Today I needed a little injection of beauty into my world. There’s no better excuse to share a Dance Quote from lovely Isadora Duncan:
“The dancer’s body is simply the luminous manifestation of the soul.
The true dance is an expression of serenity;
it is controlled by the profound rhythm of inner emotion.
Emotion does not reach the moment of frenzy out of a spurt of action;
it broods first, it sleeps like the life in the seed,
and it unfolds with a gentle slowness.
The Greeks understood the continuing beauty of a movement
that mounted, that spread, that ended with a promise of rebirth.” Isadora Duncan
To accompany the poetry (that’s always what her quotes sound like to me), I found a fantastic video of the Isadora Duncan Dance Group performing in Bologna in 1997. These are just snippets, but you get to see choreographed pieces from Isadora herself, including “The Butterfly”, “The Furies” and “The Revolutionary”.
I attempted to find the group’s website to no avail (even tried to find an archived page). If you know where this group’s webpage has gone to, let me know!
“To dance, put your hand on your heart and listen to the sound of your soul.” Eugene Louis “Luigi” Facciuto
Luigi Facciuto is a true father of modern Jazz dance (he is even sometimes referred to as “father jazz”). He was a very accomplished dancer when he moved to Los Angeles in the 1950′s to further his career. Instead, he became paralyzed after a serious car accident. He recovered enough to begin working at the dance bar again, but when he would leave the bar and attempt to dance out on the floor, his injuries did not enable him to have the same balance and coordination that he had before the accident.
But that did not stop him. He did so well at the bar, he thought “well, I’ll just take the bar out on to the floor with me!” And he created the very first formal Jazz technique. It’s a technique that I’ve been schooled in for the past 10 years, and if you’ve ever heard a teacher tell you to “push down to go up,” then you’ve used the Luigi technique. So, when you go up on your toes (or releve), you don’t just use your calf muscles to pop up. You “pull up” from the top of your head and “push down” within the space around you. This is the biggest part of the Luigi technique, the opposition. You “pull away left to go right” and so on. It’s an excellent technique and really allows for breath and reach in dance steps.
I love the quote from him above. He overcame the very worst kind of obstacles for a dancer and artist, and he certainly knows the sound of his soul. Because it is the soul of a dancer. Thanks for the technique Luigi. And the love of dance.
I found this fantastic video of an Isador Duncan style-dance and thought it would go perfectly with this luscious quote of hers:
“Every movement that can be danced on the seashore
without being in harmony with the rhythm of the waves,
every movement that can be danced in the forest
without being in harmony with the swaying of the branches,
every movement that one can dance… in the sunshine,
in the open country, without being in harmony with the life
and the solitude of the landscape – every such movement is false,
in that it is out of tune in the midst of nature’s harmonious lines.
That is why the dancer should above all else choose movements
that express the strength, health, nobility, ease and serenity of living things.” Isadora Duncan
I love the idea that to dance is to be in harmony with the land, the sea, the air and the fabric of life around us. Dance is living and dance is life.
Isn’t Tamara Rojo gorgeous? Just look at the expression on her face, her joy, her FEET!! More on her later…
“What is dance? I am dancing all the time.
Every gesture, the body line of every pose,
the way I get from place to place, the movement in the acting –
none of it would be the way it is if I weren’t a dancer.” Ray Bolger
If you aren’t familiar with Mr. Ray Bolger, have I got a treat for you. Ray played the Scarecrow in one of the most glorious movies ever created: The Wizard of Oz. I love how he recognizes that dance is also in every day movement. Who couldn’t use more dancing in our lives every day? I sure could! Here’s his timeless and beautiful “dance” to “If I Only Had a Brain”.
