Iovanna Lloyd Wright

1925 - 2015
Iovanna Lloyd Wright passed away on September 7, 2015, in a nursing home in San Gabriel, California. She was 89.

Born in Chicago, Illinois, on December 3, 1925, Iovanna was the only child of Frank Lloyd Wright and Olgivanna Lloyd Wright. She was raised and lived most of her life at Taliesin in Spring Green, Wisconsin and at Taliesin West in Scottsdale, Arizona.

In 1949 Iovanna Lloyd Wright went to Paris, France, where she studied dance and philosophy with the philosopher and mystic, G. I. Gurdjieff. His dances were called "Movements" and were based on sacred dances discovered during his travels to Central Asia, Tibet and other countries in the mid-19th and early 20th centuries.

On her return to the United States, Iovanna taught classes in these "Movements" to the Taliesin Fellowship, students at the school for architecture and related arts, founded in 1932 by Mr. and Mrs. Frank Lloyd Wright.

She went on to create many choreographic works and wrote a number of plays, fusing the two art forms into what she termed dance-dramas. She began writing poetry and some fiction in her earlier years, which continued through the last several years of her life.

Major productions of her dance-dramas became known as The Taliesin Festival of Music and Dance and were presented annually to the public at Taliesin West in Arizona. Her mother, Olgivanna Lloyd Wright, a former pupil of Gurdjieff, composed the music, which was played by members of the Phoenix Symphony Orchestra. Iovanna trained the performers in these productions – the architecture students, painters and sculptors, as well as the architects at Taliesin. The "Movements" were also presented in Chicago, San Francisco and Dallas. A production of her own choreography was presented at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco in the early 1970's.

Iovanna Lloyd Wright is survived by her only child, Eve Lloyd Wright; nephew Eric Lloyd Wright; nephew Brandoch Peters, the son of William Wesley Peters, the first apprentice of Frank Lloyd Wright and his son-in-law through his marriage to Svetlana Hinzenburg, Olgivanna's first child and Iovanna's half-sister with whom she spent her childhood and youth.

We who love Iovanna will miss her very much and will honor her particular genius by way of our own work and through our own lives.

A private Memorial Service in honor of Iovanna Lloyd Wright is planned for December 4, 2015 at the Wayfarer's Chapel (5755 Palos Verdes Drive South, Rancho Palos Verdes, CA 90275; 310-377-1650)