Footprints on stone. An outline of Isadora Duncan presence today.
Supervisor: Penelope Iliaskou, Artistic director of Duncan Dance Center, Athens
WHEN: December 16th, 2016
WHERE: INDA foundation symposium “La leggera lievita dei piedi scalzi”,Palazzo Greco, Syracuse, Italy.
Abstact
The lecture discusses the symbolic meaning of dancing near stone architecture, as it was firstly articulated in Isadora’s Duncan dances, philosophy and methods and later evolved and devised into site specific dance – architecture research.
Isadora Duncan, a pioneer of the modern era, brought dance back to its primitive roots – and inevitably back to nature. When she and her brother, Raymond, came to Greece, they decided to build a dance temple – a house, in which they could develop their ideas expressing their Hellenic dream. Based on the plans of Mycenae palace of Agamemnon, their construction at Kopanos hill in Byronas region in Athens was never finished. In 1980’s the Municipality of Byronas took over the reconstruction of the building founding a place dedicated to dance, which would carry their name.
I. & R. Duncan Dance Research Center was inaugurated in 1992 and is now operating as a small scale Dance House covering diverse aspects of choreographic research creation and education. Over the past years the venue has hosted many projects, three of which have explored relations between dance and architecture by means of site specific research and performance always related to Duncan’s modernistic philosophy about freedom and beauty. The selected projects outlining the site’s dynamics affected by Duncan’s presence today are:
a) Architecture and dance workshop – Manolis Iliakis, Betty Dramisioti, Evelin Gavrilou, Duncan Dance Research Center, Athens, 2003
b) Her Topia: A dance – architecture event – Carol Brown and Doritta Hannah, Duncan Dance Research Center, Athens, 2005
c) Emersion – Viky Spanovagellis, Olga Spiraki, Kiriakos Spirou, Evangelos Papadakis, Duncan Dance Research Center, Athens, 2011
Sofia Kondylia represented Duncan Dance Center as an associated choreographer & Architect.
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Sofia Kondylia 