Kimberling   Photo: John Link 

A flock of Monarch butterflies – stopping for the night in the Hudson Valley on their way to Mexico --- greeted early arrivals Saturday in Untermyer Park and Gardens, high above the river in Yonkers.  Their visit was unscheduled, but no more an accident than the gust of wind which an hour later lifted the silken wings of three dancers to Chopin’s “Butterfly Etude,” nor the shaft of light from the setting sun that illumined Gluck’s “Bacchanal.” Isadora planned it that way.     

Nearly a century after Isadora Duncan’s dancers performed in Samuel Untermyer’s open-air amphitheater in 1923, Lori Belilove and her Isadora Duncan Dance Company returned for an encore. And if Isadora was ahead of her time, her self-anointed successor Belilove is right on time with this revival.   

On the Altar of Art

Mearns Rehearsing "Narcissus"

The Art of Isadora
Lori Belilove and the Isadora Duncan Dance Company
Joyce Theater, New York
June 19, 2017

A prophet may always be without honor in her home country, but Isadora Duncan may finally have won respect in America.  It happened last night at a jam-packed Joyce Theater, where a famous ballerina gave a boost to a sworn enemy of ballet.  Isadora would have been amazed.

Sara Mearns of New York City Ballet joined the Isadora Duncan Dance Company, briefly, for a solo to Chopin's "Narcissus."  Duncan's choreography has probably never been performed with the articulation, power and speed Mearns brought to it. It was exciting, electric, especially the upsweep of her moving turns. But it wasn't strictly Duncanesque.