ISADORA DUNCAN
"He said that a woman's bottom should be in a cushion, otherwise it's revolting. He said there are exceptions. Ballet dancers are exceptions. They can run and lift their legs because they have no entrails. Isadora Duncan had entrails, that's why she should not have danced. But she danced and for this reason became crazy. (Her voice is back to normal.) She wasn't crazy." - Julia, Fefu and her Friends
Isadora Duncan was a prolific dance icon and pioneer artist who changed the face of expressive and modern dance. In her lifetime, she defied and rejected the rigidity of traditional ballet technique, and instead forged a style of dance that was more imaginative, more experimental, and more free. Known as “the mother of modern dance,” Isadora’s trademark style was bare feet, loose clothing, and improvisational movement which placed a new emphasis on gravity and the connection of the body to the earth. She performed to great acclaim in Europe and Russia, and elevated interpretive dance to the status of creative art.
Born in San Francisco, CA in 1877 as the youngest of four children, Isadora’s parents were divorced by 1890. Her mother, a music teacher, struggled to make ends meet while raising her children in Oakland, CA. However, her mother was insistent on influencing her children with art and music, and read aloud from prolific writers such as Shakespeare, Browning, Keats, Dickens, and Whitman every evening. Whitman’s poem, “Song of Myself,” would become not only a favorite poem of Isadora's, but also a source of inspiration and personal anthem which would inform her future philosophy of the role of nature in dance.
"You were once wild here.
Don't let them tame you."
Isadora Duncan
I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
Creeds and schools in abeyance,
Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,
I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
Nature without check with original energy.
Disillusioned with school, Isadora dropped out at the age of ten, instead opting to self-educate at the Oakland Public Library under the guidance of poet and librarian Ina Coolbirth. To earn funds, she and her sister taught dance to young children at a local school in Oakland. Dismayed and frustrated with the rigidity of ballet technique, Isadora began to develop a technique all her own. Isadora took early inspiration from nature, especially the ocean. The foundation for her style was the connectedness of the human body, soul and spirit to nature. Isadora believed that movement originated from the solar plexus center of the body and was the source of all movement. Additionally, she focused on natural human movement - skipping, jumping, running - as opposed to the "steps" of ballet. Her movement was liberated and vibrant, a radical departure from the stuffy Victorian Era standards of propriety.
In her teenage years, Isadora performed in Chicago and New York, to varying levels of success. She often performed for wealthy patrons, who were shocked by her style of movement and ridiculed her. At the age of twenty one, Isadora set her sights on Europe and moved to London. She and her family frequently visited the British Museum, where Isadora drew inspiration for her movement from Greek antiquities. Her costumes for performances were directly inspired by Grecian forms, with long flowing tunics and bare feet which allowed for freedom of movement corsets and pointe shoes could not. With the patronage of actress Mrs. Patrick Campbell, she began to perform at private receptions for the British wealthy. Isadora's timing could not have been better, for the art of ballet in the Victorian Era had begun to grow stale and her audiences found her style of movement thrilling and intriguing. Word of this fresh and exciting dance artist caught wind, and in 1902 she made her performance debut for audiences in Budapest, selling out a run of thirty performances.
Isadora and her Isadorables
When asked for the pedagogic program of my school, I reply: 'Let us first teach little children to breathe, to vibrate, to feel, and to become one with the general harmony and movement of nature. Let us first produce a beautiful human being, a dancing child.' Nietzsche has said that he cannot believe in a god that cannot dance. He has also said, 'Let that day be considered loft on which we have not danced.' But he did not mean the execution of pirouettes. He meant the exaltation of life in movement.
As her performance career began to ignite, Isadora continued to develop her dance pedagogy and take on new students, referred to as the “Isadorables.” While teaching in Paris, Isadora began to teach her students words that would become the core of her teaching, “Listen to the music with your soul. Now, while listening, do you not feel an inner self awakening deep within you -- that it is by its strength that your head is lifted, that your arms are raised, that you are walking slowly toward the light.” (Kurth, 80) Dance had never before held fast to such a concept of connection. Isadora was the first to choreograph to music not originally written for dance, and set pieces to the compositions of Beethoven, Brahms, and Chopin.
In 1905, Isadora opened her own dance school in Berlin. Her celebrity status increased, and she kept company with other prolific figures of the time period such as Auguste Rodin, Vaslav Nijinsky, and Gertrude Stein. Her dancing alone was not the only unconventional aspect about Duncan: she identified as bisexual, an atheist, and believed to maintain communist beliefs. In the wake of the 1905 Russian Revolution, her reputation as a dancer was one of a symbol of the liberation of women, rebellion, and revolt.
Isadora’s personal life was deeply turbulent and painted with heartache and grief. In 1906, she bore her first child, Deidre, out of wedlock with scenic designer Gordon Craig. Her second child, Patrick, was born in 1910 by Paris Singer. In 1913, her children were in care with their nanny when their car flew off the road and went into the River Seine. Both of her children drowned. By the time Isadora was informed, the bodies had already been delivered to the morgue. Consumed with sorrow, Isadora struggled after the accident to rebuild her life. She entered into a relationship with sculpture artist Roman Romanelli and became pregnant with her third child. She gave birth to a son in 1914, however the baby did not live longer than a day after his birth.
Following this immense personal pain, Isadora retreated to Italy, where she stayed with close friend and actress Elenora Duse. Upon the outbreak of World War I, Isadora and the Isadorables fled to America where she began performing again. During this time, those close to her became aware of her increasingly concerning erratic and demanding behavior. Following an extensive solo performance tour throughout Europe, the United States, and South America, her career began to fade by the 1920s. The press made many intrusive speculations about her dramatic personal life and romantic relationships, and harshly reviewed her work. She became more known for her financial struggles, tragic personal circumstances, love affairs, and public drunkenness. Encouraged by friends, Isadora began to work on her autobiography, My Life, which was published in 1927 to great acclaim. In the same year, Isadora's life would meet it’s bizarre end, when Isadora’s scarf caught into the wheels of her automobile while driving in Nice, France. Her life and her dancing changed the face of artistic movement forever and every modern dancer who followed may point to her groundbreaking conventions as the invention of modern dance.