This Photographer Shadowed Isadora Duncan Dancers in Greece and It's Like She Stepped Back in Time
August 1, 2017

In 2016, photographer Rose Eichenbaum was invited by Lori Belilove, director of The Isadora Duncan Dance Company, to document the company’s pilgrimage to Athens, Greece—Duncan’s inspirational home. Belilove’s itinerary was designed to educate her dancers, along with a gathering of Belilove’s international students, about Greek art and culture. “The weeklong trip,” Eichenbaum writes, “had us virtually stepping back in time to witness the very things that had inspired Duncan to create new movement.”


Afternoons were spent touring historic and ancient sites, among them the Theatre of Dionysus, the Acropolis of Athens, the Temple of Olympian Zeus and the Temple of Poseidon overlooking the Aegean Sea. Here, Belilove at the Temple of Poseidon. Photo by Rose Eichenbaum.

Belilove at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens. Duncan spent hours there examining depictions of the human body in sculpture, bas-reliefs and vases, and observing how draped cloth carved into the marble flowed and wrapped around human bodies in motion. Photo by Eichenbaum.

Dancer Nikki Poulos. Each morning, they headed to the Isadora & Raymond Duncan Dance Research Center for company class and rehearsals. It sits on the exact site where Duncan and her brother built and designed what they called a “dream temple for the dance” in 1903. Photo by Eichenbaum.

Tea at Hotel Grande Bretagne, where Isadora Duncan stayed during her visits to Athens. Photo by Eichenbaum.