Catherine Gallant to teach the Isadora Intensiveat Mystic Fountain Workshop
June 20-23, 2019
Legacy and interpretation in the works of Isadora Duncan
June 22 2:30-5pm followed by lecture 5-6pm and June 23 2:30-5
Catherine Gallant will share the history of Duncan’s work (her movement and use of music) with a focus on the innovations she made that initiated the development of “modern dance” in the US and internationally. Ms. Gallant will lead a Duncan technique session and teach excerpts from her recent choreography which honors Duncan’s 1908 work to Beethoven’s Allegretto (from the Symphony No. 7). Movement activities will be followed by a discussion which highlights the process, and inherent questions, involved in such acts of interpretation as “reconstruction”, “re-staging” and “reimagining”.
How does a dance exist when it is over?
What happens to a dance when it becomes “lost”? The Allegretto sections from Isadora Duncan’s untitled work to Beethoven’s Symphony No.7 Op.92, was performed in 1979 when Maria Theresa Duncan presented a reconstruction of this “lost” work with her Heritage Company. Originally Duncan performed three movements of the symphony as a solo and was accompanied by a full orchestra. She performed the work between the years 1904-1909 in the US, France and the Netherlands. This dance is an important representation of Duncan’s musical intelligence and marks her primary foray into abstraction as a catalyst for her dance making process. Critics of the time were outraged at her choice to dance to Beethoven and called it a “sacrilege”.
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