Sara Mearns in Dances of Isadora at Paul Taylor this week.
I saw the opening last night.
It was performed with Trisha Brown’s Set and Reset, performed by her company, and with Taylor’s Esplanade–quite an event.
Talk about going to the source and coming back again–Mme. Duncan informed so much of what we see today, and her solos still hold up on their own as living art.
And didn’t that diagonal moving downstage right turn up–transmogrified– in Le Clercq’s Waltz of the Flowers choreography three decades after Isadora’s Russian sojourn in the early-1920s?
Unlike Fokine, who was enchanted by Isadora during her earlier Russian visits, Balanchine always put Isadora down. But, I mean, come on.
Mearns demonstrated her customary total commitment, tempered here by dignity, restraint, monumental repose.