I Know a Woman by Kate Hodges

Author:Kate Hodges
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Aurum Press
Published: 2018-06-24T04:00:00+00:00

GERTRUDE STEIN

went on holiday to Mexico with Mercedes

DOROTHY PARKER

went to the same school

A GLORIOUSLY eccentric free spirit, Isadora Duncan brought joy to the world of dance and revelled in a bohemian life.

Born in San Francisco, this precocious prancer had set up neighbourhood dance classes by the age of six. Isadora’s approach to dance was free-form – she’d had no formal training, preferring to interpret the music with feeling and improvise – and her trademark moves were running and leaping. She left home in her teens, moving to Chicago, Illinois then New York. Due to her unconventional way of dancing, however, she found it hard to get ballet or theatre work.

Yearning for European culture, Isadora travelled to London in 1898. She studied Greek mythology and wandered around the statues of the British Museum for inspiration. Informed by nature and ancient rituals, she rejected the conventions of ballet, calling for its abolition, and performed barefoot in tunics and togas, wrapped in scarves.

Still not accepted by the dance establishment, Isadora performed in private houses, but her break came when fellow modern dancer Loie Fuller took her on tour around Europe.

Isadora had two children, a daughter by theatre designer Gordon Craig, and a son by sewing machine heir Paris Singer. Tragedy struck in 1913, however, as the siblings drowned when the car they and their nanny were in drove into the Seine.

Isadora poured her heart into her work. The success of her shows meant she could open dance schools. The first, in Germany, spawned six ‘Isadorables’: pupils who were all adopted by Isadora.

Isadora was bisexual, an atheist and a fervent communist. In 1921, she moved to Russia, where she met and had a brief marriage to poet Sergey Aleksandrovich Yesenin. Two years after their split, he committed suicide.

Isadora’s final years were to be an emotional struggle. She was often drunk, had a series of very public love affairs and led a transient lifestyle in France. She died at the age of fifty when her long, trailing silk scarf got caught in the wheels of her open-top car.

On hearing of Isadora’s death, the writer Gertrude Stein somewhat callously commented, ‘Affectations can be dangerous.’ The two had both grown up in Oakland, California, in the 1880s, but met in the salons and drawing rooms of Europe. Gertrude immortalised Isadora in a pen portrait, ‘Orta or One Dancing’, a fluid, repetitive written piece that echoes and gives meaning to Isadora’s flowing, unique movements.

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