I've always disliked Isadora Duncan. I didn't like her face to begin with; I didn't like the stupid Greek tunics. I thought the legend of her childrens' drowning and of her own death via scarf ("Affectations can be dangerous," said Gertrude Stein at the time) were part of her pretentiousness.
Her magnate lover, Paris Singer, helped me understand. When Duncan asked him why he stayed with her, he replied: "You have the most beautiful skin, and you never bore me." He eventually left her forever after he'd rented Madison Square Garden for her and she mocked his gesture in front of others.
After reading "Isadora: A Sensational Life" by Peter Kurth for the past few days, I like her much better. She's still pretentious (and obnoxiously slutty---sleeping with over 1,000 men, according to her one and only husband, the 18-years-younger Russian poet Esenin, himself a drunken slut).
But there's also something THERE. I think she was sincere in her desire to express a universal music in dance, and to teach others to express the same. I'm not certain, but I believe she is considered the founder of modern dance; she especially hated ballet and its rigid forms. Ballet still survives, of course. But so does Duncan's then-newfangled concept of "natural" dance which, combined with Loie Fuller's elevated, enhanced "skirt dance" performed in Paris (with accompanying light show) at the turn of the last century, are together the foundation of modern dance. (Fuller the modern, technological innovator; Duncan, the "back to nature," "free-love" purist --- both a radical departure from the established mores of the time.)
Her magnate lover, Paris Singer, helped me understand. When Duncan asked him why he stayed with her, he replied: "You have the most beautiful skin, and you never bore me." He eventually left her forever after he'd rented Madison Square Garden for her and she mocked his gesture in front of others.
After reading "Isadora: A Sensational Life" by Peter Kurth for the past few days, I like her much better. She's still pretentious (and obnoxiously slutty---sleeping with over 1,000 men, according to her one and only husband, the 18-years-younger Russian poet Esenin, himself a drunken slut).
But there's also something THERE. I think she was sincere in her desire to express a universal music in dance, and to teach others to express the same. I'm not certain, but I believe she is considered the founder of modern dance; she especially hated ballet and its rigid forms. Ballet still survives, of course. But so does Duncan's then-newfangled concept of "natural" dance which, combined with Loie Fuller's elevated, enhanced "skirt dance" performed in Paris (with accompanying light show) at the turn of the last century, are together the foundation of modern dance. (Fuller the modern, technological innovator; Duncan, the "back to nature," "free-love" purist --- both a radical departure from the established mores of the time.)
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