Through thick or thin ice

What real dancers think of figure skating
Insiders reveal what they love and loathe about their balletic cousins on ice 
by Margaret Eby, Salon.com, February 16, 2010

Volunteer with Belilove's Isadora Duncan Dance Company

Lori Belilove & The Isadora Duncan Dance Company will be performing at Judson Church, 55 Washington Square South, March 11-15, with five evening performances and a Saturday matinee.

From February 23 through March 10, volunteers are needed for postcard and poster distribution in businesses (cafes, etc.) around Washington Square and adjacent neighborhoods (time commitment varies and is flexible).

From March 11 through 15, volunteers are also needed to assist in the set up and/or break down of chairs (time commitment is set and based on performance time).

Click here for more information on IDDC.

Address all emails to Alison at info@isadoraduncan.org.

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For instructions on how to submit your own request for arts volunteers, please click here.

Dance on Target!

Tonight: Dancing with the Arts at Brooklyn Museum's Target First Saturday

From 5-11pm, the museum's free events are devoted to Dancing with the Arts, featuring contra dance and West African dance circles; a performance, Q&A and book-signing with Lori Belilove's Isadora Duncan Dance Company; a screening of Mad Hot Ballroom and much more. For complete details, click here.

Love & Art: Isadora Duncan

This past Saturday and Sunday, Lori Belilove--famed lineage-bearer and interpreter of Isadora Duncan dance--led her Isadora Duncan Dance Company in a 90-minute concert featuring a live performance by pianist Anastasiya Popova at Judson Memorial Church. With its landmark architectural details--especially the angelic Augustus Saint-Gaudens baptistery frieze--and its history of radical dance innovation, the church provided an exquisite and oddly-appropriate setting for Duncan's pioneering, proto-modern movement.

Given everything we have seen and learned from the revolutionary Judson generation and their successors, it might be hard to think of Duncan's emotionally- and politically-passionate dances as innovative. However, in her day, Duncan's poetic channeling of nature--delicate ripples and sensuous flow, fiery crackling and powerful soaring--introduced a liberation of the female dancing body, a refreshing response to classical music, and a new approach to the presentation of dance on the stage. She also broke barriers to the expression of progressive themes concerning the rights of the masses.

Given advances in technique and contemporary experimentation, Duncan dance, seen today, might not be to every taste. However, Belilove and her dancers--including the Beliloveables children's corps--perform it with rigor, liveliness and keen attention to graceful line. It is music, classical visual art and nature brought to life through an idealism that lives on in the discipline of this committed troupe.

If you missed the Judson presentations, you'll have numerous opportunities to experience Duncan technique--through ongoing classes and workshops for children, teens and adults, a winter intensive in January, and a special evening featuring Belilove and Sabrina Jones, author of Isadora Duncan: A Graphic Biography, on January 3 at the Brooklyn Museum.

For details, visit the Isadora Duncan Dance Foundation site.

What would Isadora do?

Lori Belilove gives us some ideas in this Dance Magazine interview by Joy Held, published in last month's issue and posted on the Web site of The Isadora Duncan Dance Company.