Beauty and Her Shadow
The dances presented in this performance were originally choreographed by Isadora Duncan in 1912. They offered brilliant expressions of the full range of human emotion—from the joy of friendship, to the tenderness of motherhood, to the complexities of relationships, and even to our connection with the Divine. Many described the dances as “beautiful.” Isadora believed that dance was an expression of the human soul, and that true beauty arose from the alignment between our inner and outer selves and our relationship with Nature. She championed a form of dance that remained within the natural movement of the human body, rejecting distortion, contortion, or any constraints on the dancer’s freedom of expression.
The purpose of this performance was to celebrate Duncan’s choreography and to expand the conversation around how we perceive beauty today. Do we experience it in our daily lives? Has our sense of beauty shifted in the era of social media? How do we recognize it when we see it?
Artists:
Cynthia Word
Valerie Durham (guest artist)
Vanessa Carmichael
(Chacana) Karen Morales-Chacana
Jenifer Golden
Kristen Kissik
Production Team:
Concept: Cynthia Word, Valerie Durham
Direction and Coaching: Cynthia Word, Valerie Durham
Costume Design: Zoie Lafis, Margaret Johnson
Text Adaptation: Cynthia Word, Valerie Durham
Stage Management: Michelle Janota
Technical Direction: Elly Makowski
Video/Photography: Theo Kosseas / Media4Artists