From Artistic Director, Lori Belilove:

My story begins when I was introduced to Isadora Duncan by Mr. Vassos Kanellos in Athens Greece when I was a young teen. I was traveling with my family throughout Europe – and intentionally away from the tumult and unrest of Berkeley, CA in 1967! Mr. Kanellos was a world-renowned dancer who had studied with Isadora and was now decorated by the Greek Government as an ambassador of Greek culture. He was extra-ordinary and talked all about Isadora, glancing at a photo of her with a lock of her hair in the frame. He invited me to return to Athens to study seriously with him which I did the minute I graduated from High School.

Fast forward, while living in Athens, one of the highlights of my time there was visiting the Acropolis on the full moon. There were few restrictions at that time and I could wander and sit and dream for hours. I, like Isadora, was inspired and spellbound with the Power and the Beauty. Duncan wrote her essay, “The Parthenon”, in The Art of The Dance”, published posthumously:

“Anyone, who arriving at the foot of the Acropolis, has mounted with prayerful feet toward the Parthenon, and at length standing before this monument of immortal Beauty, and who, upon lifting his eyes to this rhythmical succession of Doric columns, has felt “form” in its finest and noblest sense… “

It was at the Parthenon where Isadora’s art matured. After her revelatory, ah ha! moment on her first pilgrimage to the Parthenon, she wrote that she was now beyond the satyrs and nymphs and garden parties of her early dancing days when she experienced the Doric columns, writing:

“Neither Satyr or Nymph had entered here, neither Shadows nor Bacchantes. All that I had danced was forbidden in this Temple… only a rhythmic cadence, those Rhythmic Doric Columns ...”, and further she wrote: “These columns which seem so straight and still are not really straight, each one is curving gently from the base to the height, each one is in flowing movement, never resting, and the movement of each is in harmony with the others. … as I thought this my arms rose slowly toward the Temple and I leaned forward—and then I knew I had found my dance, and it was a Prayer."

To tie my story together, while a protege of Mr. Kanellos’ I would research books in English to expand my education at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens! Having read another profound passage by Isadora, “I believe that in each life there is a spiritual line, an upward curve, and all that adhered to and strengthens this line is our real life—the rest is but as chaff falling from us as our souls progress. Such a spiritual line is my Art.” I put the book down – and saying to myself; I’m clear now, I want to devote myself to this art and be the best possible Duncan dancer I can be.

Lori Belilove

New York

2023