Isadora Duncan, Pina Bausch. Danza dell'anima, liberazione del corpo

"The highest intelligence in the freest body: the dancer of the future is about to appear" Isadora Duncan

"With dance I could express myself with all the emotions I could not put into words" Pina Bausch This is a tribute to Isadora Duncan and Pina Bausch, icons of modern and contemporary dance, through documents, photographs, and works of art that illustrate how two dancers with such different career paths were able to free the body and dance in the twentieth century.
The book is published on the occasion of the Milan exhibition, and in a popular and meticulously way - with the support of rare visual material having strong emotional impact - tells the rich story of experience, ideas and teaching that Isadora Duncan (San Francisco 1877- Nice 1927) and Pina Bausch (Solingen 1940) spread throughout their careers, highlighting the different sources for their inspiration and the ideal tension that make them a symbol and model for younger generations. The book evokes the path through which these two great innovators - each using her own expressive means - formulated and solidified a far-reaching process that broke up the pillars of the classical ballet tradition and uncovered fertile new ground in theatre, costume and the conquering of the soul-body dualism.

Dance as a mirror of the soul, the poetry of movement, the transparency of emotions: Isadora Duncan and Pina Bausch inspired and guided a bold revolution in freedom of expressivity and the creation of a new language of the body.
At the beginning of the twentieth century the lone Californian pioneer Isadora bravely opened the road to liberated dance in Europe by challenging conventions and defending a "dancing humanity" committed to the harmonious cultivation of beauty and simplicity.
In the last part of the twentieth century Pina and her phenomenal Wuppertal Tanztheater were able to visualise "the language of life" on the stage, that is, masterfully represent the essence of sentiments and states of mind that mark our daily life.

The volume contains two introductory essays, one by Pier Giorgio Carizzoni (Corpo eloquente, specchio della vita) and the other by Maurice Béjart (Danzare la vita), followed by two sections dealing respectively with Isadora Duncan and Pina Bausch. The first consists of a rich photographic and documentary record aiming to illustrate the important stages in the multifaceted life of this Californian dancer: Greece, Paris, Russia, and Germany. Of particular interest are the splendid drawings and watercolours by Auguste Rodin, Grandjuan, André Dunoyer de Segonzac, Jean Lafitte, José Clara and Valentine Gross Hugo that are inspired by dance and the movement of a body that was finally liberated.
The second section is dedicated to Pina Bausch's dance-theatre, witnessed through the special eye of two great photographers, Ulli Weiss and Francesco Carbone, who followed the development of her choreographic and aesthetic art from its beginnings in the 1970s.