‘Spirit Dances 6’ Captures Duncan’s Radiance

Isadora Duncan, the spiritual mother of modern dance, liberated the dancing body, riveted audiences and scandalized whoever couldn’t keep up a hundred years ago. But it’s hard to reexperience those effects today, after cartoonists and counterculture dance have exhausted our eyes with freestyle images that involve skipping.

Yet Duncan’s legacy still draws those who long to see the truly expressive dancer who can make us feel deeply and advance our thoughts. On Saturday night at Highways in Santa Monica, in “Spirit Dances 6: Inspired by Isadora,” a few soloists did just that, while others elaborated the legacy in interestingly idiosyncratic ways.

The one Duncan dancer on the program was Kathryne Cassis, whose excerpts from Duncan repertory were curtailed by a knee injury. She resorted, not uninterestingly, to “marking” and “talking through” her work--familiar poses were glimpsed while we heard about Duncan’s approach. Both of these elements had been masterfully introduced via a slide presentation that started the evening (put together by Allegra Fuller Snyder). Other soloists captured bits of Duncan’s charms--flowing simplicity from Diane Takamine; luxuriant lightness and joyful discovery from Linda Gold. Anndrea Taylor, Gabriela Cerda and Roberta Wolin-Manker offered glosses on Duncan’s fluttering arms, her severe drama and naive patriotism, respectively.

But from two women who have lived a few decades longer than Duncan herself came the evening’s heart-wrenching highlights. Marion Scott, whose elegant aging presence has enlivened previous “Spirit Dances” (a series she conceived and directs), used simple, direct gestures to evoke Duncan’s grief after her two children drowned. She slowly, then startlingly, slid into a believable silent scream that melted into Schubert’s mournful “Du bist die Ruh’.” Fuller Snyder’s solo was a gift to anyone wondering how a dance can be like the sun’s warmth and its sudden setting. To Wagner’s Prelude to Act 1 from “Lohengrin,” she was resigned in seated stillness before painfully walking toward a golden light and raising her arms like a supplicant, then an angry servant with an unknown mission. She was a haiku and an epic--an experienced, weighted body that housed a raging soul, sinking with the dying of the light.