Isadora Duncan (2019)

With this piece devised for Elisabeth Schwartz, Jérôme Bel continues his series of portraits of dancers initiated in 2004, focusing on the figure of Isadora Duncan, of whom Elisabeth Schwartz is a specialist. Here, for the first time, the portrait concerns a choreographer who is deceased. Drawing on Duncan’s autobiography, My Life. Jérôme Bel goes beyond the romantic depiction to reveal a visionary choreographer, who, through her great freedom of expression, privileging spontaneity and naturalness, laid the foundations of modern dance, from which contemporary dance arose. Mixing discursive and sensory registers, spoken moments and danced solos, the show revives the memory of free dance by associating choreographic knowledge with the experience of performance.