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American dancer Isadora Duncan (1878-1927) is noted for her founding of new dance techniques based largely on the dances of the ancient Greeks. With her graceful barefoot movements, flowing Grecian costumes, and maverick views on everything from ballet to marriage, Isadora Duncan sparked a revolution in American dance and challenged society's rigid expectations of women. Often called the "Mother of Modern Dance", she revolutionized dance, introducing an improvisational, emotion-driven form that would give birth to a new American style of dance. Isadora Duncan has been one of the most enduring influences on 20th century culture. Ironically, the very magnitude of her achievements as an
artist, as well as the sheer excitement and tradgedy of her life, have tended to dim our awareness of the originality, depth and boldness of her thought.
Isadora's father was a prominent San Francisco banker.
Isadora was born during 1878 in San Francisco. Isadora Duncan danced as soon as she could walk. When not teaching, or in school, Isadora explored the beach and would later say that her earliest ideas of dance came from watching the rhythms of the waves. Her father�s bank failed after her birth. Shortly afterwards her parents were divorced and her father remarried. Her mother had to give piano lessons to support her four children. The two boys found odd jobs, while young Isadora and her sister Elizabeth taught dancing to neighborhood children. Despite the poverty, she grew up in a childhood
filled with imagination and art. Her mother introduced her four children (Isadora was youngest) to classical music, as well as Shakespeare, poetry, literature and art. The children read every book, good or bad, that chance flung in their path, and when chance was busy with other people's problems, Isadora went to the Public Library.
Isadora met Ina Coolbrithat the public library. Ina possessed a rare talent. She not only created beauty, but she had the gift, as well, of inspiring the creative instinct in others. Isadora was an eager pupil. Her reading carried her back to the classical culture of ancient Greece, and the natural, unaffected, spontaneous Grecian art became her inspiration and dream. Toe-dancing, social gymnastics, was to be scorned. She demanded, from the very beginning, self-expression unrestrained by rule and custom.
Isadora spent many hours playing and dancing upon the beach, and even taught dance classes to younger children as a way to earn a little extra money for the struggling family.
When she was 14 years old, pupils, children of neighbors, came to her to be taught to dance.
The Oakland classes grew and then there were classes across the bay in San Francisco. Every day
Isadora and her sister, Elizabeth, took the ferryboat to San Francisco and then walked from the
Ferry building to Sutter and Van Ness Avenue. There, in the old home they had rented�the Castle
mansion�they taught the young hopefuls of San Francisco society forms of the dance that were
50 years ahead of their time.
Isadora as a teenageer traveled to Chicago and New York with some of her
family members, working and performing in various productions such as Mme.
Pygmalion, Midsummer's Night Dream or vaudeville shows with limited success.
It was not until she reached London, however, that Isadora began to find acceptance for her dancing. She performed in private "salons" for ladies of social standing and their guests in London and Paris. Gradually her popularity grew, and she began performing on great stages throughout Europe.
Isadora Duncan's dance style was characterized by free and flowing moments expressing inner emotions and intended to portray the movement of such natural forces as waves, winds, birds, and insects. At first she met strong oposition, chiefly from adherents of traditional dance forms such as ballet with its conventions and restrictions. Desite this oposition, the dance style she founded came into wide favor. Dancer, adventurer, revolutionist, ardent defender of the poetic spirit. Isadora Duncan was a thinker as well as poet, gifted with a lively poetic imagination, a radical defiance of "Things as they are," and the ability to express her ideas with verve and humor. To best understand Isadora, she was a theorist of dance, a critic of modern society, culture, education and a champion of the struggles for women's rights, social revolution and
the realization of poetry in everyday life.
Virtually alone, Isadora restored dance to a high place among the arts. Breaking with convention, Isadora traced the art of dance back to its roots as a sacred art. She developed within this idea, free and natural movements inspired by the classical Greek arts, folk dances, social dances, nature and natural forces as well as an approach to the new American athleticism which included skipping, running, jumping, leaping, tossing.
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Duncan visited the Soviet Union and her dance technique had considerable
influemce on Russian balet. She was the insiration for a new style of dance, known as interpative dancing.
She was especially interested in teaching children and inspiring a love of dance in them. She founded dance schools in Berlin (1904), Paris (1914), Moscow (1921), and other locations. The financial drain of her schools (schools were also established in Russia and Paris at various points in her life) forced Isadora to tour and perform considerably, leaving her sister Elizabeth in charge of the schools and pupils. In the Athenian hills Isadora gathered a class of small Grecian boys about her. She taught them the dances of ancient Byzantium, as well as Greek choruses and songs. bare-legged, with sandaled feet and flowing draperies, the Duncans danced from village to village, and the world called them mad. A year passed, and their purse was empty. Bidding a tearful farewell to the peasants who had learned to love the lady on Kopanos Hill, Isadora and her kin returned to modern civilization and Vienna. Isadora tourned Europe and America giving dance recitals with her pupils who were known as Duncan dancers. She published her autobiograph, My Life in 1926-27.
Isadora Duncan, My Life.
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