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Art > Dance
Isadora Duncan.
Promotion to the light Olga Klimova
I realized that in different parts of the world, due to conditions unknown to us, different people, in different fields, from different sides, are looking for the same next, naturally emerging creative principles in art.
When they meet, they are struck by the commonality and kinship of their ideas.
This is exactly what happened at the meeting I described [with Isadora Duncan]: we understood each other from half a word.
The soul plunges far into the depths of centuries when Isadora Duncan dances; back to the morning of the world, when the greatness of the soul found free expression in the beauty of the body, when the rhythm of movement corresponded to the rhythm of sound, when the movements of the human body were one with the wind and the sea, when the gesture of a woman's hand resembled the opening petals of a rose, her foot stepping on the turf was like a leaf falling to the ground.
When all the fervor of religious faith, love, patriotism, sacrifice or passion found its expression to the sounds of a kithara, harp or tambourine, when men and women danced in front of their hearths and their gods in religious ecstasy, or in the woods or by the sea, because they were overwhelmed with the joy of life; every strong or positive impulse was transmitted from soul to body in absolute harmony with the rhythm of the universe.
Mary Fenton Roberts
Isadora dances everything that others say, sing, write, play and draw, she dances Beethoven's Seventh Symphony and the "Moonlight Sonata", she dances Botticelli's "Spring" and Horace's poems.
Maximilian Voloshin
Give beauty, freedom and strength to children.
Give art to people who need it so much.
Great music can no longer be used only for the delight of a small group of cultured people, it must be given free of charge to the masses; it is as necessary for them as air and bread, because it is the spiritual wine of humanity.
Isadora Duncan
Would you believe me, I trembled with awe when I saw Isadora Duncan.
Once in a century, a new idea comes, and here I was a spectator of the last one that was born.
This is the beginning of a new era in art.
Nothing can shake the soul like a dance.
Some of her movements bring tears to her throat.
Titterton
Isadora Duncan, whose name has long become synonymous with dance, was born in San Francisco on May 27, 1878.
Her mother, who was left alone with four children after the divorce, had to work a lot, so Isadora was left to herself from an early age.
In her memoirs about her childhood, she thanks fate for the poverty of their family, which allowed the children to lead a free, unrestrained life, close to nature: "...it is to this circumstance that I owe the inspiration that led to the creation of my dance."
Thanks to her mother, the entire childhood of the future dancer was permeated with music and poetry.
In the evenings, Mrs. Duncan sat at the piano and played Beethoven, Schumann, Schubert, Mozart, Chopin to her children, or read aloud from Shakespeare, Shelley, Keats.
Isadora often said that she started dancing before she could walk.
Anyway, at the age of six, she gathered the neighborhood children and opened her first "dance school".
When she turned ten, she and her sister already had a wide range of students and earned money by teaching.
They called it the new dance system, although there was no system then, of course, yet.
Isadora improvised to the music and taught all the beautiful movements that came to her mind.
It seems that the idea of a new dance came to her naturally, like the breath of life.
And then for several years it appeared, took shape and became clearer.
The first steps to the stage were not easy.
The family often starved.
But the idealism of the Duncan clan has always helped to win over material difficulties.
However, complete impracticality quickly negated the barely appearing funds.
Isadora's youth was filled with inspiration and creative enthusiasm.
He and his brother Raymond would start the morning dancing in the Luxembourg Garden (the family was already living in Paris at that time), and then spend long hours in the Louvre admiring Greek vases.
Sometimes they had almost nothing to eat, but this did not prevent them from discussing Plato's ideas, reading Schopenhauer and Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, or crying with delight at the presentation of a Greek tragedy.
Chicago, New York, London, Paris.
Isadora gradually gained fame and continued to search.
"I spent long days and nights searching for a dance that could become a divine reflection of the human spirit through body movements.
For hours I stood motionless, my arms crossed over my chest, covering my solar plexus…
I searched and finally found the main spring of every movement, the unity from which all the various movements are born, the mirror reflecting the creation of dance... "
Ballet, Isadora believed, relies on the bodily center and generates artificial, mechanical movement that does not convey the movement of the soul.
She was looking for an internal source that would transmit movement to the body.
Then the body would gain transparency and become a conductor of the mind and spirit.
"When I listened to music, the rays and vibrations of the music streamed towards this source of light inside me, where they were transformed into a spiritual vision, a mirror not of the mind, but of the soul; and with this vision I could display them in dance."
She often tried to explain this to the artists.
Stanislavsky writes about this in his book, who at the same time was looking for the actor's inner creative engine and after meeting Duncan came to the conclusion that they were looking for the same thing in different fields of art.
Isadora Duncan was creating a new dance.
But for her, it was rather a return to something ancient, original.
Spiritual freedom, the ability to express in dance what the soul is filled with, is a natural human need.
Her system did not require grueling and harsh training
She herself admitted that she was unable to do this.
Her nature was too impetuous and freedom loving.
The movements of Isadora's dance were simple: steps, light running, low jumps, free batmans, expressive poses and gestures.
The magic, apparently, was hidden in a deep penetration into the music, an emotional transfer of the state.
How to explain the delight of the huge halls?
The talent of the performer or the receptivity of the audience?
Maybe both.
Her intuitive understanding of music was amazing.
It used to happen that the composers before whom she danced their music admitted that this was how they presented their works.
Her dances were born from seeing a flowing river and from reading a poem, from works of art and observing the rhythm of an incoming wave.
From many days of contemplation of Botticelli's "Spring", the "Dance of the Future" was born: "I sat in front of the picture until I began to see how flowers grow, how bare feet dance, how bodies sway; until the harbinger of joy came down to me, then I thought: "I will dance this picture and send everyone this message of love, spring and the birth of life"…
I tried to find the meaning of spring through the mystery of this beautiful movement.
It seemed to me that since life is such a confusion and blind search, if I manage to unravel the secret of this picture, I will be able to show others the way to fullness of life and joy."
She always performed in a simple tunic like a Greek one, which she often wore in everyday life.
A revolutionary step was the bare legs, not covered with a silk leotard, which brought the dancer the nickname "divine sandals".
Isadora adhered to ancient views about the natural beauty and harmony of the body.
Critics wrote about her enthusiastically: "Duncan dances naturally, simply, as she would dance in a meadow, and with all her dance she fights with the dilapidated forms of the old ballet";
"These beautiful hands that mimic playing the flute, playing the strings... these splackavellie in the air hands, this long strong neck...
I wanted all of this to worship the living classic worship!"
; "Every motion of her, full of splendor and beauty that your heart begins to beat faster, eyes vlazhneyut, and you understand that even if your life is happy, such wonderful moments like this come along once in many years…
The most extraordinary thing is the impression that you have of this woman, even when the dance is over and the stage is empty."
If she considered the dance only as a solo performance, then everything would be simple.
Having achieved the fame desired in any country, she could continue her triumphant performances.
But Isadora was obsessed with the idea of school and a huge ensemble dancing Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.
She created the first school in Germany.
I bought a villa in Grunewald and tried to turn it into a paradise for children.
There are paintings everywhere, Greek bas reliefs and her favorite blue curtains.
She dreamed that she would raise her children in the spirit of Hellenistic beauty, and then her pupils would teach and develop other children until all the children of the world became a huge happy dancing group.
Forty children were recruited to the school, whom Madame Duncan, in fact, adopted, supported, raised and trained.
But it became increasingly difficult to cover the costs.
"I have to find some kind of a millionaire!"
— Isadora often exclaimed.
The millionaire found it himself.
Paris Eugene Singer, one of the richest people in Europe, came and offered to take on all the costs of maintaining the school.
In her memoirs, Isadora calls him Lohengrin, the knight savior.
Lohengrin became the father of her second child.
The father of the first was the great director of the reformatorGordon Craig.
True to her beliefs, Isadora refused marriage, believing that it deprives a woman of freedom.
Her children were beautiful, they were growing up and had already started dancing among other pupils.
Isadora was happy.
And then a tragedy occurred.
The daughter and son were killed (the car they were driving fell into the river).
Isadora's grief was boundless.
She was kept from suicide by the little students who surrounded her with the words: "Isadora, live for us.
Arenot we your children?"
She hid from people for a long time and could not go on stage.
Over time, the acute pain subsided, but the wound in the soul did not heal.
Isadora continued to teach children, but the war intervened, the school had to be closed.
Isadora Duncan created her last and longest existing school in our country.
She, like many people like her who dreamed of a new world, took the revolution in Russia idealistically.
When the Soviet government sent her an invitation with a proposal to organize a school in Russia, she went without hesitation.
Although everyone tried to dissuade her: Bolshevik Russia was terrifying.
She believed that an ideal communist state had been created on earth by such a miracle, and she was going to spend the rest of her life dressed in a red blouse among comrades dressed just as simply and filled with brotherly love.
The main thing is that a dream has come true: the state will support her school.
In the autumn of 1921, an announcement was placed in the "Working Moscow" about the opening of the "Isadora Duncan School for children of both sexes aged 4 to 10 years".
Initially, there were more than a hundred children, later there were forty.
It was no longer possible to feed and warm in the hungry and cold Moscow of the twenties.
Isadora spent the rest of her savings on this school and was forced to leave Russia to earn money for the school by touring.
After Isadora, the school was run by her adopted daughter Irma Duncan.
Isadora was the forerunner of the new dance, but she did not create a pedagogical system, did not have significant successors.
There were plenty of imitators of Duncan's free plastic art, but much of Isadora's art was connected with her extraordinary personality and could not be translated into a complete technique.
Her dance did not have well established steps and positions, but it required an unusual spiritual fullness.
Mary Fenton Roberts wrote well about this: "There are no imitators of Isadora Duncan, because there are no other women who would devote their entire lives to clearly imagine what beauty is, sincerely seek it and discard everything that is not in harmony with the simplicity and perfection of Nature."
Unlike the dancers who later created modern dance (Mary Wigman, Martha Graham, Merce Cunningham), for Isadora, the main idea in dance was the idea — the idea of freedom, harmony and beauty embodied in the movement.
She never limited herself to the stage, for her dance was life itself, and not an attempt to create a new aesthetic.
Isadora Duncan was a brilliant dancer.
And, of course, she had a great influence on stage dance.
Geniuses come to point out opportunities.
And we remember these people, who are like stars in the sky of their time, because you can talk about a new aesthetic as much as you want, but only the heart of the performer will make the heart of the viewer tremble.
And without this trepidation, there will only be a cold reflection on the abilities of the dancer and the grace or clumsiness of his poses.
Isadora Duncan made the hearts of the audience tremble.
Therefore, it has remained in history.
She had a lot of flaws, it's true.
But she was always true to her ideals, and the main thing that formed the basis of her being was beautiful.
How beautiful were her art and dreams of educating a new, harmonious person with the help of dance and music.
Today, at the turn of the XX and XXI centuries, we are successfully changing the world for the worse with the help of bad movies, obscene dances and ugly paintings.
Why?
Donot we already have that dazzling craving for a new, better world that so overwhelmed the geniuses of the beginning of the XX century?
Or maybe we just havenot fully woken up yet?
A hundred years ago, Isadora taught her young pupils: "Listen to music with your soul.
And when you listen, donot you feel how your inner essence awakens in the depths and with the help of this force your heads are raised, your hands are raised, you are slowly moving towards the light?
This awakening is the first step in the dance."
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