Arts & Entertainment
Russian adventures
Dance legend’s time abroad explored in new work
‘Once Wild: Isadora Duncan in Russia’
Today through Sunday
Word Dance Theater
Georgetown University’s Davis Performing Arts Center
37th & O Streets, NW
$10-$25
202-687-ARTS
worddance.org
Cynthia Word as Isadora Duncan in ‘Once Wild.’ (Photo by Teresa Castracane, courtesy Theo Kossenas, Media 4 Artists)
Isadora Duncan’s spectacular life is often reduced to a cautionary tale: long, flowing scarves and convertibles don’t mix. But there’s much more to the glamorous mother of modern dance than her ungraceful death and Word Dance Theater, a D.C.-based cross disciplinary company dedicated to carrying forth Duncan’s work, is doing its best to make sure that the world knows it.
Word Dance Theater is joining forces with Georgetown University’s Davis Performing Arts Center to present “Once Wild: Isadora in Russia,” a compelling slice from Duncan’s groundbreaking legend.
Penned by Norman Allen, who is gay, “Once Wild” reimagines Duncan and her adopted daughter Irma’s time in Russia during the early days of the Bolshevik revolution. It follows the American dancer’s efforts to introduce iconoclastic choreography to young Russian dancers; the challenges they encountered opening a dance school amidst a background of sweeping social changes and Isadora’s tumultuous romance with volatile Russian poet Sergei Esenin (danced by Helen Hayes Award-winning, out actor Philip Fletcher).
The story — an original work based on historic facts — is told from Irma’s point of view. Because the production combines both theater and dance, Allen says, there are two Irmas on stage throughout the show — an older Irma who sits in a wheelchair (Kimberly Schraf) delivering all of the 80-minute work’s dialogue, and company member Ingrid Zimmer who silently dances as the younger Irma, embodying the memories and essence of Duncan’s choreography.
“Once Wild” isn’t Allen’s first foray into the world of dance. Early in his career he scored a big success with “Nijinsky’s Last Dance,” a one-man show about the legendary, gravity-defying Russian ballet dancer. He’s also written a libretto for the Washington Ballet. “With ‘Once Wild,’ the dance and words are interwoven and overlap,” Allen says. “As always with any work, the toughest part was finding the structure. How do you make sense of five years of historical tumult and two women doing amazing things? (Director Derek Goldman) and I have tried to make this play a reliving rather than a looking back. Old Irma speaks to young Irma. It’s much more alive this way.”
Cynthia Word, Word Dance Theater’s artistic director and the show’s choreographer, plays Isadora.
“Though I’ve been interested in Duncan for many years, dancing and choreographing her work, this is the first time I’ve ever portrayed her. It’s a big responsibility. Isadora, I think, would only want that I dance my truest self.”
Duncan, who died from a broken neck at 49 in 1927 on the Côte d’Azur after her trademark long scarf became entangled in the spokes of her chauffer-driven Bugatti, was a genius who single handedly altered the entire concept of dance. Unlike classical ballet that left audiences in awe, she preferred organic, relatable movement. Her work incorporated timely issues. She danced to music composed by the great masters and incorporated themes of current issues on stages stripped of unnecessary spectacle. She and her dancers dressed in comfortable, loose-fitting tunics (the theme song for the ‘70s sitcom “Maude” describes Isadora as “the first bra burner”). “I doubt she ever wore a bra to start with,” Word says.
“Once Wild” includes a lot of Duncan’s own choreography. Other than some flickering images, there’s no film of Duncan dancing, Word says. But fortunately for today’s choreographers, Duncan was a star on the between-the-wars Paris art scene, so there are many photographs and paintings of her in dance poses which give important clues about the dance. Archived reviews describing her work have proved very helpful too. “Lineage from dancer to dancer has also become very important,” says Word whose teacher was taught by one of Duncan’s students. “How close you can get to the source is important. Being close to the source makes the work more real.”
Duncan was still performing and very active until the end. “She had premonitions about her death,” Word says. “But it didn’t help. Isadora loved to go fast.”
The 44th annual Queen of Hearts pageant was held at The Lodge in Boonsboro, Md. on Friday, Feb. 20. Six contestants vied for the title and Bev was crowned the winner.
(Washington Blade photos by Michael Key)
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Books
New book profiles LGBTQ Ukrainians, documents war experiences
Tuesday marks four years since Russia attacked Ukraine
Journalist J. Lester Feder’s new book profiles LGBTQ Ukrainians and their experiences during Russia’s war against their country.
Feder for “The Queer Face of War: Portraits and Stories from Ukraine” interviewed and photographed LGBTQ Ukrainians in Kyiv, the country’s capital, and in other cities. They include Olena Hloba, the co-founder of Tergo, a support group for parents and friends of LGBTQ Ukrainians, who fled her home in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha shortly after Russia launched its war on Feb. 24, 2022.
Russian soldiers killed civilians as they withdrew from Bucha. Videos and photographs that emerged from the Kyiv suburb showed dead bodies with their hands tied behind their back and other signs of torture.
Olena Shevchenko, chair of Insight, a Ukrainian LGBTQ rights group, wrote the book’s forward.
The book also profiles Viktor Pylypenko, a gay man who the Ukrainian military assigned to the 72nd Mechanized Black Cossack Brigade after the war began. Feder writes Pylypenko’s unit “was deployed to some of the fiercest and most important battles of the war.”
“The brigade was pivotal to beating Russian forces back from Kyiv in their initial attempt to take the capital, helping them liberate territory near Kharkiv and defending the front lines in Donbas,” wrote Feder.
Pylypenko spent two years fighting “on Ukraine’s most dangerous battlefields, serving primarily as a medic.”
“At times he felt he was living in a horror movie, watching tank shells tear his fellow soldiers apart before his eyes,” wrote Feder. “He held many men as they took their final breaths. Of the roughly one hundred who entered the unit with him, only six remained when he was discharged in 2024. He didn’t leave by choice: he went home to take care of his father, who had suffered a stroke.”
Feder notes one of Pylypenko’s former commanders attacked him online when he came out. Pylypenko said another commander defended him.
Feder also profiled Diana and Oleksii Polukhin, two residents of Kherson, a port city in southern Ukraine that is near the mouth of the Dnieper River.
Ukrainian forces regained control of Kherson in November 2022, nine months after Russia occupied it.
Diana, a cigarette vender, and Polukhin told Feder that Russian forces demanded they disclose the names of other LGBTQ Ukrainians in Kherson. Russian forces also tortured Diana and Polukhin while in their custody.
Polukhim is the first LGBTQ victim of Russian persecution to report their case to Ukrainian prosecutors.
Feder, who is of Ukrainian descent, first visited Ukraine in 2013 when he wrote for BuzzFeed.
He was Outright International’s Senior Fellow for Emergency Research from 2021-2023. Feder last traveled to Ukraine in December 2024.
Feder spoke about his book at Politics and Prose at the Wharf in Southwest D.C. on Feb. 6. The Washington Blade spoke with Feder on Feb. 20.
Feder told the Blade he began to work on the book when he was at Outright International and working with humanitarian groups on how to better serve LGBTQ Ukrainians. Feder said military service requirements, a lack of access to hormone therapy and documents that accurately reflect a person’s gender identity and LGBTQ-friendly shelters are among the myriad challenges that LGBTQ Ukrainians have faced since the war began.
“All of these were components of a queer experience of war that was not well documented, and we had never seen in one place, especially with photos,” he told the Blade. “I felt really called to do that, not only because of what was happening in Ukraine, but also as a way to bring to the surface issues that we’d had seen in Iraq and Syria and Afghanistan.”
Feder also spoke with the Blade about the war’s geopolitical implications.
Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2013 signed a law that bans the “promotion of homosexuality” to minors.
The 2014 Winter Olympics took place in Sochi, a Russian resort city on the Black Sea. Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine a few weeks after the games ended.
Russia’s anti-LGBTQ crackdown has continued over the last decade.
The Russian Supreme Court in 2023 ruled the “international LGBT movement” is an extremist organization and banned it. The Russian Justice Ministry last month designated ILGA World, a global LGBTQ and intersex rights group, as an “undesirable” organization.
Ukraine, meanwhile, has sought to align itself with Europe.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy after a 2021 meeting with then-President Joe Biden at the White House said his country would continue to fight discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. (Zelenskyy’s relationship with the U.S. has grown more tense since the Trump-Vance administration took office.) Zelenskyy in 2022 publicly backed civil partnerships for same-sex couples.
Then-Ukrainian Ambassador to the U.S. Oksana Markarova in 2023 applauded Kyiv Pride and other LGBTQ and intersex rights groups in her country when she spoke at a photo exhibit at Ukraine House in D.C. that highlighted LGBTQ and intersex soldiers. Then-Kyiv Pride Executive Director Lenny Emson, who Feder profiles in his book, was among those who attended the event.
“Thank you for everything you do in Kyiv, and thank you for everything that you do in order to fight the discrimination that still is somewhere in Ukraine,” said Markarova. “Not everything is perfect yet, but you know, I think we are moving in the right direction. And we together will not only fight the external enemy, but also will see equality.”
Feder in response to the Blade’s question about why he decided to write his book said he “didn’t feel” the “significance of Russia’s war against Ukraine” for LGBTQ people around the world “was fully understood.”
“This was an opportunity to tell that big story,” he said.
“The crackdown on LGBT rights inside Russia was essentially a laboratory for a strategy of attacking democratic values by attacking queer rights and it was one as Ukraine was getting closet to Europe back in 2013, 2014,” he added. “It was a strategy they were using as part of their foreign policy, and it was one they were using not only in Ukraine over the past decade, but around the world.”
Feder said Republicans are using “that same strategy to attack queer people, to attack democracy itself.”
“I felt like it was important that Americans understand that history,” he said.
More than a dozen LGBTQ athletes won medals at the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics that ended on Sunday.
Cayla Barnes, Hilary Knight, and Alex Carpenter are LGBTQ members of the U.S. women’s hockey team that won a gold medal after they defeated Canada in overtime. Knight the day before the Feb. 19 match proposed to her girlfriend, Brittany Bowe, an Olympic speed skater.
French ice dancer Guillaume Cizeron, who is gay, and his partner Laurence Fournier Beaudry won gold. American alpine skier Breezy Johnson, who is bisexual, won gold in the women’s downhill. Amber Glenn, who identifies as bisexual and pansexual, was part of the American figure skating team that won gold in the team event.
Swiss freestyle skier Mathilde Gremaud, who is in a relationship with Vali Höll, an Austrian mountain biker, won gold in women’s freeski slopestyle.
Bruce Mouat, who is the captain of the British curling team that won a silver medal, is gay. Six members of the Canadian women’s hockey team — Emily Clark, Erin Ambrose, Emerance Maschmeyer, Brianne Jenner, Laura Stacey, and Marie-Philip Poulin — that won silver are LGBTQ.
Swedish freestyle skier Sandra Naeslund, who is a lesbian, won a bronze medal in ski cross.
Belgian speed skater Tineke den Dulk, who is bisexual, was part of her country’s mixed 2000-meter relay that won bronze. Canadian ice dancer Paul Poirier, who is gay, and his partner, Piper Gilles, won bronze.
Laura Zimmermann, who is queer, is a member of the Swiss women’s hockey team that won bronze when they defeated Sweden.
Outsports.com notes all of the LGBTQ Olympians who competed at the games and who medaled.
PHOTOS: Queen of Hearts
New book profiles LGBTQ Ukrainians, documents war experiences
More than a dozen LGBTQ athletes medal at Olympics
Rob Jetten becomes first gay Dutch prime minister
US Embassy in Mexico issues shelter in place order for Puerto Vallarta
Judge rescinds order against activist in Capital Pride lawsuit
Trans activists arrested outside HHS headquarters in D.C.
How do we honor Renee Good, Alex Pretti?
Calendar: February 20-26
