Research Unplugged
A Conversation with Elisha Clark Halpin
"Reviving Isadora: Staging Works by the Mother of Modern Dance"
Research Unplugged was more than just a conversation on Wednesday, April 15, when professor
Elisha Clark Halpin spoke about the life and legacy of influential choreographer Isadora Duncan, interspersed with several short dances performed by students of the Penn State dance program.
Isadora DuncanCredit Wikimedia Commons
Halpin, assistant professor and head of Penn State’s dance program, described some of Duncan’s main influences, notably her art-appreciative mother, Greek philosophy and art, and the works of Walt Whitman and Friedrich Nietzsche. The audience also learned intriguing facts about Duncan's unconventional life and precocious childhood. Duncan started her first dance school at age five, explained Halpin, noting that Isadora recruited other children in the neighborhood and taught them how to sway their arms properly.
Duncan went on to become famous for her style of natural dance and focus on the free movements of the body. Halpin's dance students gracefully demonstrated some original Duncan dances for the Research Unplugged audience. The dancers were dressed in Duncan fashion, barefoot and free to move, and some even wearing the loose Greek-style tunics that Duncan preferred.
Halpin credited Duncan’s original dancers, nicknamed the "Isadorables" and The Isadora Duncan Dance Foundation for spreading Duncan’s style of natural dance to the world.
The Three Graces (1918)
Music: Franz Schubert, Waltz, D924 No.10
Performed by: Megan Moore & Lauren Steinke
Choreography: Isadora Duncan
Reset from Labanotation by: Elisha Clark Halpin
For more about Elisha Clark Halpin, read on...
