Brightest Young Things

Aside from the occasional Millenium Stage performance, high end ballet is one prohibitively expensive joy of DC (the other being opera). So when we found out that Today at The Corcoranyou get to see (stellar) dancers Cynthia Word and Ingrid Zimmer explore the history of modern dance through works of two of its most famous innovators, Isadora Duncan and Ruth St. Denis, and all that for a (Bargain) price of 25 dollars, we were understandably thrilled.

And as an added bonus, the performances will be followed by an open discussion to deconstruct and understand how the pieces related to the times in which they were created, and what made them so radical then and even now.
Since 2001, the ensemble has presented in every major dance venue in the area, and were honored as a finalist in the D.C. Metro Dance Award for Best Emerging Modern Dance Company, along with Ms. Word as Best Emerging Choreographer.
This splendid evening of dance is planned to complement Modernism: Designing a New World 1914–1939.(which by the by is closing on July 29th, so get thee to the Corcoran promptly)

do your homework:
about Ruth St.Denis:
Raised in a Bohemian environment, Ruth St. Denis (1879-1968) was encouraged to perform from a very early age. She studied ballroom and skirt dancing (whatever this is, it sounds thrilling) at the Maud Davenport school in Somerville, New Jersey, and was drilled in Delsarte poses by her mother. Her first professional job was as a variety act in 1894 at Worth's Family Theatre and Museum in New York. Important early influences were her work with the eminent director David Belasco, eastern spiritualism and imagery, along with European travel. By 1906 Ruth had the essence of her distinctive dance style, which combined spiral form with equal parts voluptuousness, mysticism, and erotica. She built a stunning career as a soloist and, in 1914, acquired a professional and personal partner in Ted Shawn.
A year later the two opened Denishawn which, as a school and company, nurtured leaders of the next generation of modern dancers: Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey, and Charles Weidman. As a choreographer, St. Denis created some beautiful visualization group works, but her performance in such solos as The Incense, The Nautch, The Cobras, The Yogi, Liebestraum, and, with Shawn, in Tillers of the Soil are most memorable. Her autobiography, An Unfinished Life, was published in 1939.

About Isadora Duncan
Isadora Duncan was born in Oakland, California in 1877 and showed dance promise as a very young girl (this statement seems to match any exceptionally talented individual). Isadora's genius was appreciated by her family when she was very young, but her revolutionary ideas on dance were not well accepted in America. When Isadora was in her teens, the family moved to Europe, where her genius was recognized. Even so, raising money was always difficult, until Isadora met her "Lohengrin", an American heir to the Singer sewing machine fortune. With his financial support, she founded schools of Duncan dance in France and Germany. Eventually, Isadora gained great fame in both Europe and America; in fact, in the entire world.

Isadora Duncan was a pioneer of 20th-century American dance. She is often credited with moving dance away from strict formal structures and toward more free-flowing forms of personal expression. She wore Grecian-style gowns, often performed barefoot, and startled audiences by employing such everyday human movements as skipping and running. Duncan is also remembered as an early feminist; among other things, she did not believe in marriage (most notoriously she had a devastating affair with a much younger Sergei Yesenin) and bore two children out of wedlock by two different men (who tragically drowned when their car rolled into the Seine).She was killed in a freak 1927 accident when her scarf became tangled in the rear axle of her automobile, and was an inspiration for Tamara De Lempicka's famous "lady with a scarf portrait"

Both women have impacted modern dance in ways that are too profound to express in a "blog entry" but if you go to the Corcoran tonight at 7, you may understand it and appreciate it a little more.

for more details: here