Isadora Duncan, dance queen.

Perhaps one can say about this woman in the words of Pushkin: “All life. mine was the pledge of the faithful meeting with you. " In the memory of many, she remained as the beloved of S. Yesenin. But she had her own, no less dramatic and difficult life... The father left the family when the children were still young, and although the Duncan sisters received a good education, they had to earn their own living early on.
Later, Isadora ironically said that her father got rich several times and went broke the same number of times. The family had four children, and they all devoted themselves to art. Elizabeth was the first to create her own school.Isadora got the idea of \u200b\u200bcreating her own dance gradually. At first, she just wanted to dance to the music. She is attracted by E. Novin's music, and she composes dances for his "Narcissus", "Ophelia" and "Water Nymphs". Later Duncan will use the music of Beethoven, Gluck, Chopin, Tchaikovsky. She made her stage debut in 1899, but was never able to find a permanent job in America. Not wanting to waste her talent in cabarets and in theaters on secondary roles, she moved with her mother and brother to Europe. Duncan tries to perform at the evenings of artists, artists, believing that only here he can prove himself as an artist. However, gradually the circle of her audience is expanding, and on the recommendation of some of her patrons, she begins to prepare large dance programs. Soon Duncan signs a contract and begins performing with concerts in different cities of Europe. At the same time, she began teaching the art of dance in private schools, first in Germany and then in France.In l904, Duncan opened her own school near Berlin, and in 1914, with the outbreak of the First World War, she moved to Paris. She expressed her impressions of the art of dance in a special lecture. Duncan believed that the main quality of dance is the maximum emancipation of the performer. That is why she gave up on traditional ballet shoes and danced only barefoot or in sandals. The main quality of a dancer, according to Duncan, is the ability to control his body. Only in this case will both beauty and expressiveness come. Duncan's ideal was ancient Greek frescoes, vase painting and sculpture. The actress had a great talent for pantomime. and was an excellent improviser. She replaced the traditional ballet costume with a light Greek tunic and danced without shoes.This is where the name "sandals dance" originated. Duncan's plastic consisted of elements of walking, running on half-toes, light jumps, and expressive gestures. The dancer's creative credo is determined by two principles - life and love. Perceiving theater as the art of personal emancipation, she defends the woman's right to love and have children at will, without getting married. She has two children - Dardry and Patrick, the girl's father is the famous artist-designer Edward Gordon, with whom Isadora voluntarily parted, so that everyone could serve their cause. The second son was born from P.3inger, a famous millionaire, heir to the inventor of the sewing machine. In her notes, Duncan even called him Lohengrin, the hero of R. Wagner's opera.Both Duncan children were tragically killed in a car accident in 1913. Some believed that they were killed on the orders of one of the competitors of Patrick's father, P. Zinger. Duncan's first meeting with Russia took place during the years of the first Russian revolution, then she came here several times, trying to organize a dance school at the Maly Art Theater and teach the art of her dance to the actors of the imperial theaters. Then she met with K. Stanislavsky and A. Pavlova, whose art excited and fascinated her. It was then that the ideas of a revolutionary change in the style of dance seized her, and Isadora Duncan even prepared several dances, reflecting in them the revolutionary pathos of the time. Contemporaries recalled her dance "Marseillaise" for a long time. In 1921, at the invitation of the People's Commissar of Education A.V. Lunacharsky Duncan comes to Russia again to organize a school here, similar to those that she has already created in Europe. Duncan hoped that her Russian students would not dance just for the sake of enrichment, and dreamed of making her own new dance popular. While visiting one of the Moscow cafes, she met with Sergei Yesenin.Isadora was seized with a desire to love, as if with this feeling she wanted to shield herself from the world and forget about the tragic death of her children. It is interesting to compare the opinions of several people about her at once. One of Yesenin's poets and friends A. Mariengof assessed her very skeptically and unfriendly: “Yesenin was captivated not by Isadora Duncan, but by her world fame. He married her glory, and not this - elderly, heavy, but still beautiful woman with skillfully dyed hair - a deep crimson color. " No less harsh and Gorky's response: in his opinion, it was a lady "elderly, heavy, with a red, ugly face." True, one can see Isadora in a purely feminine and somewhat different way, as A. Miklashevskaya remembered her; the actress of the Chamber Theater, to whom Yesenin dedicated his famous cycle of poems "The Love of a Bully" and who became Isadora's happy rival: “And for the first time I saw Duncan up close: she was a very large woman, well preserved; She amazed me with her unnaturally theatrical appearance.She wore a transparent chiton with gold lace, girdled with a gold cord with gold leaves, and on her feet were gold sandals and lace stockings. Not a woman, but some theatrical king. " Probably, Duncan wanted to love not only herself, but also to find love and understanding on the part of Yesenin, to find with him a little personal happiness. In her attitude to Yesenin, one could already feel "the tragic greed of the last feeling," as the poet N. Krandievskaya, the second wife of A. Tolstoy, once remarked. But he and Yesenin were completely different. And the point is not only that Isidora - as Yesenin called her - spoke fluent English, French, German, and Yesenin spoke only Russian, and that they grew up in completely different social and cultural environments. Let us turn again to the words of Mariengof: “Yesenin was loved, Izadora - loving.Yesenin, as an actor, turned his cheek, and she kissed. They had been husband and wife for only a year and a half and parted. After Yesenin's death, Isadora even tried to commit suicide, but she was saved. In 1924, she left the USSR for good. After her departure, the school, which existed until 1949, was directed by the adopted daughter of the ballerina Irma. Many artists have tried to capture Duncan's extraordinary plasticity. Thanks to L. Bakst, the image of her magnificent neck has been preserved. In a dance with V. Nizhinsky, O. Roden tried to capture her, who made many sketches. The tragic death of Isadora in September 1927 is also covered with legends. She loved to wear long transparent shawls that she wrapped around her neck. One day, when she was about to get into the car, the end of the shawl got under the wheel and, tangled in the spokes, squeezed Duncan's throat. Strong tissue fractured the spine and severed the carotid artery. Death came instantly. Although Duncan did not create a professional dance "system, her searches have enriched not only female, but also male dance. The art of the great dancer has influenced contemporary choreographic art, the work of Russian choreographers M. Fokin, A. Gorsky, K. Goleizovsky. Duncan's ideas inspired Fokine to create the so-called “continuous dance.” Isadora Duncan's work is not forgotten in her homeland, America. Bow, the nicknames of the once famous ballerina, among whom were the famous dancers Ruth Saint-Denis Ted Sean, created in memory of Isadora improvisational dance technique.

Isadora Duncan crossed out all the conventions of the classical school, removing pointe shoes from the ballerina and inviting her to feel the energy of the scene with her bare feet. She refused the pack, put on a tunic: the body, not squeezed into a corset, breathes, lives, dances. Classical ballet generates mechanical, artificial movements, a learned combination of poses and movements, even very beautiful and well-adjusted ones, closes the soul. And one must dance with soul and soul. It is the human body that is capable of capturing and transmitting the breath of the wind, the mutiny of the sea waves, the rolling of thunder and the radiance of the sun. Man in dance is the continuation of the existence of nature, in all its grandeur and the smallest manifestations.

Isadora Duncan considered the art of dancing to be widely available. She promoted the development of mass schools, where children, while learning to dance, would learn the beauty of their body movements. She opened such schools in Berlin, Paris, Greece, America. Duncan's search for funds and a place for his idea of \u200b\u200blife brought him to Russia. Researcher Gordon McVeigh in his work "Sergei Yesenin and Isadora Duncan" quotes from the article "Our Guest" by the People's Commissar of Education A. V. Lunacharsky, published in 1921, a month after Isadora arrived in Moscow: "... Duncan's Dreams She thinks about a large public school of 500 or 1,000 students, but for now she agrees to start with a small number of children who will receive education through our teachers, but develop physically and aesthetically under her leadership ... Duncan herself, for now that, imbued with a very militant communism, which sometimes evokes an involuntary, of course, extremely kind and even, if you like, a tender smile ... Duncan was called the queen of the gesture, but of all her gestures, this last one, a trip to revolutionary Russia, in spite of her fears - the most beautiful and deserves the loudest applause. "Duncan's first performance in Moscow took place on November 7, 1921, on the stage of the Bolshoi Theater on the day of the celebration of the fourth anniversary of the October Revolution. The Duncan School in the USSR worked until 1929. Isadora herself tragically died in 1927, and left Russia in 1924.

The first international symposium dedicated to the work of Isadora Duncan was recently held in the American capital, at the George Washington University. It brought together more than fifty participants, including dancers, choreographers, dance researchers, psychologists and educators from various states of America, as well as specialists from Germany and Russia.It was attended by the Russian researcher of creativity Duncan Elena Yushkova, Ph.D. in art history, author of the book "The Plasticity of Overcoming: Brief Notes on the History of Plastic Theater in Russia in the 20th Century".

- At the symposium, it was discussed, - says Elena Yushkova, - is there a dance of Isadora Duncan today, in the XXI century? And if so, what happens to him: has he frozen in some ossified forms or continues to develop? Since the dance was passed only from hand to hand - from female students to female students and only at the end of the 20th century was it recorded on paper using labanotation (a movement recording system invented by the German choreographer Rudolf Laban), what is left of it today? Why is Duncan's dance needed and to whom?

The main ideas of Isadora Duncan were expressed over a century ago and still live on today. First of all, this is the musicality of movement and sensitivity to the smallest nuances of music, movement from the center (which in the human body is located approximately in the solar plexus region), harmony of all parts of the body in the process of movement, fluid smooth movements that at first glance seem very simple. Even now, there are many myths about the Duncan dance - they were analyzed by dancer and teacher Valerie Dernham, one of the organizers of the symposium. For example, it is believed that it is so simple that everyone can perform it practically without preparation, that Isadora's dances were not "staged", but simply improvised by her on stage, that when she died, her dance died with her ... All professional Duncanists are wonderful understand the absurdity of these statements, they know how difficult it is to master this technique and that Duncan dance is not just a historical heritage that needs to be preserved, but also a living, modern and still very expressive art form.

Today, new possibilities of Duncan's choreography are opening up. The body and psyche are interconnected, and individual changes in the emotional or mental sphere cause changes in all these areas. Often people with a high degree of bodily stress are not aware of their feelings. Muscle clamp is an unreduced emotion that prevents a person (who often does not realize it) from feeling like a whole person. And if with the help of dance you activate the body, release tension, then they will be freed, which means that the senses will heighten. By improving coordination, achieving harmonious control of the body, it is possible to harmonize the inner emotional world of a person.

As Elena Yushkova noted, that is why Isadora's system is in demand - numerous studios in different US cities do not experience a shortage of students. There are even studios for the disabled, where people with disabilities comprehend Duncan's philosophical choreography in practice and, as one of the participants in the symposium demonstrated on video, they quite successfully practice certain elements of the dance, those that are able to perform for people with limited movement. Sadly, modern children are no less squeezed than they were in Puritan times, although they don't wear corsets today. Children now spend most of their day at computers. This distorts their muscles, the chest cannot move normally, the person cannot breathe normally ... should this semi-medical chain continue?

In the process of training according to the Duncan system, children and adolescents gradually begin to release their breath, liberate the body and soon literally flourish. The main advantage of the method is that fluency in the musculoskeletal system becomes a tool for harmonizing the personality. Therefore, we can safely say that education through Duncan's dance is not only aesthetic in nature. " The school in Russia was closed for ideological reasons, as promoting "morbid, decadent art brought to our country from America." Time has corrected this formulation, revealing the truevalue Duncan's creativity - innovation, spiritual purification and the aesthetics of optimism through the harmonious development of personality. Therefore, her dance is in demand today, after a hundred years.

The amazing life of the "divine sandals", marked either by luxury or by poverty, was full of stormy passions and terrible tragedies. She was respected for her skill and talent. They envied her - for the love of the public, independence of behavior, protection of the strong. Her last love with the fair-haired Russian poet played a strange role in the fate of the dancer. This love, closeness to Yesenin's entourage and admiration for the revolution in Russia is remembered more often than the bright creative life of the great dancer Isadora Duncan.

First impressions

To an uncomplicated question from journalists, when she made the first steps, Isadora invariably answered: "In the womb. Probably under the influence of Aphrodite's food - oysters and champagne." The mother, abandoned by her husband, was in a state of constant irritation and depression. She cared little about the variety of the unborn baby's diet and strangely quenched her gastronomic addictions - she ate only oysters, drinking plenty of icy champagne. The child was born extremely mobile and playful. A year later, a favorite family fun appeared - a tiny girl in a vest was put on the center of the table, and she amazingly moved to any melody that was played or hummed to her. Years will fly by, and in the grown Isadora the rare gift of painting feelings with movements will grow stronger. She will never question the thought that is dear to her: the richness of human life depends on the depth of feelings. She trusted this postulate unconditionally, although she constantly became a victim of this "sensual" idea.When emotions, unable to remain at the peak of passion, weakened, the cloudless and happy time ended almost suddenly. A new page of the biography began. All of them, these pages of fate, are filled with an almost mystical ritual meaning.... The first vivid impression of life was a fire when two-year-old Isadora was thrown out of the window of a burning house into the hands of a policeman. The spontaneous movement of bright tongues of flame became a symbol of Duncan's fiery, irrepressible, unrestrained dance ...

The last dance

At the end of her career, one of Isadora's most popular dances was Scarf Dance. She loved to perform this phantasmagoric dance in the presence of Yesenin. The poet's excited fantasy painted a strange picture: "She is holding a scarf by the tail, and she herself is dancing. And it seems, not a scarf, but a bully in her hands ... The bully hugs her, and shakes her, and strangles her ... And then suddenly - once! - and the scarf is under her feet. She tore it off, trampled it - and the lid! There is no bully, a crumpled rag lying on the floor ... Her heart squeezes. As if I’m lying under her feet. As if it’s a cover for me. " Isadora often repeated the dance with the scarf for an encore. So it was at a concert in Nice on September 14, 1927. : On the same day, having effectively thrown the fatal scarf scarf around her neck, she freely stretched out on the car seat. Behind the wheel is a young Italian, the last hobby of fifty-year-old Isadora. Smiling, she said: "Goodbye friends, I'm on my way to fame!" These were her last words - her head jerked and hung like a broken puppet. The scarf hit the axle of the wheel of the speeding car and dug into the neck like a stranglehold.

"The dance is free and clean"

Those who have seen Isadora dancing at least once have never forgotten her. Subverter of foundations classical dance, she did not doubt that true dance should be born "from a spiritual need to express the inner experiences of a person." Dance and life were synonymous to her. Rejecting the classic dance education, she always exclaimed: "And how can you teach dancing?" In the American studio Stebbins, where Isadora took her first steps, they taught plastic interpretation of music, the art of open improvisation. A simple gymnastic complex served as a movement basis.

Duncan has created her own style, free from stereotypes and schools. Her dance expressed the "excitement of the soul" (Rodin). For her, beauty was important, simple and complex, like nature itself. Isadora's movements did not require the most severe, grueling preparation. Duncan's program included the technique of transformation into an image, the ability to make music a symbol for the movements of the soul, and to make expressive gestures picturesque. The artistic result is inherently improvisational; on stage it looks like an intuitive insight. By asserting that the world of feelings is the only important thing, she, of course, was cunning. For she was fond of philosophy, taught foreign languages, comprehended German in order to read Schopenhauer and Kant in the original. She drew inspiration for her dance from Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Dance of watercolor purity, impressionistic understatement. The bodily harmony of her movements reached the spiritual content of the music.At first, Duncan was inspired by antiquity - its harmony of forms, beauty of poses, respect for nature. Duncan's stage costume was, in fact, Greek too. She danced in light tunics, appearing on stage barefoot and almost naked: a transparent tunic did not hide the soft lines of her beautiful body. At a time when dancers were "wrapped" in matte silk leotards, this was an almost revolutionary step.Duncan's body was delicious. Once Archduke Ferdinand, seeing Duncan on the beach in her loose bathing suit - also a tunic made of transparent crepe de Chine with a deep cut and with bare legs (insolence at that time unheard of), whispered: "Oh, how good this Duncan! How wonderfully good!" Spring is not as good as it is ... ".The movements of her dance - a step, an easy run, low jumps, free batman with a leg lift no higher than 45 degrees, expressive poses and gestures, sometimes melodious, sometimes passionate, sometimes gentle, sometimes sharp - resembled drawings of ancient frescoes and vase paintings. Emotional freedom triumphed in the dance. The movements did not obey any rules. I dance as I feel. The dance needed neither a dramatic plot, nor costumes, nor sets. Only music, light, tunic and performer.Critics wrote enthusiastically about her: "Duncan dances naturally, simply, like she would dance in a meadow, and with all her dance he fights against the decaying forms of the old ballet." "These beautiful raised hands, imitating playing the flute, playing the strings, ... these hands splashing in the air, this long strong neck ... - I wanted to bow to all this with living classical worship!"Portraits and photographs cannot convey the divine melody of Isadora's movements. The most reliable "document" is the reviews: poets. For Isadora's dance is associative and metaphorical. "Isadora Duncan dances everything that other people say, sing, write, play and paint. Music is transformed in her and comes from her" (Maximilian Voloshin). “In her dance, the form finally overcomes the inertia of matter, and every movement of her body is the embodiment of a spiritual act” (Sergei Soloviev). ": She is about the unspeakable. There was dawn in her smile. The scent of a green meadow in her body movements. The folds from the tunic, like a murmur, beat in foamy streams when she gave herself up to a free and pure dance" (Andrey Bely). A portrait of Isadora was placed in the central place of Blok's study ...

"Dance and Love is my life"

Dance is the first and main passion of her life: Love is the second, worthy rival of dance in terms of the power of passion. She was called the courtesan of the twentieth century. She painfully anticipated love, anticipated it, patiently waited. From the youngest, crystal-clear girlish years. 1902 year. Budapest. One of the first concerts of Isadora. Early spring. The air is filled with fragrant aromas of blossoming flowers. Ovation after concerts, carefree people around, warm languor of awakened nature - "everything awakened the consciousness that my body is not only an instrument that expresses the sacred harmony of music." Young actor Oscar Berezhi felt this awakening passion of a young dancer. They escaped from the hotel into the world of her first passion.After going through this hobby, she will say that there is nothing higher than love and passion. And he will deliver a verdict - marriage is impossible, because it is an institution of "enslavement" of a woman. Only free love. She will change her conviction only once, registering her marriage with Yesenin in the Soviet registry office.After the Budapest novel that flashed like lightning, Isadora comprehended dance even more inspired, "reading" the music of Richard Wagner plastically. Another adventure is connected with Bayrett, the Wagner region, where she came at the invitation of the composer's widow. One night, looking out of the hotel window, she saw a short man under a tree. It was a German art historian - Heinrich Tode, passionately in love with a young dancer.Throwing on her coat, Isadora ran out into the street and brought Henry to her place. "Me: an unearthly gust enveloped me, as if I were floating on the clouds. Tode bent down to me, kissing my eyes and forehead. But these kisses were not kisses of earthly passion.: Neither this night, which he spent with me, nor in the following did not come to me with earthly lust. He conquered me with one radiant gaze, from which everything seemed to blur, and my spirit rushed to the mountain heights on light wings. But I did not want anything earthly. My feelings, which had been dormant for two years, now poured into spiritual ecstasy ". To combine bodily joy and spiritual passion - so Duncan dreamed of earthly love - she never had to. Each novel ended in pain: This turned out to be the end of the relationship with Todé.

First meeting with Russia

1904 year. Tour of Russia. Endless snowy plains, frosty air, long Russian feasts, the heat of the Russian bath: "Snow, Russian food, and especially caviar, cured me of the exhaustion caused by spiritual love to Toda, and my whole being craved communication with a strong personality that stood before me in Stanislavsky's face ". He is fascinated by the dance of Duncan, often comes to her backstage. He is amazed that "in different parts of the world, due to conditions unknown to us, different people are looking for the same natural principles of creativity in different spheres of art:" In a strange American woman, he sensed an artist of the same blood. The theater reformer, Konstantin Sergeevich turned out to be very conservative in the relationship of love. One evening, looking at his noble beautiful figure, broad shoulders, black, slightly silvery hair on the temples, Isadora wrapped her arms around his strong neck, pulled her head and kissed him on the lips. He gently returned the kiss to her, but his face was filled with utter amazement. Then she tried to draw him closer to her, he staggered back and shouted: "But what are we going to do with the child ?!" "What kind of child?" Isadora asked. "Ours, of course. What will we do with him? I will never agree to have my child raised on the side ...".The child was still too far away, and Isadora laughed loudly. Stanislavsky turned away in confusion and hastened to leave. "All night, waking up, I could not help laughing, but, laughing, I was beside myself with anger." The novel did not take place.And after Isadora's departure, the music of Chopin and Schumann sounded on the Russian ballet stage; the heroes of the ballets by Mikhail Fokine, Alexander Gorsky, and a little later - Kasyan Goleizovsky seemed to be leaving the frontal Greek bas-reliefs; ballerinas began to lighten their costumes, and sometimes even parted with steel pointe shoes ...

Motherhood

Isadora, Deirdre and Patrick, 1913

Another great reformer filmmaker became the father of her beautiful and long-awaited daughter. Gordon Craig was the master of theatrical thoughts. His experiments with theatrical space were inspired by the mythopoetics of Shakespeare's space, and the idea of \u200b\u200bthe "superplasticity" of an actor dissolving himself in the theater space was a paraphrase of Isadora's own thoughts. In 1904, after one of the Berlin performances, an angry man burst into Isadora's dressing room. "You are amazing!" He exclaimed. "Unusual! But you stole my ideas. And where did you get my set?" "What are you talking about ?! These are my own blue curtains! I invented them at the age of five and have been dancing against them ever since!" Isadora replied. "No! These are my decorations and my ideas. But you are the creature that I represented among them. You are the living embodiment of my dreams." This is how this romance began:"We were not two, we merged into one whole, into two halves of one soul." But after the first weeks of intoxication with passion, the clarification of family functions began. Craig wanted to see Isadora at home, peacefully leading the household and helping her husband in his work. Is it worth writing that it was impossible? The union, undermined by "creative quarrels", a little later and jealousy, fell apart pretty quickly.Isadora had a girl whose father invented a poetic Irish name - Deirdre. "Oh, women, why do we need to learn to be lawyers, painters and sculptors when there is such a miracle? Finally I learned this tremendous love that exceeds the love of a man ... I felt like a god, higher than any artist."

Paris was shocked by Isadora's tragedy and her courage. No one saw her tears.

At the end of the first decade of the new century, Duncan created a delightful miniature "Musical Moment", which enjoyed continued success. On her second tour in Russia, she invariably encased this dance at least six times, each dancing differently. "Musical moment" absorbed the happiness of motherhood and another light love affair. Isadora was overwhelmed by the desire to create a dance school in order to educate children in the spirit of Hellenistic beauty, and later - the pupils themselves would introduce many others to the beautiful. And life on earth will be transformed beyond recognition - that's what the idealist Isadora thought. She opened a school, but there were not enough funds to support it. "I have to find a millionaire! I have to keep the school." The desire came true - the dancer met Paris Eugene Singer, the son of a famous sewing machine manufacturer, one of the richest people in Europe.Singer offered to cover the costs of running Duncan's school so that she could safely create new dances. Singer presented magnificent gifts. Perhaps for the first time Isadora could not think about money. Receptions, masquerades, expensive dinners on wonderful travels. Son Patrick was the most expensive gift. She was again holding the baby in her arms. "Only instead of a white house shaking from the wind there was a luxurious palace, and instead of a gloomy restless North Sea - a blue Mediterranean one."At one of the costume balls in the studio of the Paris house, Singer was jealous of Isadora. A stormy showdown ended with his departure to Egypt and the refusal to build a theater for Isadora.

Tragedy

Another trip to Russia is fraught with a premonition of tragedy. She is haunted by mystical nightmares - in the outlines of the snowdrifts she sees the outlines of two coffins, at night she clearly hears Chopin's "Funeral March". She hysterically improvises to the sounds of this march on stage, without preparation or rehearsal. Believing her intuition, she falls into a deep depression. Returning to Paris, she left with her children for Versailles on vacation. Singer, returning from his travels, invited her with the children to lunch in the city. Fears leave Isadora - she is happy again. They are happy to meet, full of dreams of a bright future. Nearby children: three-year-old Patrick and six-year-old Deirdre - they look like angels. And life is approaching idyll. After lunch Singer went about his business, Deirdre, Patrick and the governess drove back to Versailles, and Isadora went to rehearsal in her atelier."Art, success, wealth, love and, most importantly, adorable children," Isadora thought to herself, smiling to herself, preparing for the rehearsal, and suddenly she heard an inhuman cry. She turned around. Singer stood in the doorway, swaying like a drunk. Falling on his knees in front of her, he groaned: "Children ... children ... are dead!" The car with the governess and children stalled. The driver went out to check the engine. Suddenly the car began to roll backwards towards the Seine. The driver rushed to the door, but could not open it, the handle got jammed, the car tilted and slid into the river. When the car was finally pulled out of the river, the passengers were dead.Could there be more grief than the death of children? Upon learning of the tragedy, Isadora did not cry; she fell into prostration. A state of feverish excitement did not leave her in the crematorium, when three coffins were burned before her eyes. She supported Singer, who fell ill immediately after the tragedy, interceded for the driver, who was detained by the police. "He is a father and I need to know that he is back in the family."Paris was shocked by Isadora's tragedy and her courage. No one saw her tears. "When I returned to my atelier, I firmly decided to end my life. How could I stay to live, having lost my children? And only the words of the young students surrounding me:" Isadora, live for us. Are we not your children? "Gave me back the desire to satisfy the sadness of these children, who wept over the loss of Deirdre and Patrick." Until the end of her life, she subconsciously believed that the students saved her, and the creation of schools, the upbringing of female students became almost an obsession.She tried not to talk to anyone about children. But their images haunted her constantly. Once she saw them in the waves of the sea, she rushed to meet them, but the children disappeared into the water spray. Frightened that she was going mad, Isadora fell to the ground and screamed loudly. And then someone touched her head. A young man bowed before her: "Can I help you with something?" - he asked. Desperate, Isadora replied: "Yes, save me. Give me a child." Their relationship was short-lived: the young Italian was engaged. She believed that new baby will be one of the lost children back in her arms.Hearing her son's cry, Isadora almost choked with happiness. She again holds her own child in her arms! This happiness was short-lived: a few hours later the boy died. "It seems to me that at that moment I experienced the greatest suffering that can be assigned to a person on earth, since in this death it was as if the death of the first two children was repeated, the old torments were repeated and new ones were added to them."

"... to the light source"

Duncan's true passion was not only dance, but also the desire to teach him people. Of course, children are the most receptive to the art of small creatures who have not yet gone far from nature, sincerely believing that running and jumping is much easier than just walking. The craving for dance pedagogy has been living in Duncan since childhood. In any case, a "thin and strange child" at the age of ten, she and her sister organized their own school, where "teachers" "taught what was called" secular dances. "Throughout her life, there will be a chain of studios brought to life by her "disgust" for the theater with its elves dressed in long tunics "of white and gold gauze with two tinsel wings." The desire to create her own school was unrestrained, but the end of her beginnings was always predetermined - a complete financial ruin. She opened schools in Germany, France, America and, as a rule, they did not exist for long."My ideas of the dance were to depict the feelings and emotions of a person," the goal of the lesson was to "lead the child's soul to the source of light." The super task is to educate a new harmonious person of the future by means of dance and music. How can this be achieved? "Teach your child to raise his hands to the sky so that in this movement he comprehends the infinity of the Universe, its harmony and perfection." Instill in the kid faith in the miracles of the surrounding endless movement and then tell him: "Since you are the most perfect in the kingdom of nature, then your movements should include all the beauty of nature, but beyond that, the beauty of your human mind and your understanding of the beautiful ...".In the fall of 1921, an announcement was placed in the "Workers' Moscow" about the opening of "Isadora Duncan's school for children of both sexes between the ages of 4 and 10". It was pointed out that "preference for admission is given to the children of workers." Children (initially there were more than a hundred) went to school every day for preliminary classes. Later their number was reduced to forty. This was the maximum that could be fed and warmed in the hungry and cold Moscow of the twenties. Duncan sent a telegram to her American impresario: "Can you organize my performances with the participation of my student Irma, twenty adorable Russian children and my husband, the famous Russian poet Sergei Yesenin." However, these first foreign tours of the Moscow studio did not take place due to the fact that the American authorities refused visas to students at the school, and subsequently deprived Duncan of his American citizenship "for Soviet propaganda" and loyalty to revolutionary ideas.After Duncan's departure, the school in an old mansion on Prechistenka was run by her adopted daughter and devoted student Irma Duncan and the studio's director-administrator Ilya Schneider.

Faizulina Svetlana

Isadora Duncan's work - a man of a bright performing individuality - was born of Duncan's harmony and system, closed in Duncan's genius, her intuitive insights and improvisational impulses. Her work did not lend itself to analytical "translation" into a complete methodology, into the foundation of the pedagogical system. Isadora herself contained the method, style and direction of the dance.

Download:

Preview:

Municipal state educational institution

Podovinnovskaya secondary school

Isadora Duncan's Stage Dance:

fashion revolution on stage

Art Exam Paper

Completed by: Faizulina Svetlana.

Checked by: Yumadilova Nadezhda Vladimirovna.

C. Podovinnoe

year 2013

1. Introduction
2. Main part

1. Ballet as an art form

2. The life and work of Isadora Duncan

A) childhood and adolescence

B) the first meeting with Russia

C) the last dance

D) Isadora's dance - "excitement of the soul".

3 . Isadora. A fashionable revolution on the stage.

1. Conclusion
2. Literature.
3. Applications

Introduction

Ballet ( frballet, from italballo - dancing) -

This is a kind of stagearts; a performance, the content of which is embodied in musical and choreographic images. Most often, ballet is based on a certain plot,dramatic plan, libretto, but there are also plotless ballets. The main types of dance in ballet areclassical dance and a characteristic dance. An important role is played herepantomime, with the help of which the actors convey the feelings of the characters, their "conversation" among themselves, the essence of what is happening. Elements of gymnastics and acrobatics are also widely used in modern ballet.Isadora Duncan is one of the most talented ballerinas of her time. She is graceful and inimitable in dance. I admire her. The ballerina has created her own style. I study choreography at the School of Art. I love dancing, but would like to know more about the people of art and therefore the themes of my work Isadora Duncan's Stage Dance: A Fashion Revolution on the Stage.

PURPOSE: to consider ballet as a unique - plastic art form

TASKS:

1. Get to know the history of Russian ballet
2. Get to know the life and work of Isadora Duncan
3. Create a computer presentation on the studied issue, as an aid for students in grades 8-9

Ballet as an art form

Ballet is a dance scene, an episode in a musical performance, an opera united by a single action or mood. Bloomscourtier ballet as a magnificent solemn spectacle. The beginning of the ballet era in France and around the world should be considered15 october1581... The first ballet was called The Queen's Comedy Ballet (or Circe), staged by an ItalianBaltazarini... The musical basis of the first ballets was made up of folk and court dances, which were included inold suite. In the second half17th century new theatrical genres such ascomedy - ballet, opera- ballet, in which a significant place is given to ballet music, and attempts are made todramatize... But ballet becomes an independent form of stage art only in the second half.XVIII century thanks to the reforms carried out by the French ballet masterJean Georges Nover... Based on the aesthetics of the French enlighteners, he created performances in which the content is revealed in dramatically expressive images.

In its evolution, ballet is increasingly approachingsportslosing along the waydramatic the meaning of the role is sometimes ahead in technology, but lagging behind in content.

IN integrated learning professional artist knowledge neededmusical culture, history, literature andscenariodramaturgy... At the same time, from the age of seven, children passgymnastic preparation, because the ballets of the past, which have survived to this day, have been technically improved, and modern ballet on a classical basis, for example balletForesight, requires serious physical training, soballerinaSylvia Guillem she began her career with gymnastics.

Ancient ballets had a sublime aesthetics, sometimes they were staged onantique plots, such as stagingCharles Didlot « Marshmallow and Flora».

IN XVIII - XIX centuries the artist could be at the same timeactor and a dancer, since no special development of physical capabilities was required.

In the end 19th century and at the beginning XX century, the theater schools were divided. The repertoire of many theaters simultaneously includeddramasballet divertissement branches and operettas... So for example, in addition to performances inBig, Kasyan Yaroslavich Goleizovsky staged balletperformances in " Bat"And in" Mamontovsky Theater of Miniatures", Among which was the production of" Les Tableaux vivants ", meaning" come to life picture ", since Goleizovsky was primarilyartist... This phenomenon develops in modern ballet as a "revived painting", "revived photography" and "revived sculpture". Toputyou first need to seedraw and blind.

"Musically revived" paintings were born from a series of "foreign" drawingsVictor Hartmannseen in 1874 year at the exhibition Modest Mussorgsky, which in memory of a friend wrote forpiano famous suite - a series of musical pictures - "Pictures at an Exhibition"Published in 1886 year, as amended N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov and many times orchestrated.

The famous ballet number "Baba Yaga", stagedLeonid Yakobson to the orchestrated musical number of M.P. Mussorgsky, has become an integral aesthetic nuance of allconcert programs.

Pictures at an Exhibition "Dancing Come to Life" and1963 yearwhen F.V. Lopukhov put ballet on stagestanislavsky Theater... In this way, painting came to life first musicallythen plastically.

Ballet is a complex plastic art form, it develops thanks to a person, a person with natural unique choreographic data. Isidora Duncan is one of the brightest examples of creative ballet personalities. I will dwell on her life and work.

The amazing life of the "divine sandals", marked either by luxury or by poverty, was full of violent passions and terrible tragedies.
She was respected for her skill and talent. They envied her - for the love of the public, independence of behavior, protection of the strong. Her last love with the fair-haired Russian poet played a strange role in the fate of the dancer. This love, closeness to Yesenin's entourage and admiration for the revolution in Russia is remembered more often than the bright creative life of the great dancer Isadora Duncan.Her real name is Dora Angela Duncan.

When she made the first steps to a simple question from journalists, Isadora invariably answered: "In the womb. Probably under the influence of Aphrodite's food - oysters and champagne." The mother, abandoned by her husband, was in a state of constant irritation and depression. She cared little about the variety of the unborn baby's diet and strangely satisfied her gastronomic addictions - she ate only oysters, drinking them abundantly with ice-cold champagne. The child was born extremely mobile and playful. A year later, a favorite family fun appeared - a tiny girl in a vest was put on the center of the table, and she amazingly moved to any melody that was played or hummed to her.

Years will fly by, and in the grown Isadora the rare gift of painting feelings with movements will grow stronger. She will never question the thought that is dear to her: the richness of human life depends on the depth of feelings. She trusted this postulate unconditionally, although she constantly became a victim of this "sensual" idea.

When emotions, unable to remain at the peak of passion, weakened, the cloudless and happy time ended almost suddenly. A new page of biography began

... The first vivid impression of life was a fire when two-year-old Isadora was thrown out of the window of a burning house into the hands of a policeman. The spontaneous movement of bright tongues of flame became a symbol of Duncan's fiery, irrepressible, unrestrained dance ...

1904 year. The first tour of Russia. Endless snowy plains, frosty air, long Russian feasts, the heat of the Russian bath ... "Snow, Russian food, and especially caviar, cured me from the exhaustion caused by spiritual love to Toda, and my whole being craved communication with a strong personality that stood in front of me in Stanislavsky's face ". He is fascinated by the dance of Duncan, often comes to her backstage. He is amazed that "in different parts of the world, due to conditions unknown to us, different people are looking for the same natural principles of creativity in different areas of art ...". In a strange American woman, he sensed an artist of the same blood. After Isadora's departure, the music of Chopin and Schumann sounded on the Russian ballet stage; the heroes of the ballets by Mikhail Fokine, Alexander Gorsky, and a little later - Kasyan Goleizovsky seemed to be leaving the frontal Greek bas-reliefs; ballerinas began to lighten their costumes, and sometimes even parted with steel pointe shoes ...

At the end of the first decade of the new century, Duncan created a delightful miniature "Musical Moment", which enjoyed continued success. On her second tour in Russia, she invariably encased this dance at least six times, each dancing differently.

Isadora was overwhelmed with a desire to create a dance school in order to educate children in the spirit of Hellenistic beauty, and later - the pupils themselves would introduce many others to the beautiful. And life on earth will be transformed beyond recognition - that's what the idealist Isadora thought. She opened a school, but there were not enough funds to support it. "I have to find a millionaire! I have to keep the school." The desire came true - the dancer met Paris Eugene Singer, the son of a famous sewing machine manufacturer, one of the richest people in Europe.

Singer offered to cover the costs of running Duncan's school so that she could safely create new dances. Singer presented magnificent gifts. Perhaps for the first time Isadora could not think about money. Receptions, masquerades, expensive dinners on wonderful travels. Son Patrick was the most expensive gift. She was again holding the baby in her arms. "Only instead of a white house shaking from the wind there was a luxurious palace, and instead of a gloomy restless North Sea - a blue Mediterranean one."

At one of the costume balls in the studio of the Paris house, Singer was jealous of Isadora. A stormy showdown ended with his departure to Egypt and the refusal to build a theater for Isadora.

At the end of her career, one of Isadora's most popular dances was the Scarf Dance. She loved to perform this phantasmagoric dance in the presence of Yesenin. The poet's excited fantasy painted a strange picture: "She is holding a scarf by the tail, and she herself is dancing. And it seems, not a scarf, but a bully in her hands ... The bully hugs her, and shakes her, and strangles her ... And then suddenly - once! - and the scarf is under her feet. She tore it off, trampled it - and the lid! There is no bully, a crumpled rag is lying on the floor ... My heart squeezes. As if I was lying under her feet. ... she moved amazingly to whatever melody was played or hummed to her. Isadora often repeated the dance with the scarf for an encore. So it was at a concert in Nice on September 14, 1927. ... On the same day, effectively throwing the fatal scarf scarf around her neck, she freely stretched out on the car seat. Behind the wheel is a young Italian, the last hobby of fifty-year-old Isadora. Smiling, she said: "Goodbye friends, I'm on my way to glory!" These were her last words - her head jerked and hung like a broken puppet. The scarf hit the axle of the wheel of the speeding car and dug into the neck like a stranglehold.

Those who have seen Isadora dancing at least once have never forgotten her. A subverter of the foundations of classical dance, she did not doubt that true dance should be born "from the spiritual need to express the inner experiences of a person." Dance and life were synonymous to her. Refusing classical dance education, she always exclaimed: "And how can you teach dancing?" In the American studio Stebbins, where Isadora took her first steps, they taught plastic interpretation of music, the art of open improvisation. An uncomplicated gymnastic complex served as a movement basis.

Duncan has created her own style, free from stereotypes and schools. Her dance expressed the "excitement of the soul" (Rodin). For her, beauty was important, simple and complex, like nature itself. Isadora's movements did not require the most severe, grueling preparation. Duncan's program included the technique of transformation into an image, the ability to make music a symbol for the movements of the soul, and to make expressive gestures picturesque. The artistic result is improvisational in nature; on stage it looks like an intuitive insight.

By asserting that the world of feelings is the only important thing, she, of course, was cunning. For she herself was fond of philosophy, studied foreign languages, comprehended German in order to read Schopenhauer and Kant in the original. She drew inspiration for her dance from Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Dance of watercolor purity, impressionistic understatement. The bodily harmony of her movements reached the spiritual content of the music.

At first, Duncan was inspired by antiquity - its harmony of forms, beauty of poses, respect for nature. Duncan's stage costume was, in fact, Greek too. She danced in light tunics, appearing on stage barefoot and almost naked: a transparent tunic did not hide the soft lines of her beautiful body. At a time when dancers were "wrapped" in matte silk leotards, this was an almost revolutionary step.

Duncan's body was delicious. Once Archduke Ferdinand, seeing Duncan on the shore in her loose bathing suit - also a tunic made of transparent crepe de Chine with a deep cut and with bare legs (insolence at that time unheard of), whispered: "Oh, how good this Duncan is! How wonderfully good!" Spring is not as good as it is ... ".

The movements of her dance - a step, an easy run, low jumps, free batman with a leg lift no higher than 45 degrees, expressive poses and gestures, sometimes melodious, sometimes passionate, sometimes gentle, sometimes sharp - resembled drawings of ancient frescoes and vase paintings. Emotional freedom triumphed in the dance. The movements did not obey any rules. I dance as I feel. The dance needed neither a dramatic plot, nor costumes, nor sets. Only music, light, tunic and performer.

Critics wrote enthusiastically about her: "Duncan dances naturally, simply, like she would dance in a meadow, and with all her dance he fights against the decaying forms of the old ballet." "These beautiful raised hands, imitating playing the flute, playing the strings, ... these hands splashing in the air, this long strong neck ... - I wanted to bow to all this with living classical worship!"

Portraits and photographs cannot convey the divine melody of Isadora's movements. The most reliable "document" is the reviews of ... poets. For Isadora's dance is associative and metaphorical. "Isadora Duncan dances everything that other people say, sing, write, play and paint. Music is transformed in her and comes from her" (Maximilian Voloshin). "In her dance, the form finally overcomes the inertness of matter, and every movement of her body is the embodiment of a spiritual act" (Sergei Soloviev). "... She - about not said. In her smile was the dawn. In the movements of the body - the scent of a green meadow. The folds from the tunic, like a murmur, beat in foamy streams when she gave herself up to a free and pure dance" (Andrey Bely). A portrait of Isadora was placed in the central place of Blok's study ...

Dance is the first and main passion of her life ... Love is the second, worthy rival of dance in terms of the power of passion. She was called the courtesan of the twentieth century. She painfully anticipated love, anticipated it, patiently waited. From the youngest, crystal-clear girlish years.

She danced in light tunics, appearing on stage barefoot and almost naked: a transparent tunic did not hide the soft lines of her beautiful body.
In my work, I want to focus on one of the most beautiful love stories. This is the love story of Isadora Duncan and Sergei Yesenin.

Everyone tried to dissuade her from going to Soviet Russia. Red Russia inspired terror and fear. She dreamed of visiting the world of the proletarian state. "I am convinced that the greatest miracle in the history of mankind is taking place in Russia, which has only taken place over the past two millennia ..."
What prompted the famous star, whose art was admired by outstanding artists, painters, musicians, to leave for hungry Russia? The main goal was to create a school in Moscow, where she tried to solve new problems, which she formulated as follows: "I want the working class for all the hardships that it has borne for years, would receive the highest award, seeing their children cheerful and beautiful."

She is 44 years old - the "divine sandal" looks almost older than her years. But the Moscow public is still loyal to her. Now she is doubly an innovator: she fights not only against the canonized forms of ballet academism, but also conveys the revolutionary spirit of the era. She dances heavily, heavily and languidly, but the applause does not stop, and Lenin himself greets her from the tsarist box.

Duncan lived in Soviet Russia for three years. The Isadora Duncan Moscow Studio has outlived its legendary founder for more than twenty years. The studio's first performance took place in 1921 on the stage of the Bolshoi Theater. Duncan's "revolutionary dances" repertoire consisted of "The Marseillaise", "Internationale". Particularly successful were the compositions "Slavic March" and "Varshavyanka", in which "the banner of the revolution was picked up from the hands of the fallen fighters by new and new fighters" ...

In Moscow, Isadora is experiencing a dramatic romance with Sergei Yesenin. Their first meetings are described in many memoirs. The evidence is different. Some portray the sublime romance of a sudden outbreak of feeling, others - passion in a drunken stupor. It is unlikely that the authors deserve reproaches for bad faith, rather there were several meetings. And they were just as stormy and contradictory as the short life of an American dancer and a Russian poet together. Seeing Isadora's dance at the concert, Yesenin dreamed of meeting. Their acquaintance took place at a literary evening with the artist of the Chamber Theater Yakulov: "... She arrived in a red silk tunic and, entering the hall, looked around the audience with a tired look. In the corner, on a low sofa, she saw the curly head of a blond young man of striking beauty, looking at her strange, shining yellowish eyes. ... After a while she was lying on the sofa, and Yesenin was sitting at her feet. Isadora stroked his curls and whispered tenderly and admiringly. " So their love began. In 1922, Duncan married a golden-haired elf, the age of her son, and took Soviet citizenship.

At times Yesenin loved her almost maniacally, not leaving her alone for a minute. A caring and gentle lover, he caught her every look. But suddenly he was torn apart by fits of rage. He scolded Isadora last words, beat, hid from her. I came back again. Isadora forgave him everything, admired his talent, youth, beauty. She took care of him like a son. One of Isadora's biographers wrote: "She was a mother in all manifestations of love. Until the end, she could not be either a wife or a lover. ... She gave herself, not discriminating - like a mother, not discriminating, gives everything to children."

Europe, America, Europe again ... In America, Yesenin was terribly tormented that he was perceived as the last love, as an autumn whim of a genius dancer, and not as a poet. Everything comes to an end. The end of their dramatic relationship also came. Isadora was tired of Yesenin, besides, each time he behaved more and more dirty and cynical. In November 1923, upon returning to Russia, after another scandal, they finally parted.

Learning in Paris in 1925 about Yesenin's suicide at the Angleterre Hotel, in the same room where they lived during their first trip together, Isadora confessed: “I was shocked by Sergei's death, but I cried and suffered so much because of him that, it seems to me, he has exhausted all human possibilities for suffering. " FROM

A year later, in order to pay off the artist's debts, her dear house and atelier in Nuilly were put up for sale. The day before the auction, Isadora received a notice from the Moscow court that, as Yesenin's official widow, she inherited royalties for all of his poems. Isadora refuses the inheritance in favor of the poet's mother and sisters. The next day the property in Nuilly was sold. Had Isadora agreed to receive the Yesenin inheritance, the house could have been redeemed.

Duncan's true passion was not only dance, but also the desire to teach him people. Of course, children are the most receptive to the art of small creatures who have not yet gone far from nature, sincerely believing that running and jumping is much easier than just walking.
The craving for dance pedagogy has been living in Duncan since childhood. Anyway, a "thin and strange child" at the age of ten, she and her sister organized their own school, where the "teachers" "taught what was called" secular dances. "Secular dances are dances that were taught

Throughout her life, there will be a chain of studios brought to life by her "aversion" to the theater with its elves, dressed in long tunics "of white and gold gauze with two tinsel wings." The desire to create her own school was unrestrained, but the end of her beginnings was always predetermined - a complete financial collapse. She opened schools in Germany, France, America and, as a rule, they did not exist for long.

"My ideas of the dance were to depict the feelings and emotions of a person," the goal of the lesson was to "lead the child's soul to the source of light." The super task is to educate a new harmonious person, the future by means of dance and music. How can this be achieved? "Teach your child to raise his hands to the sky so that in this movement he comprehends the infinity of the Universe, its harmony and perfection." Instill in the kid faith in the miracles of the surrounding endless movement and then tell him: "Since you are the most perfect in the kingdom of nature, then your movements should include all the beauty of nature, but beyond that, the beauty of your human mind, and your understanding of the beautiful ...".

In the fall of 1921, an announcement was placed in the "Workers' Moscow" about the opening of "Isadora Duncan's school for children of both sexes between the ages of 4 and 10". It was pointed out that "preference for admission is given to the children of workers." Children (initially there were more than a hundred) went to school every day for preliminary classes. Later their number was reduced to forty. This was the maximum that could be fed and warmed in the hungry and cold Moscow of the twenties. Duncan sent a telegram to her American impresario: "Can you organize my performances with the participation of my student Irma, twenty adorable Russian children and my husband, the famous Russian poet Sergei Yesenin." However, these first foreign tours of the Moscow studio did not take place due to the fact that the American authorities refused visas to students at the school, and subsequently deprived Duncan of his American citizenship "for Soviet propaganda" and loyalty to revolutionary ideas.

After Duncan's departure, the school in an old mansion on Prechistenka was run by her adopted daughter and devoted student Irma Duncan and the studio's director-administrator Ilya Schneider.

There were many imitators of Duncan's free plasticity. Under the influence of the triumphal performances of the dancer herself and the pupils of her school in Moscow and St. Petersburg, rhythmoplastic studios multiplied like mushrooms after rain. The most famous of them were Heptakhor in the northern capital, which existed until the early 30s, and the Moscow Plastics Classes studio under the direction of E. Rabenek (later the studio was headed by Lyudmila Alekseeva) in the Moscow House of Scientists, which still lives today. All studios were different, sometimes not like Duncan's. But they all took over the main goal - to teach children the beauty of free movement, born of music. Their organizers were eager to experiment and find new forms.

Conclusion.

Duncan failed to create a direction, a methodological basis for teaching. The creativity of Isadora herself - a man of a bright performing individuality - was born of Duncan's harmony and a system closed in Duncan's genius, her intuitive insights and improvisational impulses. Her work did not lend itself to analytical "translation" into a complete methodology, into the foundation of the pedagogical system. Isadora herself contained the method, style and direction of the dance.

Today, Isadora Duncan is dedicated to performances and concert miniatures, exhibitions and festivals. Her performing style is "visible" in all directions of modern dance. Her approach to creativity excites the imagination of heads of plastic and movement studios. The memory of her gives birth to new books and films. Great actresses, including Vanessa Redgrave and Maya Plisetskaya, are trying to unravel the mystery of her fate.

... Isadora rests in the largest Parisian cemetery, Père Lachaise - great woman world, the first star of the rising dance era of the twentieth century, whose rebellious spirit is still alive today ...

The element of dance, the element of love and just the natural elements conspired to determine the life of this woman! The element of water told her the nature of the dance, and the fire, which destroyed her wardrobe, forced Duncan to go out to the audience for the first time, wrapped in a piece of light fabric. "She is dancing naked!" - the ill-wishers were indignant. And few of those sitting in the hall guessed that this Bacchante, one of her looks that shook the foundations of Puritan morality, was, in fact, ... a naive girl who still had no idea what this "earthly love" was.

While working on the essay, I learned about the life and work of Isadora Duncan. Her human qualities, kindness, purposefulness, curiosity, merging with creative activity and dance flexibility, gave rise to virtuoso dance wonders on the stage. Love is the quality that is developed in it to the highest degree. Love for dance did not prevent her from showing love for her neighbors and relatives. In the course of my work, I created a computer presentation that can be used as a guide not only in a comprehensive school, but also in the School of Arts. I coped with the set goals and tasks.

Isadora Duncan (1877-1927) - the famous American dancer-innovator, was the founder of free dance. She owned the development of a whole system and plastics associated with ancient Greek dances. Duncan has been repeatedly voted the greatest dancer in the world in polls.

Isadora is also known for being the wife of the great Russian poet Sergei Yesenin.

Childhood

Isadora was born on May 27, 1877. It happened in the US state of California, in the city of San Francisco on Geary Street. Her real name is Dora Angela Duncan.

Her father, Joseph Charles Duncan, turned a major banking scam, then took all the money and fled, leaving his pregnant wife with three children without a livelihood.

The mother of the future dancer, Mary Dora Gray Duncan, experienced this tragedy in her own way, she could not eat anything except oysters, which she washed down with cold champagne. Subsequently, when journalists asked Isadora the question at what age she first started dancing, the woman jokingly replied that, probably, still in the womb, champagne and oysters made themselves felt so.

The girl's childhood cannot be called happy. The mother barely pulled her now four children on her shoulders and for a long time fought off the investors who had been deceived by their father, who now and then held meetings under their windows.

We must pay tribute to Isadora's mother, the woman was not broken by such troubles and troubles. She promised herself that she would bring up her children, provide everything necessary and grow good people out of them. My mother was a musician by profession, and in order to support her family, she had to work very hard, giving private lessons. Because of this, she simply physically could not pay due attention to her children, especially the smallest Dora.

In order not to leave the baby at home alone for a long time, she was sent to school at the age of five, while hiding the real age of the girl. Forever in the heart and in the memory of Isadora were those unpleasant memories and sensations from childhood, when she felt uncomfortable and lonely among her older, prosperous classmates.

But there were girls in childhood and good moments, albeit rare. Selfless mother in the evenings belonged only to her children, she played them the works of Beethoven and other great composers, read William Shakespeare, with early years instilling a love of art. Children, like chickens around a chicken, united around their mother, forming a strong and close-knit clan of Duncan, which was ready to challenge the whole world if necessary.

Passion for dance

We can say that already at the age of six, Dora opened her first dance school. It was later that she created them all over the world, and then the little girl, together with her sister, simply taught the neighboring children to dance, move beautifully and plasticly. And by the age of ten, Duncan was already earning her first money dancing. She not only taught younger children, but also came up with new beautiful movements. These were her first steps in creating her own signature style in dancing.

Very early on, Isadora got interested in representatives of the opposite sex. No, she was not at all a licentious nymphet, just from a young age she was distinguished by her love. For the first time, she took a fancy to a young man, Vernon, who worked in a pharmacy warehouse. Dora was only eleven years old at that time, but she so persistently sought attention to herself that Vernon had to lie, allegedly he was engaged. And only when the young man assured Isadora that he would soon marry, she left him behind. The girl was still very young, falling in love turned out to be childishly naive, but even then it became clear that a persistent and eccentric person would grow out of her.

School program was difficult for Dora. And not because she did not understand something, on the contrary, Duncan was very capable. It's just that schoolwork made Isadora terribly bored. The girl ran away from lessons many times and wandered along the seashore, listening to the music of the surf and coming up with light air dance movements to the sound of the wave.

Isadora was thirteen years old when she dropped out of school, declaring that she did not see any point in learning, considered it a useless occupation, and in life she could achieve a lot even without school education. She began to pay serious attention to music and dancing. At first, the girl was engaged in self-education. But soon she was lucky and without anyone's patronage and recommendations, without cronyism and money: she got to the famous American dancer and actress Loie Fuller, who was the founder of modern dance.

Fuller took Isadora to her as a student, but soon young Duncan began performing with her mentor. This went on for several years, and by the age of eighteen the talented student went to conquer Chicago.

She showed her dance numbers in nightclubs, where she was presented to the public as an exotic curiosity, since Isadora performed barefoot and in a short ancient Greek tunic. The audience was shocked by the manner of Duncan's performance, she danced so sensually and tenderly that it was impossible to take your eyes off her movements and get up from the chairs after the dance was over. Such a dress length in those days was inconceivable even for progressive America, nevertheless, no one ever called Isadora's dances vulgar, they were so light, graceful and free.

Isadora's performances were successful, which allowed her to improve her financial condition and go to conquer Europe.

In 1903, she came with the entire Duncan family to Greece. Already in 1904, Isadora's deafening performances took place in Berlin, Munich, Vienna. She quickly became famous in Europe.

In 1904, Isadora took her first tour in St. Petersburg. Then she came to Russia more than once, where there were many admirers of her talent.
Despite this success, Duncan was not a rich woman, she spent all the money she earned on opening new dance schools. There were times when she had no money at all, then friends helped Isadora.

Personal life

After a chemist's warehouse clerk Vernon, with whom Isadora fell in love at the age of eleven, for six years she was exclusively engaged in dancing, work and career. Her early years passed without love affairs.

And starting at the age of 17, Duncan experienced all the feelings that are subject to a woman on Earth - love, disappointment, happiness, grief, pain, tragedy. She, a principled opponent of marriage, had a too stormy personal life. Various men became her lovers: old and young, married and single, rich and poor, beautiful and talented, or none at all.

When she performed in Chicago nightclubs, a Polish emigrant artist Ivan Mirotsky fell in love with Isadora to unconsciousness. He was not a handsome man, he wore a beard, and his head of hair was a bright red color. Nevertheless, Duncan felt sympathy for him, even though the man was almost thirty years older. Their romance with walks in the woods, kisses, courtship lasted a year and a half. The matter began to move towards the wedding, and its date had already been set, when Isadora's brother found out that Mirotsky was married, his wife lived in Europe. Duncan painfully experienced this breakup, it became for her the first serious tragedy in her life. To forget about everything, she decided to leave America.

Then the loser actor Oscar Berezhi appeared in her life. She was 25 years old, Oscar became Isadora's first man, despite the fact that she constantly moved in bohemian circles. The wedding did not work out again, since Berezhi was offered a lucrative contract, and he preferred Isadora a career, leaving for Spain.

Four years later, Duncan met the theater director Gordon Craig. Isadora gave birth to a daughter from him, but soon Craig left them and married his old friend.

The heir to the famous dynasty that invented sewing machines, Paris Eugene Singer is the next man in Duncan's life. He really wanted to get to know the dancer and one day after the performance he came to Isadora in the dressing room. She did not marry Singer, although she gave birth to a son from him.

Tragedy with children

She had a unique gift: Duncan had a presentiment when death walked nearby. In her life, it happened more than once that nature itself sent her some kind of sign, and soon after that one of Isadora's relatives, friends or acquaintances died.

Therefore, when in 1913 terrible visions began to torment her, the woman lost her peace. She constantly heard funeral marches and saw little coffins. She went crazy, worried about her children. Duncan tried to make the babies' lives completely safe. With their common-law husband and children, they moved to a quiet, cozy place of Versailles.

Once Isadora was with the children in Paris, she had urgent business there, and she sent the kids with a chauffeur and a governess home to Versailles. On the way, the car stalled, the driver got out to find out the reason. At that moment, the car drove off and fell into the Seine river, the children could not be saved.

Isadora's depression was terrible, nevertheless, she found the strength to speak out in defense of the chauffeur, realizing that he also had small children.

She was like a stone, did not cry and never spoke to anyone about this tragedy. But one day, while walking by the river, I saw the ghost of my little children, they were holding hands. The woman screamed and became hysterical. A young man who was passing by rushed to her aid. Isadora looked into his eyes and whispered: "Save ... Give me a child!" From this fleeting relationship, she gave birth to a baby, but he lived only a few days.

Duncan and Yesenin

In 1921, the greatest love came into her life. She met the Russian poet Sergei Yesenin.

A stormy romance began immediately on the day they met. She fell in love with him because Sergei reminded her of a little blond son with blue eyes. The difference of eighteen years did not prevent them from becoming spouses in 1922, in Duncan's life this was the first and only marriage.

Yesenin loved Isadora madly and admired her, they traveled around Europe and America, were happy, but not for long. He didn't know at all in English, and Isadora is Russian. But not only these difficulties in linguistic communication broke their idyll. Yesenin was depressed that everyone abroad perceived him only as the husband of the great Isadora Duncan. The passion passed, and an eternal love union did not work. Sergei returned to Russia two years after the wedding, and Isadora continued to love him.

He died in 1925, in the life of Duncan did not become another blonde, blue-eyed, most beloved.

Death

One close friend said about Isadora that for her to move quickly was as necessary as breathing. Duncan has been running like mad all her life, stopping only to eat and drink. She had all the prerequisites to crash in a car at least twenty times.

Cars became an obsession in Isadora's life and played a mystical role. Her children died in a car accident, the dancer herself was crashed more than once, cutting across Russia in cars. During the European trip with Yesenin, they changed four cars, because Duncan simply terrorized the drivers, demanding to go as quickly as possible, and several times her demands ended in failure.

It was as if she had been playing with cars all her life: who wins? The cars brought her pain, disappointment and tragedy, and she again sat down and rushed. On September 14, 1927, the final came to Nice, Duncan lost. She had a date with another lover Benoit Falchetto. Isadora sat in the passenger seat of his two-seater sports car and did not notice how the edge of the long shawl was left overboard and caught on the rear wheel. Benoit turned on the gas, the car moved, the shawl pulled like a string, and in an instant broke Isadora's neck. At 9.30 pm at the Saint-Roche clinic, doctors recorded the death of the great dancer.

Many poetry lovers associate her name exclusively with Sergei Yesenin, believing that she was only a companion and inspirer of the great Russian poet. The Western world sees the situation from a different angle, perceiving Yesenin as the husband of a famous dancer, a real revolutionary from art.

Contemporaries gossiped about their stormy romance, loud quarrels and reconciliations, and biographers continue to savor the details to this day. But we must not forget that it was not only passions and intoxicating attraction - it was a union of two strong creative personalities, gifted and selfless.

Today, the biography of Isadora Duncan is interesting not only for professional dancers and researchers of Sergei Yesenin's creativity. For many, she has become a symbol of the freedom and independence of women, and to some extent even a symbol of feminism and emancipation.

Our article will tell you about the difficult fate of Isadora Duncan, biography, personal life, creativity and the role she played in the art of dance.

Dora's childhood

Dora Angela Duncan was born in San Francisco to a wealthy family on May 26, 1877. She was the fourth child of her parents. Her father Joseph Charles was a banker and mining engineer, famous as a connoisseur and connoisseur of art. But soon after Dora was born, the family went bankrupt and lived in real need for some time.

When Dora was not even a year old, her parents divorced. The mother, along with four children, moved to Auckland and for some time earned her bread by sewing and playing the piano.

Dance of the senses

Since childhood, not only Isadora, but also her brother and sisters, have been passionate about dancing. But unlike other children, little Dora always tried to find her way. She danced what she felt.

She had to quit her studies at the dance club quite early, since there was simply not enough money to pay. But Isadora did not give up dancing, on the contrary, she began to teach this art to others. It was with these lessons that she earned her first money.

At 18, the girl moved to Chicago, where her dream of a big stage led her. But the city did not accept her: the tests ended in refusal. Failure did not stop Isadora at all, she did not begin to doubt herself, but only realized that the world was not quite ready for her work.

The next attempt was New York. This time the girl was lucky, and she got a job at the John Daley Theater, famous at that time.

For a while, Isadora took ballet lessons from the famous Marie Bonfanti, but soon realized that this was not what she wanted. She became disillusioned not only with ballet, but also with America, which, in her opinion, could not appreciate her talent.

Isadora in Europe

In 1898, the dancer came to London. This decision brought good results: Isadora began to receive invitations to speak, her income increased significantly.

In the biography of Isadora Duncan interesting factrelated to money deserves special attention. She did not know how to save up and always spent the lion's share of her earnings on opening another school, renting a studio, and financing a tour. The business that gave her income was also the main source of spending. So this time, she first of all rented a dance studio, as soon as the level of income began to allow it.

In 1902, she went to Paris, where her fateful acquaintance with Loie Fuller, the founder of the modern dance genre, happened. The girls had similar views on art, which made them akin. They both believed that dance should not be a strict system of movements (like ballet), but a natural expression of feelings and thoughts. Soon after they met, the girls went on a tour of Europe.

Then there were other tours and tours. Isadora was finally recognized, she was expected and admired in Europe and her native America.

In 1912, couturier Paul Poiret invited Isadora to perform at a private party, the leitmotif of which was the Versailles "bacchanalia" of Louis XIV. Poiret personally made an outfit for the guest. She, barefoot and dressed only in a Greek tunic, danced on the tables among the guests. The performance created a real sensation, and the image remained with Isadora for many years: she had already appeared on stage barefoot, but she could not find the perfect outfit. They became a light tunic that does not hinder movements and allows you to admire the magnificent plastic.

In 1915, another amazing story happened. Isadora Duncan's brief biographies do not always pay attention to this event, but it was truly fateful. Due to debts, she was unable to leave the UK in time and sail to the United States on the magnificent liner Lusitania. The litigation with creditors dragged on, as a result Isadora had to hastily change tickets. The Lusitania sank off the coast of Ireland, torpedoed by a German submarine. This disaster claimed 1198 lives.

Isadora had a chance to dance in the USSR, and in many European countries, and at home in the United States. But she herself was not delighted with such activities, considering her real mission not to amuse the public, but to teach.

Dance schools

Isadora's first school began operating in 1904 in Germany, and soon another appeared, this time in Paris. The First World War made its own adjustments: the school in France was soon closed.

On the personal front

When considering the biography of Isadora Duncan's personal life, a separate chapter is usually highlighted.

She did not seek to advertise the details, but she did not make a special secret of them either, so some information differs.

Isadora is known to be an atheist and anti-stereotype. She was not married to any of the fathers of her children, considering the paperwork useless. She was not interested in the opinion of society, and she was not afraid of the condemnation of becoming a mother out of wedlock.

There is evidence that the dancer is bisexual, but not all sources confirm it. However, Isadora's letters to Mercedes de Costa, to whom she wrote about tender feelings and willingness to go to the ends of the world for love, have survived. Mercedes responded in the same gentle and soulful way.

About a romantic union with Lina Poletti, information is even more scarce. It is known that the women met on the island of Corfu and became very friends, but it seems that information about love story greatly exaggerated.

Mother's tragedy

Considering short biography Isadora Duncan, you can get an idea that the dancer experienced a great grief - the death of her own children.

She gave birth to Derdry's daughter Beatrice in 1906 from the theater director Gordon Craig. Four years later, a son, Patrick August, was born from an alliance with the heir to the Swiss magnate Paris Singer.

In 1913, the car, in which the children were traveling, with a chauffeur and a nanny, stalled on the road. The driver went out to check the engine, at this time the car rolled into the Seine. Amazingly, the dancer's heartbroken heart left room for generosity: she did not blame the driver, because she knew that he also had children, and did not want to deprive them of their father.

A terrible tragedy led to a deep depression. Trying to save her wounded soul, Isadora decided to take a desperate step. In her autobiographical book, she later wrote about how she begged an unfamiliar man for one night to conceive a child. This man was a young Italian sculptor Romano Romanelli, and their relationship gave Isadora the desired pregnancy. However, such a long-awaited baby was not destined to comfort the mother's heart: he died a few days after birth.

Isadorables

The adopted children became her delight. She was the first to adopt six dancers, whom she taught back in Germany: Maria Teresa, Anna, Irma, Gretel, Liesel, Erica. Under the care of a foster mother and mentor, the girls continued their dancing lessons. The team was familiar to viewers from different countries called Isadorables (a play on words from Isadora and adorables). The girls enjoyed tremendous success, toured, collecting full houses.

Moving to the USSR

In 1921 Isadora Duncan received an offer from A.V. Lunacharsky to open a dance school in the USSR. The government promised support, including financial, but in fact Isadora financed the school herself.

However, if this saddened her, it was not enough to close the institution. She was happy teaching others. The popularity of the school grew, and in the same year the first performance of the students took place, which went down in history.

It was dedicated to the anniversary of the October Revolution and took place on the stage of the Bolshoi Theater. The dance program, invented by Isadora personally, included, among other things, the "Varshavyanka" dance, during which the banner, which fell from the hands of the fallen soldiers, was picked up by other strong hands. The action took place to the sounds of the Polish revolutionary march. This performance brought the dancer a resounding success, although evil tongues complained that she was far from being so light and graceful in her tunic as she was in her youth.

The dancer lived in the USSR for 3 years, all this time devoting herself to teaching. Isadora did not live richly, she, as usual, spent money mainly on the school and the team, sometimes feeling need and putting up with the lack of the most basic things. Various troubles served as a pretext for returning to the United States. After Isadora's departure, the school in the USSR was headed by her adopted daughter Irma.

Acquaintance with Yesenin

The year 1921 was rich in events for the American dancer Isadora Duncan. In the same year, she met Yesenin, who was 18 years younger than her.

She hardly knew Russian, and he knew English even worse. But real feelings flared up between them. In May 1922, the lovers tied the knot.

Isadora received Soviet citizenship, but Russia never became her home. Yesenin, while accompanying her on trips around the world, suffered from homesickness. He left his wife already in 1923 and returned home.

Researchers of the Russian poet's work note that he did not leave any poems dedicated to Isadora, and only in the poem "The Black Man" there are hints of her.

The married life of two creative people, separated by the language barrier and age difference, and even not being compatriots, simply could not be simple. The couple quarreled, and then made up just as violently. Yesenin languished with melancholy and boredom in a foreign land, seeking solace in amusements and extravagance. He was oppressed by her feelings, in which a mother's desire to control and patronize was clearly visible. But when in 1925 Isadora received a letter from Irma with the news of the death of the poet, it was a real shock for her. She wrote an obituary full of despair and grief and stated that she sincerely mourns her beloved, with whom she has always lived in harmony and understanding. Later, the dancer published a memoir about Yesenin, and transferred the entire fee (over 300 thousand francs) to his family in the USSR.

last years of life

After the death of the poet, Isadora performed little. The press wrote about her promiscuous relationships and alcohol problems. The inspiration left her, the stage was no longer the main joy of life. Debts accumulated, former friends were lost in the cycle of events, beauty faded ...

Scarlet scarf

It is difficult to imagine that such a bright life, full of victories and achievements, losses and hardships, would be completed by a trivial quiet death ... In the biography of Isadora Duncan, closely connected with the stage, the ending was bright in its own way.

On September 14, 1927, leaving the house of friends in Nice, she got into an open sports car "Amilcar" and said that she was going towards glory (according to other sources, towards love).

The driver started the engine, the car started, air currents caught the ends of a gorgeous hand-embroidered silk scarf. Its floors tangled in the spokes of the wheel, Isadora was thrown overboard. She died instantly from a fracture of the cervical vertebrae.

Personal biography, the life and death of Isadora Duncan, and in particular her work, still inspire poets and artists, directors and artists today. Several biographical films have been shot about her, many books have been written. The style of dance she founded is still taught in many schools around the world.

Isadora Duncan's work

Isadora Duncan's work was treated differently: some admired her art, others considered her performances too frank and even indecent. Duncan herself was not embarrassed by such assessments. She danced from the very beginning of her life. Maximilian Voloshin spoke about her work: “Isadora dances everything that others write, sing, play, paint. She dances Moonlight Sonata, poetry by Horace and a funeral march. With gestures and movements, she wanted to convey to those around her true essence.

Among Isadora's friends was the sculptor Auguste Rodin. Seeing once at an exhibition of his work, Isadora decided that she must certainly visit the workshop of the great sculptor. She was captivated by his genius. "My pilgrimage to Rodin," wrote Isadora, "resembled the visit of the god Pan by Psyche, with the only difference that I wanted to know the way to Apollo, and not to Eros." Rodin gave the famous dancer a short tour of his workshop, showing Duncan his creations. Isadora was amazed at the delicate modesty with which the master showed her his masterpieces: only occasionally did he quietly pronounce the names of the sculptures or simply run his hands over them. Then they headed to Duncan's studio.

Isadora expounded to Rodin her theory of dance and, wearing a tunic, danced in front of him. This first meeting could have ended in a completely unfriendly way: Rodin tried to seduce Isadora, but, as Duncan wrote, "my ridiculous upbringing ... forced me to pull back, throw a dress over a tunic and leave him bewildered." Subsequently, Isadora very much regretted her "childhood delusions" ... Two years later, she again met with Rodin, who for many years will be not only her friend, but also a teacher. Once, while making sketches from Isadora's students, he told her: “Why didn't I have such models when I was young? Models that can move in accordance with the laws of nature and harmony! True, I have had beautiful models, but none of them understood the art of movement as well as your students. "

Another famous French sculptor, Emile Antoine Bourdelle, depicted Isadora's dancing on the facade of the Theater on the Champs Elysees. He wrote about the American dancer: “Isadora is the embodiment of proportion, subordinated to spontaneous feeling; she is mortal and immortal, and both of her faces represent the law of the divine principle, which is given to man to comprehend and merge with his life. Isadora Duncan was also familiar with the famous French artist Eugene Carriere. She often visited his studio, visited the artist's family. Isadora recalled his house, which had many books, and Carriere himself was surrounded by family and friends. "This young American woman is revolutionizing the world!" the artist once said about Isadora.

At that time, the general public did not yet know Isadora, but she was able to conquer lovers of high art. Duncan was especially pleased to hear from such people compliments and acknowledgment of her work. “In an effort to express human feelings,” admitted Eugene Carriere, “Isadora found the most beautiful examples in the art of Ancient Greece. She is inspired by and admires the magnificent figures in the bas-reliefs. Endowed with the gift of a pioneer, she turned to nature, where these movements are taken from. Wanting to imitate the Greek dances and revive them, she found her own way of self-expression ... As the Greek creations come to life at some moment in front of us, so we grow younger, looking at her, a new hope is born and wins in us, and when she expresses humility before inevitability, we submit to fate together with it. Isadora Duncan's dance is not entertainment, it is an expression of personality, a living work of art. " These words of the artist were especially dear to Isadora's heart.