Isadora Duncan's School of Dance: Inappropriate Eroticism or Art of the Future?
Isadora Duncan's School of Dance: Inappropriate Eroticism or Art of the Future?

Video: Isadora Duncan's School of Dance: Inappropriate Eroticism or Art of the Future?

Video: Isadora Duncan's School of Dance: Inappropriate Eroticism or Art of the Future?
Video: ASMR 19th Century Photographer - YouTube 2024, November
Anonim
The founder of free dance Isadora Duncan
The founder of free dance Isadora Duncan

Nowadays Isadora Duncan called the ancestor of modern dance and the genius of choreography, and at the beginning of the twentieth century. her dancing shocked and outraged. The manner of dancing barefoot and in translucent tunics caused bewilderment and angry responses.

Isadora Duncan
Isadora Duncan

Isadora was fond of dancing from the age of 6, and with her concert program she first performed in Budapest in 1903. A year later she conquered Russia. Her “free dance” was highly appreciated by lovers of Russian ballet, and S. Diaghilev even said that her tour inflicted a “blow on classical ballet from which he would never recover”. Andrei Bely wrote with admiration: “… she came out, light, joyful, with a childish face. And I realized that she was about the unsaid. There was dawn in her smile. In body movements - the scent of a green meadow. The folds of her tunic, like a murmur, beat with foamy streams, when she gave herself up to the dance, free and pure. " In 1907, Duncan's book "The Dance of the Future" was published in Russia, where she explained her views on art.

Isadora Duncan is the author of Dance of the Future, 1907
Isadora Duncan is the author of Dance of the Future, 1907

For Isadora, dance was more than just a dance, she created her own philosophy of naturalness and freedom: “For me, dance is not only an art that allows the human soul to reveal itself in movements, but it is also the basis of a whole concept of life, more refined, more harmonious, more natural … … everything obeys this supreme rhythm, the characteristic feature of which is flow. In no way does nature make leaps; between all moments and states of life there is a sequence that a dancer must sacredly observe in her art, otherwise she will turn into an unnatural, devoid of true beauty, a puppet. To search for the most beautiful forms in nature and to find movement that reveals the soul of these forms - this is the art of a dancer, "she wrote in her article" The Art of Dance "in 1913.

Isadora Duncan with her students, 1917
Isadora Duncan with her students, 1917
Isadora Duncan with her students. Greece, Thebes 1920
Isadora Duncan with her students. Greece, Thebes 1920

In America, Isadora was not recognized, and she decided to move to Europe, where the new directions of choreography were treated more favorably. She opened her dance school in Paris. But remembering his success in Russia, Duncan dreams of returning there. Isadora wrote a letter to Lunacharsky, declaring that she was tired of bourgeois, commercial art and dreamed of dancing for ordinary people, for the masses. In response, he invited Duncan to Russia and promised her "a school and a thousand children." She was given a mansion on Prechistenka with two large halls for dancing.

Mansion on Prechistenka, provided by the Soviet government to Isadora Duncan for a dance school
Mansion on Prechistenka, provided by the Soviet government to Isadora Duncan for a dance school
Students of the Isadora Duncan School of Dance, Moscow, 1923
Students of the Isadora Duncan School of Dance, Moscow, 1923

Despite the fact that Duncan was still quite popular in Russia, she received a flurry of criticism. V. Meyerhold called her "absolutely obsolete", the Bolsheviks who came to power considered her dance mystical and impractical. Critics wrote indignantly about her mature age and excess weight, noting not the art of dancing, but "massive legs" and "shaking breasts." Her outfit was called tasteless, they wrote that she looks ridiculous and vulgar in translucent short tunics.

Girls from Isadora Duncan's School of Dance
Girls from Isadora Duncan's School of Dance
Isadora Duncan
Isadora Duncan

American F. Golder, describing the holiday on which Duncan danced, did not restrain himself in expressions: “The special guest was Isadora Duncan; the woman was either drunk or crazy, or both. She was half dressed, and asked the young men to pull up her tunic."

Isadora Duncan with her students
Isadora Duncan with her students
Isadora Duncan
Isadora Duncan

During her stay in Russia, Isadora Duncan met Sergei Yesenin and married him in 1922. And soon she received an offer to give a series of performances in the United States. This time, America greeted her with full houses and applause, but not in all cities. She was expelled from Chicago and Boston, in Brooklyn she fell off the stage. Critics were again merciless: in her short red outfit they saw Bolshevik propaganda and inappropriate eroticism.

The founder of free dance Isadora Duncan
The founder of free dance Isadora Duncan
Isadora Duncan with her students
Isadora Duncan with her students
The founder of free dance Isadora Duncan
The founder of free dance Isadora Duncan

In 1923, Duncan and Yesenin returned to Russia, but this time she was received coolly: many blamed her for the poet's alcoholism. Their a whirlwind romance ended in a tragic ending, and the dancer had to return to Europe. “How many troubles humanity could have avoided if people did not make so many wrong movements,” said Isadora. Her absurd death made them say that a family curse hung over Duncan

Recommended: