Deep Light is a performance and workshop shared by dancers and musicians moving with the deep legacy of dancer Isadora Duncan. And a new legacy, the contemplative feminist dance movement Sanctuary on the Fault Line. Audience may attend the performance, workshop or both.
We will be sharing in the often lost gesture of ‘deep light’, so beautifully exemplified in Isadora Duncan’s dance ‘Ave Maria’. This was one of the first dances Duncan made after she took a break from performing following the tragic loss of both her young children. The dance has the strength of lightness, a surprising steadiness, a deep support, and a glow that is breathtaking in the context. Reminding us that when we keep meeting life’s experience, however challenging, in a contemplative embodied way grace can awaken something steady and shining.
We will remember together that dance is a way to be with life’s experience, deeply, silently and expressively. We will explore that dance is often able to say things we have no words for, hold us, and move us through things we cannot move through alone.
The performance will take place on the evening of Saturday 13 September, 2025, and includes a light supper. There we will share another Duncan dance, ‘Funabre’, which preceded ‘Ave Maria’, in which Duncan had a premonition of the tragic event that was to come. We’ll share a new live music and dance piece called ‘Burial’, which calls in a resolving moment for our ancestors who were persecuted as ‘witches’, calling all their goodness back among us. And we’ll finish with Duncan’s ‘Ave Maria’. It will be a recovering journey of contemplation through music and dance.
The workshop will take place on Sunday 14 September, 10:00 – 15:30, led by dancers Debbie Allan, Hayley J S Matthews and Isadora Duncan legacy dancer and teacher Barbara Kane. Simple and open to all levels. We’ll begin preparing our bodies for support and yielding. We’ll continue by exploring some Celtic understandings of ‘deep light’ and some embodiments of lightness from depth. And we’ll finish by learning a little of Duncan’s ‘Ave Maria’ together.
The performance and workshop is created by Isadora Duncan Legacy Dancer and Teacher Barbara Kane, Musicians Jocelyn West, Marina Avetisyan and Alistair Simmons, Dancers Rachel Elderkin, Debbie Allan, Betsy Field, and Hayley J S Matthews. And invited and visioned by Dancer, Rolfer and Musician Hayley J S Matthews.
Barbara Kane – Artistic Director of Isadora Duncan Dance Group, studied Duncan technique and repertoire in New York (1970-79) with Lillian Rosenberg, Julia Levien and Hortense Kooluris. Since 1980 Kane has learned further aspects of the Duncan work in Paris with pupils of Lisa Duncan, in Munich with pupils of Elizabeth Duncan and in Moscow with pupils of Isadora Duncan. She was member of the New York based Isadora Duncan Centenary Dance Company (1976-79). In 1985 Kane co-formed the Isadora Duncan Dance Group (London/Paris) and continues to teach, lecture and perform throughout Europe, North America, and Japan. Kane has taught and coached the dancers on Duncan’s work that you’ll see in Saturday’s performance and will be teaching in Sunday’s workshop.
Debbie Allan – Debbie began her contemporary modern dance training in 1972, at the age of 11. Her love of dance, sparked in Aberdeen, Scotland, has lasted throughout her life. From an early age she was teaching, performing, choreographing, and running a modern jazz dance company. She has performed in both community and professional settings through five decades, and has continued to develop her skills in dance, improvisation, and somatic movement (she is an accredited Somatic Movement Educator in Body-Mind Centering). In 2021 Debbie joined the Sanctuary on the Faultline international dance network founded by Hayley Matthews and through Hayley’s lab, Dancing a Path through the Crisis, was introduced to Barbara Kane and the dances of Isadora Duncan. In 2022 Debbie joined the Isadora Duncan Dance Group (IDDG) finding ongoing inspiration and community, while learning and embodying the artistry and natural movement flow of Duncan Dance.
BOOKING AVAILABLE SOON. To register your interest, please email Kate@wccm.org
