Angela Isadora Duncan (May 26, 1877, or May 27, 1878 – September 14, 1927) was an American-born dancer and choreographer, who was a pioneer of modern contemporary dance and performed to great acclaim throughout Europe and the United States. Born and raised in California, she lived and danced in Western Europe, the U.S., and Soviet Russia from the age of 22. She died when her scarf became entangled in the wheel and axle of the car in which she was travelling in Nice, France.
Early life Angela Isadora Duncan was born in San Francisco, the youngest of the four children of Joseph Charles Duncan (1819–1898), a banker, mining engineer and connoisseur of the arts, and Mary Isadora Gray (1849–1922). Her brothers were Augustin Duncan and Raymond Duncan; her sister, Elizabeth Duncan, was also a dancer. Soon after Isadora's birth, her father was investigated and charged following the collapse of the family’s bank, which coincided with a larger reorganization of San Francisco’s finances, a period of crushing reversals and closing of silver mines. Although the jury voted for his acquittal, Isadora's mother (angered over his infidelities as well as the financial scandal) divorced him, and from then on the family struggled with poverty. Joseph Duncan, along with his third wife and their daughter, died in 1898 when the British passenger steamer SS Mohegan ran aground off the coast of Cornwall.Ean Wood, Headlong Through Life: The Story of Isadora Duncan (2006), p. 27: "They...would all be drowned, along with 104 others, when the S.S. Mohegan, en route from London to New York, ran aground on the Manacle Rocks off Falmouth, in Cornwall."
After her parents' divorce,Duncan (1927), p. 17 Isadora's mother moved with her family to Oakland, California, where she worked as a seamstress and piano teacher. Isadora attended school from the ages of six to ten, but she dropped out, having found it constricting. She and her three siblings earned money by teaching dance to local children.
In 1896, Duncan became part of Augustin Daly's theater company in New York, but she soon became disillusioned with the form and craved a different environment with less of a hierarchy.
Work
Duncan's novel approach to dance had been evident since the classes she had taught as a teenager, where she "followed [her] fantasy and improvised, teaching any pretty thing that came into [her] head".Duncan (1927), p. 21 A desire to travel brought her to Chicago, where she auditioned for many theater companies, finally finding a place in Augustin Daly's company. This took her to New York City where her unique vision of dance clashed with the popular pantomimes of theater companies.Duncan (1927), p. 31 While in New York, Duncan also took some classes with Marie Bonfanti but was quickly disappointed by ballet routine.
Feeling unhappy and unappreciated in America, Duncan moved to London in 1898. She performed in the drawing rooms of the wealthy, taking inspiration from the Greek vases and bas-reliefs in the British Museum.Duncan (1927), p. 55 The earnings from these engagements enabled her to rent a studio, allowing her to develop her work and create larger performances for the stage.Duncan (1927), p. 58 From London, she traveled to Paris, where she was inspired by the Louvre and the Exposition Universelle of 1900 and danced in the salons of Marguerite de Saint-Marceaux and Princesse Edmond de Polignac.Duncan (1927), p. 69 In France, as elsewhere, Duncan delighted her audience.
In 1902, Loie Fuller invited Duncan to tour with her. This took Duncan all over Europe as she created new works using her innovative technique,Duncan (1927), p. 94 which emphasized natural movement in contrast to the rigidity of traditional ballet.Jowitt, Deborah. Time and the Dancing Image. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989. p. 71 She spent most of the rest of her life touring Europe and the Americas in this fashion.Kurth (2001), p. 155 Despite mixed reaction from critics, Duncan became quite popular for her distinctive style and inspired many visual artists, such as Antoine Bourdelle, Dame Laura Knight, Auguste Rodin, Arnold Rönnebeck, André Dunoyer de Segonzac, and Abraham Walkowitz, to create works based on her.Setzer, Dawn. "UCLA Library Acquires Isadora Duncan Collection" , UCLA Newsroom, last modified April 21, 2006
In 1910, Duncan met the occultist Aleister Crowley at a party, an episode recounted by Crowley in his Confessions. He refers to Duncan as "Lavinia King", and used the same invented name for her in his 1929 novel Moonchild (written in 1917). Crowley wrote of Duncan that she "has this gift of gesture in a very high degree. Let the reader study her dancing, if possible in private than in public, and learn the superb 'unconsciousness' – which is magical consciousness – with which she suits the action to the melody."Aleister Crowley, Magick: Liber ABA: Book 4: Parts 1–4 2nd revised ed. York Beach, ME, 1997, p. 197 Crowley was, in fact, more attracted to Duncan's bohemian companion Mary Dempsey ( Mary D'Este or Desti), with whom he had an affair. Desti had come to Paris in 1901 where she soon met Duncan, and the two became inseparable. Desti, who also appeared in Moonchild (as "Lisa la Giuffria") and became a member of Crowley's occult order, later wrote a memoir of her experiences with Duncan.
In 1911, the French fashion designer Paul Poiret rented a mansion – Pavillon du Butard in La Celle-Saint-Cloud – and threw lavish parties, including one of the more famous grandes fêtes, La fête de Bacchus on June 20, 1912, re-creating the Bacchanalia hosted by Louis XIV at Versailles. Isadora Duncan, wearing a Greek evening gown designed by Poiret, danced on tables among 300 guests; 900 bottles of champagne were consumed until the first light of day.
Opening schools of dance
Duncan disliked the commercial aspects of public performance, such as touring and contracts, because she felt they distracted her from her real mission, namely the creation of beauty and the education of the young. To achieve her mission, she opened schools to teach young girls her philosophy of dance. The first was established in 1904 in Grunewald, Berlin, Germany. This institution was in existence for three years and was the birthplace of the "Isadorables" (Anna, Maria-Theresa, Irma, (Gretel), Lisa, and ErikaSturges (1990), p. 39), Duncan optimistically dreamed her school would train “thousands of young dancing maidens” in non-professional community dance.Kurth (2001), p. 168 It was a boarding school that in addition to a regular education, also taught dance but the students were not expected or even encouraged to be professional dancers. Duncan did not legally adopt all six girls as is commonly believed.Kurth (2001), p. 392 Nevertheless, three of them (Irma, Anna and Lisa) would use the Duncan surname for the rest of their lives.Kurth (2001), pp. 365, 392 After about a decade in Berlin, Duncan established a school in Paris that soon closed because of the outbreak of World War I.
In 1914, Duncan moved to the United States and transferred her school there. A townhouse on Gramercy Park in New York was provided for its use, and its studio was nearby, on the northeast corner of 23rd Street and Fourth Avenue (now Park Avenue South).Sturges (1990), p. 120 Otto Kahn, the head of Kuhn, Loeb & Co., gave Duncan use of the very modern Century Theatre at West 60th Street and Central Park West for her performances and productions, which included a staging of Oedipus Rex that involved almost all of Duncan's extended entourage and friends.Sturges (1990), pp. 121–124 During her time in New York, Duncan posed for studies by the photographer Arnold Genthe.
Duncan had planned to leave the United States in 1915 aboard the RMS Lusitania on its ill-fated voyage, but historians believe her financial situation at the time drove her to choose a more modest crossing. In 1921, Duncan's leftist sympathies took her to the Soviet Union, where she founded a school in Moscow. However, the Soviet government's failure to follow through on promises to support her work caused her to return in 1924 to the West and leave the school to her protégée and adopted daughter, German-born Irma Doretta Henrietta Erih-Grimm Duncan (1897—1977).Duncan (1927), p. 422 In 1924, Duncan composed a dance routine called Varshavianka to the tune of the Polish revolutionary song known in English as Whirlwinds of Danger.
Philosophy and technique
Breaking with convention, Duncan imagined she had traced dance to its roots as a sacred art.Stewart J, Sacred Woman, Sacred Dance, 2000. p. 122. She developed from this notion a style of 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, and tossing. Duncan wrote of American dancing: "let them come forth with great strides, leaps and bounds, with lifted forehead and far-spread arms, to dance."Duncan (1927), p. 343 Her focus on natural movement emphasized steps, such as skipping, outside of codified ballet technique.
Duncan also cited the sea as an early inspiration for her movement,Duncan (1927), p. 10 and she believed movement originated from the solar plexus. Duncan placed an emphasis on "evolutionary" dance motion, insisting that each movement was born from the one that preceded it, that each movement gave rise to the next, and so on in organic succession. It is this philosophy and new dance technique that garnered Duncan the title of the creator of modern dance.
Duncan's philosophy of dance moved away from rigid ballet technique and towards what she perceived as natural movement. She said that in order to restore dance to a high art form instead of merely entertainment, she strove to connect emotions and movement: "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."Duncan (1927), p. 75 She believed dance was meant to encircle all that life had to offer—joy and sadness. Duncan took inspiration from ancient Greece and combined it with a passion for freedom of movement. This is exemplified in her revolutionary costume of a white Greek tunic and bare feet. Inspired by Greek forms, her tunics also allowed a freedom of movement that corseted ballet costumes and pointe shoes did not.Kurth (2001), p. 57 Costumes were not the only inspiration Duncan took from Greece: she was also inspired by ancient Greek art, and utilized some of its forms in her movement (as shown on photos).Duncan (1927), p. 45
Personal life
Children
Duncan bore three children, all out of wedlock. Deirdre Beatrice was born September 24, 1906. Her father was theatre designer Gordon Craig. Patrick Augustus was born May 1, 1910,Kurth (2001) fathered by Paris Singer, one of the many sons of sewing machine magnate Isaac Singer. Deirdre and Patrick both died by drowning in 1913; while out on a car ride with their nanny, the automobile accidentally went into the River Seine. Following this tragedy, Duncan spent several months on the Greek island of Corfu with her brother and sister, then several weeks at the Viareggio seaside resort in Italy with actress Eleonora Duse.
In her autobiography, Duncan relates that in her deep despair over the deaths of her children, she begged a young Italian stranger, the sculptor Romano Romanelli, to sleep with her because she was desperate for another child.Gavin, Eileen A. and Siderits, Mary Anne, Women of vision: their psychology, circumstances, and success (2007), p. 267 She gave birth to a son on August 13, 1914, but he died shortly after birth.
Relationships