Isadora/Dances at a Gathering
Royal Opera House
Dance scholars have long banged on about Isadora Duncan’s revolutionary artistry and ground-breaking — for her time, that is — thinking, thus overlooking some less overt, yet highly significant aspects of her unique, if larger than life persona. Beyond the depths of her feminist ideas, art philosophy and fervent socialism, lurked a cunningly clever, no-nonsense American woman, who knew how to play the system and get the most out of it. But her tongue-in-cheek ingeniousness has been frequently left out in many of the tributes to her memory, whether they be written, filmed or choreographed — the sole two exceptions, in my view, being Frederick Ashton’s ballet Five Brahms Waltzes in the Manner of Isadora, and Martin Sherman’s play When She Danced.
I never clearly understood what motivated Kenneth MacMillan to create a stage celebration of the divine mother of modern dance, but what I remember clearly is that his 1981 work, the première of which I attended, was not one of his best.
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