Isadora Duncan
1877 - 1927
Origins
• born in 1877 in San Francisco,
the youngest of four children
• abandoned by her father when
he swindled a bank
• grew up in a childhood filled
with imagination and art
• was introduced to classical
music, as well as
Shakespeare, poetry, literature
and art by her mother
• 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
at three
at fifteen
Teenage Years
• traveled to Chicago and
New York with some of
her family members
• performed in various
productions such as
Mme. Pygmalion,
Midsummer's Night
Dream or vaudeville
shows with limited
success
• gave dancing classes to
the rich in New York and
Newport
A fairy in A Midsummer’s Night Dream
Europe (1899)
• began to find acceptance
for her dancing once she
moves to London
• performed in private
"salons" for ladies of
social standing and their
guests in London and
Paris
• first became a sensation
in Budapest, Hungary
• began to perform on
great stages throughout
Europe
In London, Isadora would spend hours
at the British Museum amongst the
Ancient Greek art collections
Educator
• had a driving vision for the
education of young children,
grounding their learning in art,
culture, movement and
spirituality as well as traditional
academic lessons
• began her first school in
Grunewald, Germany in 1904,
selecting children from the
poorer classes and providing
completely for all their physical
and materials need from her
own pocket.
Isadora with her students
Dance Philosophy
"I spent long days and nights in the studio, seeking
that dance which might be the divine expression of
the human spirit through the medium of the body's
movement. For hours I would stand quite still, my
two hands folded between my breast, covering the
solar plexus… I was seeking and finally discovered
the central spring of all movement, the crater of
motor power, the unity from which all diversions of
movement are born, the mirror of vision for the
creation of dance."
Isadora Duncan
My Life, 1928
Dance Philosophy
“Imagine then a dancer who, after long study, prayer
and inspiration, has attained such a degree of
understanding that his body is simply the luminous
manifestation of his soul; whose body dances in
accordance with a music heard inwardly, in an
expression of something out of another, profounder
world. This is the truly creative dancer; natural but
not imitative, speaking in movement out of himself
and out of something greater than all selves."
Isadora Duncan
The Philosopher's Stone of Dancing, 1920
Tumultuous Life
• fell for the love of her
life, the theatrical
designer Gordon
Craig, by whom she
had Deidre
Gordon Craig
• lived with Paris
Singer, the sewing
machine heir, who
bankrolled her school
in Bellevue and
fathered her son
Patrick
Paris Singer and Isadora
Isadora with her children
Deidre and Patrick
• her two children
drowned with their
Scottish governess
in 1913 when the
car they were being
driven in swerved
into the River Seine
Her children’s funeral in Paris
• married the
Russian poet
Sergei Esinen
who was 17
years younger
than her in 1922
• divorced Sergei
soon after
Isadora and Sergei Esinen on tour
Death
• Isadora dies in 1927, strangled by a scarf when
it gets tangled up in the spokes of a Buggatti
sports car.
Dance Techniques
• developed her
principle of using
motions familiar to all
races and all cultures,
such as walking,
running, skipping,
jumping, kneeling,
reclining and rising
Dance Techniques
• employed a theory of
continuous movement
that mounted, that
spread, and that
ended in a promise of
rebirth inspired by the
Greek ideal
Legacy
• 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.
• To the free and natural
movements inspired by
the classical Greek arts,
she incorporated folk
and social dancing as
well as American
athleticism which
included skipping,
running, jumping,
leaping, tossing.
• With free-flowing
costumes, bare feet and
loose hair, Duncan
restored dancing to a
new vitality using the
solar plexus and the
torso as the generating
force for all movements
to follow.
• Isadora is credited with
inventing what later
came to be known as
Modern Dance.
The Isadorabels