![\"San](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/sut-l-dance-hazel-fowler.jpg\")
San Diego dance icon Jean Isaacs\u2019 11-year-old granddaughter Hazel Fowler, pictured, will perform in the piece \u201cComing of Age\u201d in Isaacs\u2019 career-closing \u201cLegacy Concert.\u201d (Doug McMinimy)<\/p>\nIt doesn\u2019t matter if one is young or old, a professional or an amateur.<\/p>\n
Throughout her decades-long career as a pioneering dancer, teacher and choreographer, Jean Isaacs says her most driving goal is to inspire \u201cmore people to be dancing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her award-winning choreography has been performed in a half-dozen countries and taught to hundreds of dance artists of all ages, all races and all physical abilities.<\/p>\n
Isaacs, 81, will celebrate her contribution to dance this weekend with \u201cThe Legacy Concert,\u201d a compilation of choreographic works that reflects her past, her present and her future.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve made 160 dances,\u201d says Isaacs, a resident of Rancho Pe\u00f1asquitos.<\/p>\n
\u201cI liked it when other artists were contributing, but this is an evening of just my work. I\u2019m excited.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dancers from Malashock Dance and from San Diego Dance Theater (SDDT), where Isaacs served as artistic director from 1997 to 2021, are among the performers featured, along with New York-based choreographer and dancer Monica Bill Barnes and SDDT founder George Willis.<\/p>\n
Isaacs\u2019 daughter Liv Isaacs-Nollet will solo in \u201cHaven\u2019t Seen Barbados\u201d and daughter Emmi Fowler\u2019s girls (granddaughters Hazel Fowler, 11, and Cora Fowler, 9), will perform in the show\u2019s poignant \u201cComing of Age.\u201d<\/p>\n
San Diego dance icon Jean Isaacs\u2019 11-year-old granddaughter Hazel Fowler, pictured, will perform in the piece \u201cComing of Age\u201d in Isaacs\u2019 career-closing \u201cLegacy Concert.\u201d (Doug McMinimy)<\/p>\n
In addition to running San Diego Dance Theater, Isaacs taught at UC San Diego for 23 years and retired in 2007.<\/p>\n
But she is probably best known as the creator of Trolley Dances, the annual, site-specific collaboration with the Metropolitan Transit System that first launched in 1999 as a solution to the lack of affordable indoor venues.<\/p>\n
Trolley Dances makes the point that dance can happen anywhere, around an outdoor fountain, on a caf\u00e9 tabletop, and even on an escalator within a public library.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s unconventional and one of many choreographic ideas that makes Isaacs unique in her field.<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/sut-l-trolley-dances-004_206738560.jpg\")
A group of dancers perform during San Diego Dance Theater\u2019s 2024 Trolley Dances program. Nelvin C. Cepeda \/ The San Diego Union-Tribune)<\/p>\n
She graduated from Wheaton College in Massachusetts with a degree in literature and learned to love the power of words.<\/p>\n
As such, she often incorporates song lyrics, poetry, text from books and her own voice to translate the message she intends a dance to deliver.<\/p>\n
\u201cLiterature was really helpful in my work,\u201d Isaacs affirms. \u201cI look at other dancers and they are beautiful, but there is not a lot of content. I try not to preach but sometimes, I can\u2019t tell one dance from the other.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another signature of Isaacs\u2019 movement language is tongue-in-cheek humor.<\/p>\n
Consider her choreography for last month\u2019s Trolley Dances, when dancers between the ages of 60 and 86 performed to \u201cSlip Slidin\u2019 Away\u201d a bittersweet song by Paul Simon.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s metaphor for death \u2014 we are all slip sliding,\u201d Isaacs quips. \u201cI\u2019m just trying to get a little lightness going because we are all so serious.\u201d<\/p>\n
In \u201cThe Legacy Concert,\u201d commentary and humor are woven through \u201cA Geography of Risk,\u201d a dance about different types of relationships that includes narrative from Isaacs, Garrison Keillor and text from a travel guidebook.<\/p>\n
Lasting nearly 30 minutes, with duets, trios and group sections, The New York Times described the dance in a 2001 review as \u201cfascinatingly unpredictable.\u201d<\/p>\n
San Diego Dance Theater artist Cecily Holcombe, who first performed in \u201cA Geography of Risk\u201d in 2016, is restaging the work for \u201cThe Legacy Concert.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWorking with professional dancers to explore the navigation of risks and balancing humor with caution remains remarkably relevant today,\u201d Holcombe says.<\/p>\n
\u201cLove, war, death, babies, illness \u2026 all of those are themes presented as risks we take.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Among](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/sut-l-dance-legacy-liv.jpg\")
Among the dancers in Jean Isaacs\u2019 \u201cThe Legacy Concert\u201d will be her daughter, Liv Isaacs-Nollet, soloing in \u201cHaven\u2019t Seen Barbados.\u201d (Jim Carmody)<\/p>\n
Isaacs\u2019 choreography is also marked by what her students call \u201cJean-isms.\u201d There\u2019s the \u201ccup of gold\u201d move, in which dancers use their arms in a way that appears as though they are circling an energy ball. And then there\u2019s what she calls the \u201csequential use of the joints.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou start the movement by rolling the shoulder forward and the elbow and the hand is stretched out,\u201d Isaacs explains. \u201cThen it rolls back in and the hand relaxes.\u201d<\/p>\n
Terry Wilson, a San Diego City College dance professor and the current executive artistic director for San Diego Dance Theater, was a former student of Isaacs.<\/p>\n
She once danced in \u201cA Geography of Risk,\u201d in addition to many favorite works Isaacs created.<\/p>\n
\u201cHer repertory and movement vocabulary is demanding and athletic,\u201d Wilson says.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe music selection is exquisite and when you are doing her work, you are saying something powerful.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wilson said Isaacs inspired her to teach dance.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs much as I love choreographing and dancing, she opened that door for me,\u201d Wilson says.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe believed in me and helped me to believe in myself \u2014 which I think she has done for thousands of people. Whether they are dancers, choreographers or audience members, I think her legacy is that she touches people\u2019s lives with her artistry and teaching.\u201d<\/p>\n
As for the future, Isaacs is confident her influence will go on.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think everyone should dance if they possibly can,\u201d Isaacs insists.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2019The Legacy Concert\u2019 is three generations, me, Liv and my granddaughters. I have six grandchildren and they are all girls \u2013 dancers, all of them. Their idea of fun is a dance party.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jean Isaacs: \u2018The Legacy Concert\u2019<\/p>\n
When: 2:30 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday and next Sunday<\/p>\n
Where:\u00a0Light Box Theater, 2590 Truxton Road, Suite 205, Liberty Station, Point Loma<\/p>\n
Tickets: $40, general; $25, seniors, students and working artists<\/p>\n