One of the wonderful things about living in the Berkshires is access to world-renowned arts institutions, particularly in the summer. We all know Tanglewood, the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, The Clark Art Institute, Shakespeare & Company, and Mass MoCA, among others. However, the Berkshire Hills are also peppered with creative artists who live and work here year round, perhaps initially coming here—as moths to a flame—because of our many celebrated arts institutions.
One such year-round artist is pianist and dancer Deborah Harris of Great Barrington, who is this year celebrating 25 years of teaching dance in the style of Isadora Duncan for children and adults.
Isadora Duncan is generally considered the preeminent, pioneering figure in the development of “modern dance” in the West. At a time when ballet was the principal dance form presented to Western audiences, Duncan burst onto the scene barefoot, clad in silk, without constraint, and often dancing outdoors. While this was considered scandalous in itself, the public was equally shocked by her use of music by classic Western composers. And whereas ballet was based on movements arguably unnatural to the human body, Duncan incorporated organic, less stylized movements in her dancing: walking, running, skipping, spiraling, and leaping. She focused on movement observable in the natural world; she considered the “wave” to be one of the foundational movements of nature. Watching Duncan dancers is often like observing nature with musical accompaniment. The dancers evoke birds flying, trees swaying, water rushing, deer leaping, waves ebbing and flowing, and clouds drifting, all redolent with breath. The movement is generally choreographed, but elements of improvisation are regularly incorporated. First and foremost, the movement is integrally connected to music.
It is these principles that Ms. Harris has been bringing to her dance classes over the past quarter century. Harris was trained in New York as a classical pianist and a dancer. She has been a dance performer in Berkshire County since the 1980s, and she continues to teach piano to adults. As a musician, dancer, and dance accompanist, she unsurprisingly gravitated toward the Duncan work, where movement was so closely integrated with music. In Harris’ classes, the dancers—whether children or adults—are barefoot and in tunics (worn over their dance clothes), and are encouraged to listen closely to, and react sensitively to, the music they are hearing. For children, developing musicality and fostering creative self-confidence are very important parts of the classes. For Harris, however, the main focus has been getting her students to experience freedom and abandon, and the joy that comes with it. It is notable that the dancers work without a mirror and are of course far, far away from phones and screens while in class.
As a nice piece of symmetry, there is a resonant history and connection between Isadora Duncan and the Berkshires, and indeed including Harris and her classes. Duncan first came to the Berkshires in 1898, performing in the salons of the Gilded Age Berkshire cottages for “society people,” but apparently much preferring spontaneous dance in the woods and winding paths of Daniel Chester French and Mary Adams French’s Chesterwood estate. More recently, Harris’s young students also performed—outdoors of course—at Chesterwood during the summers of 2004 and 2005. Additionally, Anna Duncan, Isadora’s adopted daughter and her student, performed in the Duncan style at Jacob’s Pillow’s Ted Shawn Theater in 1942, the Shawn Theater’s first season.
Currently, Harris is teaching her classes for children and adults at Dewey Hall in Sheffield. The two classes for children (ages four to six and seven to 11) are offered throughout the school year. Her adult classes are for adults of all ages and are offered in four-week blocks several times throughout the year. There is an adult block of classes coming up this summer, for example. For more information about these adult classes, check the Dewey Hall website later this spring.
At the end of each year, Harris has a “Parent Day” for her children’s classes. This is a day when she presents a lecture demonstration and informal performance for the friends and family of the students, as well as the community. This year’s Parent Day will be Sunday, May 18, at 4 p.m., at Dewey Hall in Sheffield. All are welcome. You will find more information about Harris and her classes for children and adults on Facebook at “MusicMoves: Dance in the Style of Isadora Duncan.”
