DANCE / You can't go wrong: Isadora Duncan's genius was a hard act to follow. Louise Levene reports on a gathering of disciples

PRANCING about in mother's net curtains is a phase many little girls go through. But for Mrs Duncan's daughter it became a way of life. Isadora's deeply personal dances performed in response to the finest music had a profound impact on everyone who saw them from Rodin to Diaghilev. Her ideas revolutionised both ballet and modern dance yet what most people remember of her life is its abrupt end at the age of 50 after a fatal involvement with a silk scarf.

Her immortality was assured by her disciples who took her name and continued her international mission to teach children the Duncan Technique (such as it was) and to pass on the philosophy of natural movement. On London's South Bank last week a group of Duncanites created a day of classes and performances to perpetuate the Duncan mystique. The event was part of the annual Ballroom Blitz, a two-week season of talks, free performances and low-price workshops. For pounds 1.50 your three-year-old could pretend to be a little musical horse under the kindly eye of Vera Belozorovich from the International School of Music and Movement in Moscow.

Some of the children had clearly been before: 'Mummy. Will I remember the Swan Lake steps when I'm grown up?' asked one veteran of the previous day's ballet workshop. With Duncan there were no steps to remember: 'Now you are all little musical horses,' said Vera. One mournful little pony in a blue Oxford button- down shirt and chinos lumbered around very gamely three moves behind the others who were cantering happily about the room. But Vera was still impressed. 'All the children are very musical.' She encouraged them to dance just as a sympathetic teacher would encourage them to paint. They splashed their bodies freely and lustily across the available space in response to the music, much as the woman who inspired it all a century ago had done in the theatres of the world: Isadora's children adored every minute of it.

Meanwhile, upstairs the tunic-making workshop was well under way. The general effect was one of nymphs surprised while bathing. Surprised, and rather pissed off. 'What's that photographer doing? Cheek.' Women of all ages and sizes were tweaking at tunics that are really only one step up from mother's net curtains held in place with the odd stitch or tucked into a bra strap. The effect was oddly charming. 'You don't have to dance in it, you can just wear it around the house' claimed an enthusiast. And it's so easy to run one up - 'I made this one at six o'clock this morning.'

The Greek vases on which Isadora modelled her costumes show elaborate border designs and brooches but the great dancer eschewed all ornament. The Greeks, of course, didn't have the problem of underwired black lace C-cups showing through their polyester - something that certainly never troubled Isadora herself. Her immodest drapery was a considerable part of her charm but the Isadora Duncan Dance Group always wears a leotard underneath. The group, led by artistic director Barbara Kane is taking workshops and giving performances throughout the day. These women, all far too young to have seen their Muse, devote themselves to spreading the Duncan gospel.

Barbara Kane first discovered Duncan in 1969: 'I was doing modern dance at University in the States and I found in the library a technique book that Irma Duncan had written. I searched and searched and searched and finally found a Duncan teacher in New York. There's something about Isadora that will always draw people to her. It's a very nice dance and it suits certain people.' But how do you teach something so personal? Are you trying to foster a new Isadora? 'You can't teach anyone to be the way Isadora was. Nobody could do that. But there's a technique and there's the dances that have been passed down'. This determined talk of Technique gives the lie to the popular belief that Isadora Duncan made it up as she went along. This was never the case; she spent weeks rehearsing in draughty studios with her indefatigable mother at the upright. So why do people imagine it was unrehearsed? 'Because it looked so easy when she did it - I imagine - and because she was so spontaneous people thought it was improvised. But Isadora had a sense of humour: people had already started saying 'There's no technique in it', so with her sense of humour she probably encouraged people to think that.' Ballet dancers in particular were slow to recognise any formal structure in Isadora's recitals although they all admired her execution. Pavlova's contemporary Tamara Karsavina was definitely a fan. In her memoirs she wrote: 'I remember that the first time I saw her dance I fell completely under her sway, but a great artist can be an indifferent theorist. The perfectly genuine impulsiveness of her bodily movements should have been sufficient reason for her art unaided by far-fetched arguments.' The great ballet critic of the Thirties, Arnold Haskell adored the dancer but dismissed the phenomenon: 'Her art was completely personal, and when she tried to express it in words she failed completely. There was no theory or thought behind it; it was its own justification. She had followers, a band of devoted disciples, but they never amounted to anything.'

There is a danger, surely, that Duncan's heritage will be progressively weakened and degraded by the Chinese whisper that passes uncertainly from one generation of disciples to the next. Barbara Kane is unperturbed 'I don't know if it's fair to compare people with Isadora. I don't want to be compared with Isadora. I'm not trying to be Isadora. I'm just doing something that I believe in and care about and want to develop.'

Isadora's Dontwannabes have not been the only ones spreading the word. Vanessa Redgrave's 1968 film Isadora has a lot to answer for. Barbara Kane is uncertain about the film: 'This gets me into trouble sometimes. I didn't like the fact that it was just about the sordid side of her life.' This seems a strange objection given that Duncan's own (banned) autobiography was scarcely remarkable for its coyness. Kane was pleased to see that 'the film recreated an interest in Isadora. People started recognising that she was more than just a woman who died with a scarf around her neck. And I did love the dancing.' But then she would say that. Exasperated finally by this sweet-natured refusal to judge anyone harshly, I am reminded of Martha Graham's assertion that 'there are only two kinds of dance, good and bad.' Does she honestly never look at a performance by a would-be Duncan dancer and think 'This is rubbish. This is a truly bad bit of dance?' No. Of course she doesn't. 'I have my critical eye but I never think it's terrible.' A committed Duncanist cannot perform badly however atrociously her body may move.

Duncan herself continued to dance long after her body was inadequate to the task - but she could get away with it. Frederick Ashton, who saw her give a recital when she was a portly 44 was quick to acknowledge all her shortcomings but equally eager to forgive them. The prospect of a middle-aged woman scattering rose petals about the stage to a Brahms waltz affected him deeply. 'Big legs, she had . . . But even when she was galumphing around she was still very impressive. I must have been about 15 or so when I saw her and that's a very bad age at which to see an ageing, fat woman. I was completely taken by her.' Barbara Kane is able to see beauty in far lesser talents: 'For me it's only bad when people are just doing the steps and not creating a feeling from it. When it's just technique. I have seen people be very emotional and not very technical. But if the feeling is right . . . '

Her own group certainly scored ten out of ten for feeling at the evening performance of Orpheus and Eurydice, a mixture of original dances and new choreography in the Duncan manner. But though it was interesting, it wasn't really very good. Surely there has to be more to the performing arts than the best of intentions? Such objections are clearly an irrelevance to Kane: 'I enjoy forms of community dance, people who are working in the community in an open and creative aspect so that everybody can dance.' For the disciple of a woman who could inspire a Berlin theatre audience to draw her carriage through the streets, Kane's attitude is curiously untheatrical. Yet her group does perform in theatres. Who tends to respond best? 'Basically audiences that haven't seen too much dance.'

Ballroom Blitz continues at the Royal Festival Hall, South Bank, London SE1 until Sunday 15 August. Information line: (071-921 0846)

(Photograph omitted)