Reviews

Without doubt, the fulcrum by which the evening turns is Patricia Adams. Cherubic and more physically ample than we've come to expect in dancers, Adams fairly vibrates with charisma.... In the context of a style that thrives on its simplicity, Adams knows just how to inform those moves with personality. She dances with her face as much as with her feet. She can infuse a slap of her foot on the floor in Gypsy with a bracing volatility, or establish a brilliant synthesis of grief and the conquering of grief in "March Funebre".

It is a tribute to the show's consistency of vision that it includes some of Duncan's last dances as well....they are transcended by Adams' molten reading of them, especially "Revolutionary".

John Michael Koroly
WRSU-FM (1994)

With the light, ethereal and even sometimes butterfly-like Gallant, the dances seemed particularly harmonious, performed with an ingenuous lyricism - from the carefree mischievousness in Schubert's " Moment Musical" to the sublimely stern piece " Mother" to music by Scriabin.

The solidly put together, dynamic and strong-willed Adams brought music into the dances....In duets, next to the lightness of Gallant, she revealed a unique combination of earth, body and air which was what had distinguished the dance of Duncan herself.

Maya Korneva
Nezavisimaya Gazela (Moscow- 1993)

Dances by Isadora is a company founded by fourth-generation Duncan dancers Catherine Gallant and Patricia Adams, who work to preserve Duncan's repertoire and technique. In performances this weekend they are joined by guest artist Sylvia Gold, who studied with Duncan's daughters Anna and Irma.....Actress Paula Plum reads selections from Duncan's writings between dances,providing fascinating glimpses of Isadora the artist and visionary.The program is a fond and thoughtful tribute to the mother of modern dance. ....Gallant and Adams perform short pieces to selections by Brahms and Schubert with natural lyricism and exuberance, their tunics flowing about them, arms lifted to the sky. In "Butterfly" Adams flits and floats, dipping her scarf wings. In "Water Study", Gallant bobs and dips as if carried by gentle waves. By contrast, Duncans two 1923 solos (some of the last work she created before her death in 1927) composed during her stay in post revolutionary Russia, show a different side of Duncan. "Mother" is visually and dramatically darker than her previous work. It seems inspired by emptiness rather than fullness, the feeling imparted by her earlier work. "Revolutionary" is similarly grim, performed in a red costume and red light, and featuring clenched fists and silent screams. Both are still powerful today.

Diane C. Grant
The Boston Globe (1991)

At the Cambridge Multicultural Arts Center, the members of Dances by Isadora removed the works of the "mother of modern dance" from the shelf and lovingly polished them. After an evening of Dances by Isadora, the feeling of serenity is overshadowed only by the puzzlement over the controversy that surrounded Isadora Duncan...Dances by Isadora directors Catherine Gallant and Patricia Adams bring to life the ideals so important in Duncan's art: free, spirited movement and exquisite musical accompaniment....Sylvia Gold, once a student of Isadorables Anna and Irma, lent a strong sense of wisdom and comprehension to the dances....Adams, Gallant and Gold have spent many years studying Duncan's style, and it shows in their flowing hands and arms, musicality, and charming performance. They fix their audience with direct gazes of gaiety and sorrow, and draw all into their bosoms.....Adams most closely evokes the vision of Duncan, her lovely halo of curls encircling a rapturous, mischievous face that at once teases and caresses. Her playfulness is interrupted only by the most "stressful" dance of the program, in which she portrays the revolutionary Duncan, garishly lit and robed in shocking red. Her ethereal appearance is overtaken by angry determination: wrists momentarily caught up, she wrenches free triumphantly to punch her invisible opponents......Gallant's extremely articulate hands carve patterns that hang in the air long after she's flitted elsewhere - like the series of skimming soutenu turns in the "Water Study" in which one arm finishes arcing up with a delicate flick of the wrist. The fiestiness of a gypsy or the intangibility of a butterfly fit her as comfortably as the gauzy robes that are the troupe's simple costume.....Gold's solos, the "Ave Maria" and the "Rose Petals", are full of energy that belies her 60-odd years....At the end of "Rose Petals", Gold kisses the hand held petals and scatters them to us, the pink snow a lovely talisman for the gifts of dance that are being passed from generation to generation.

Janine Parker Kolberg
The Boston Phoenix (1991)