Delicate Anarchist Remembered

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More About

• Isadora Duncan
• Mary Sano
• Shoko Hirage
• Modern Dance
• Dance

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Mary Sano always mixes it up. She credits her main inspiration, Isadora Duncan, for her cultural-mixing tendency, since Duncan, a San Francisco native and the mother of modern dance, was a great lover of what we now call multiculturalism. Duncan was world-famous in the early 20th century, back when it meant something to be world-famous; she claimed that all bodies were beautiful, and that many dances, even those considered "savage," were beautiful as well. (Not ballet, though, which she said was deformative and unhealthy and ought to be stopped. She was also an open bisexual — no rules for this one.) At the annual Dionysian Festival, Sano and her company perform an all-Chopin slate of the airy, joyous, tunic-clad style Duncan invented. In addition, musicians offer traditional Indian classical pieces, and Sano performs Noh-inspired choreography of her own. And in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the first voyage of statesmen from Japan to San Francisco, aboard the ship Kanrin Maru, musicians like koto player Shoko Hirage offer traditional Japanese flute and string-instrument works.
May 29-31, 6 p.m., 2010