Duncan, Isadora

Duncan, Isadora
orig. Angela Duncan

born May 26, 1877, or May 27, 1878, San Francisco, Calif., U.S.
died Sept. 14, 1927, Nice, Fr.

U.S. interpretive dancer.

She rejected the conventions of classical ballet and based her technique on natural rhythms and movement inspired by ancient Greece, dancing barefoot in a tunic without tights. Enjoying little success in the U.S., she moved to Europe in 1898. She toured Europe, giving recitals to great acclaim throughout her life and earning notoriety for her liberated unconventionality, and she founded several dance schools. She was strangled when her long scarf became entangled in the rear wheel of the car in which she was riding. Her emphasis on "free dance" made her a precursor of modern dance, and she became an inspiration to many avant-garde artists.

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▪ American dancer
original name (until 1894)  Angela Duncan  
born May 26, 1877, or May 27, 1878, San Francisco, California, U.S.
died September 14, 1927, Nice, France
 American dancer whose teaching and performances helped free ballet from its conservative restrictions and presaged the development of modern expressive dance (modern dance). She was among the first to raise interpretive dance to the status of creative art.

      Although Duncan's birth date is generally believed to have been May 27, 1878, her baptismal certificate, discovered in San Francisco in 1976, records the date of May 26, 1877. Duncan was one of four children brought up in genteel poverty by their mother, a music teacher. As a child she rejected the rigidity of the classic ballet and based her dancing on more natural rhythms and movements, an approach she later used consciously in her interpretations of the works of such great composers as Brahms, Wagner, and Beethoven. Her earliest public appearances, in Chicago and New York City, met with little success, and at the age of 21 she left the United States to seek recognition abroad. With her meagre savings she sailed on a cattle boat for England.

      At the British Museum her study of the sculptures of ancient Greece confirmed the classical use of those dance movements and gestures that hitherto instinct alone had caused her to practice and upon a revival of which her method was largely founded. Through the patronage of the celebrated actress Mrs. Patrick Campbell (Campbell, Mrs. Patrick), she was invited to appear at the private receptions of London's leading hostesses, where her dancing, distinguished by a complete freedom of movement, enraptured those who were familiar only with the conventional forms of the ballet, which was then in a period of decay. It was not long before the phenomenon of a young woman dancing barefoot, as scantily clad as a woodland nymph, crowded theatres and concert halls throughout Europe. During her controversial first tour of Russia in 1905, Duncan made a deep impression on the choreographer Michel Fokine (Fokine, Michel) and on the art critic Sergey Diaghilev (Diaghilev, Sergey Pavlovich), who as impresario was soon to lead a resurgence of ballet throughout western Europe. Duncan toured widely, and at one time or another she founded dance schools in Germany, Russia, and the United States, though none of these survived.

      Her private life, quite as much as her art, kept her name in the headlines owing to her constant defiance of social taboos. The father of her first child, Deirdre, was the stage designer Gordon Craig (Craig, Edward Gordon), who shared her abhorrence of marriage; the father of her second child, Patrick, was Paris Singer, the heir to a sewing machine fortune and a prominent art patron. In 1913 a tragedy occurred from which Duncan never really recovered: the car in which her two children and their nurse were riding in Paris rolled into the Seine River and all three were drowned. In an effort to sublimate her grief she was about to open another school when the advent of World War I put an end to her plans. Her subsequent tours in South America, Germany, and France were less successful than before, but in 1920 she was invited to establish a school of her own in Moscow. To her revolutionary temperament, the Soviet Union seemed the land of promise. There she met Sergey Aleksandrovich Yesenin (Yesenin, Sergey Aleksandrovich), a poet 17 years younger than she, whose work had won him a considerable reputation. She married him in 1922, sacrificing her scruples against marriage in order to take him with her on a tour of the United States. She could not have chosen a worse time for their arrival. Fear of the “Red Menace” was at its height, and she and her husband were unjustly labeled as Bolshevik agents. Leaving her native country once more, a bitter Duncan told reporters: “Good-bye America, I shall never see you again!” She never did. There followed an unhappy period with Yesenin in Europe, where his increasing mental instability turned him against her. He returned alone to the Soviet Union and, in 1925, committed suicide.

      During the last years of her life Duncan was a somewhat pathetic figure, living precariously in Nice on the French Riviera, where she met with a fatal accident: her long scarf became entangled in the rear wheel of the car in which she was riding, and she was strangled. Her autobiography, My Life, was published in 1927 (reissued 1972).

      Isadora Duncan was acclaimed by the foremost musicians, artists, and writers of her day, but she was often an object of attack by the less broad-minded. Her ideas were too much in advance of their time, and she flouted social conventions too flamboyantly to be regarded by the wider public as anything but an advocate of “free love.” Certainly her place as a great innovator in dance is secure: her repudiation of artificial technical restrictions and reliance on the grace of natural movement helped to liberate the dance from its dependence on rigid formulas and on displays of brilliant but empty technical virtuosity, paving the way for the later acceptance of modern dance as it was developed by Mary Wigman (Wigman, Mary), Martha Graham (Graham, Martha), and others.

Sewell Stokes

Additional Reading
Accounts of the dancer's life and career include Victor Seroff, The Real Isadora (1971); Frederika Blair, Isadora: Portrait of the Artist as a Woman (1986); Lillian Loewenthal, The Search for Isadora: The Legend & Legacy of Isadora Duncan (1993); Dorée Duncan, Carol Pratl, and Cynthia Splatt (eds.), Life into Art: Isadora Duncan and Her World (1993); and Ann Daly, Done into Dance: Isadora Duncan in America (1995). Maurice Dumesnil, An Amazing Journey (1932), chronicles Duncan's South American tour; and Ilya Ilyich Schneider (Il'ia Il'ich Shneider), Isadora Duncan: The Russian Years, trans. from Russian (1968, reprinted 1981), is an account of her years in the Soviet Union during the early 1920s. Studies of her dance philosophy and technique are Isadora Duncan, The Art of Dance, ed. by Sheldon Cheney (1928, reissued 1977); and Irma Duncan, The Technique of Isadora Duncan (1937, reissued 1970). Nadia Chilkovsky Nahumck, Nicholas Nahumck, and Anne M. Moll, Isadora Duncan: The Dances (1994), presents the dance scores for more than 300 of Duncan's dances.

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Universalium. 2010.

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  • Duncan,Isadora — Dun·can (dŭngʹkən), Isadora. 1878 1927. American dancer whose use of simple costumes and free movement greatly influenced modern dance. * * * …   Universalium

  • Duncan, Isadora — ► (1878 1927) Bailarina estadounidense. Su concepto de la danza influyó sobre los realizadores del ballet ruso. * * * orig. Angela Duncan (26 may. 1877 ó 27 may. 1878, San Francisco, Cal., EE.UU.–14 sep. 1927, Niza, Francia). Bailarina… …   Enciclopedia Universal

  • Isadora Duncan — Birth name Angela Isadora Duncan Born May 27, 1877(1877 05 27), Sa …   Wikipedia

  • Isadora Duncan — durante su gira americana de 1915 18. Foto de Arnold Genthe. Nombre de nacimiento Angela Isadora Duncan Nacimiento …   Wikipedia Español

  • DUNCAN (I.) — DUNCAN ISADORA (1878 1927) Danseuse américaine, née à San Francisco et morte à Nice. Dès l’âge de six ans, Isadora Duncan improvise des danses hors des règles classiques ou traditionnelles. Elle se produit jusqu’en 1900 dans les salons de la… …   Encyclopédie Universelle

  • Duncan — nom de deux rois d écosse. Duncan (Isadora) (1878 1927) danseuse américaine, pionnière de la danse moderne …   Encyclopédie Universelle

  • Isadora Duncan — Pour les articles homonymes, voir Duncan. Isadora Duncan …   Wikipédia en Français

  • Isadora Duncan — noun United States dancer and pioneer of modern dance (1878 1927) • Syn: ↑Duncan • Instance Hypernyms: ↑dancer, ↑professional dancer, ↑terpsichorean * * * Isadora Duncan …   Useful english dictionary

  • Duncan — ► Nombre de dos reyes de Escocia: Duncan I, rey de Escocia en 1034 40, y Duncan II, rey de Escocia en 1093 94. Duncan, Isadora * * * (as used in expressions) Duncan I Duncan, David Douglas Duncan, Isadora Angela Duncan Phyfe, Duncan Duncan Fife …   Enciclopedia Universal

  • Duncan — /dung keuhn/, n. 1. Isadora, 1878 1927, U.S. dancer: pioneer in modern dance. 2. Robert, 1919 88, U.S. poet. 3. a city in S Oklahoma. 22,517. 4. a male given name. * * * (as used in expressions) Duncan I Duncan David Douglas Duncan Isadora Angela …   Universalium

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