![]() ![]() Through the patronage of the celebrated actress Mrs. At the British Museum, her study of the sculptures of ancient Greece confirmed the classical use of those dance movements and gestures that hitherto instinct alone had caused her to practice and upon a revival of which her method was largely founded. She moved to London in 1898, performed in the drawing rooms of the wealthy, and earned enough to rent a dance studio to develop her work and create larger performances for the stage. With her meager savings, she sailed on a cattle boat for England. Dunkan's earliest public appearances, in Chicago and New York City, met with little success, and at the age of 21, she left the United States to seek recognition abroad. Although she always considered her dance American in spirit, Duncan never met with much success on the stage in her own country. In 1896, Duncan became part of Augustin Daly's theater company in New York where her unique vision of dance clashed with the popular pantomimes of theater companies, and felt disillusioned. Please visit the Walking WInds Holistic Center site: 50) San Francisco, California, United States Dancing the seasons with these beautiful women is indeed a divine state of madness! I’ll skip the whole flesh rending thing though…. I think of the Maenads as divine sisters, much like my friends I see at gatherings at the Walking Winds Holistic Healing Center who dance between the worlds and bring back visions. The free sometimes wild movements of the Duncan dance piece reflect this feeling. I have sculpted my Maenad in a pose taken from Isadora Duncan’s dance of the same title. The Maenads were very powerful are often representative of the power of women unbridled. It is a phallic fertility symbol, while the ivy wreaths they wore were a symbol of immortality. In their frenzied state the nymph Maenads could be very dangerous, often rending human and animal alike. They carried a wand of ivy with a pine cone at the top, called a thyrsus. ![]() it was the weak among the human followers who descended into debauchery instead of a state of divinity and prophecy. The purpose of the revels was to gain insight and prophesy, it was not just a drunken orgy. The first Maenads were the nymphs who raised Dionysus, goddesses, these Maenads would incite the human women of the villages they passed through to join in the swirling prophetic tempest. Over the hills they rambled in a drunken revel. They followed him over the countryside in a divine state of madness brought on by dancing, music, and wine. The Maenads were the female followers of Dionysus. Beautiful, free, and with every movement intention and meaning. In the dreams my costume included wings, not that the Maenads had them, but I think my subconscious was trying to tell me that the technique is very fairy! When I envision the faerie revelers dancing away under the hill or dancing around a fairy ring, this is exactly the way I think they move. Back in June I began dreaming of this dance. I was filmed for an archive doing a few pieces, the Dance of the Furies, Water Study, and The Maenad. Back in my college days, one of the most distinct honors I have experienced was to learn Isadora Duncan dance technique for a whole year from Gemze deLappe, who learned it from Isadora’s daughter Irma Duncan. ![]()
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