Interperative Dance

The purpose of interperative or modern dance is to express by means of body movement the emotions felt by the dancer in a more impromtu and spontaneous, informal manner. It is performed both individually and in groups. It also difers from ballet in that it avoids telling stories and avouds pantomine and characterizations. Isadora Duncan in the early 20th Century helped found the school of interperative or modern dance. Costuming usually involves like, diaphonous Greek style tunics.

Background

Greek drama evolved from the dance. The dramas retained dance which served to express deep religious emotion. Dance was later used sparingly to only embelish the dramas that developed in Renaisance Europe. Dance was used to express light, convention or erotic emotions in the plays, opera, romantic comedies, amd revue of Europe, in contrast to the grave emotion of Greek dance. Ballet eventually developed to tell a story in music and dance, but was a highly formalized dance style. Isadora Duncan in the early 20th Century helped found the school of interperative or modern dance. The purpose was to express by means of body movement the emotions felt by the dancer in a more impromtu and spontaneous, informal manner. It is performed both individually and in groups. It also difers from ballet in that it avoids telling stories and avouds pantomine and characterizatins.

Isadora Duncan

American dancer Isadora Duncan (1878-1927) is noted for her founding of new dance techniques based largely on the dances of the ancient Greeks. With her graceful barefoot movements, flowing Grecian costumes, and maverick views on everything from ballet to marriage, Isadora Duncan sparked a revolution in American dance and challenged society's rigid expectations of women. Often called the "Mother of Modern Dance", she revolutionized dance, introducing an improvisational, emotion-driven form that would give birth to a new American style of dance. Isadora Duncan has been one of the most enduring influences on 20th century culture. Ironically, the very magnitude of her achievements as an artist, as well as the sheer excitement and tradgedy of her life, have tended to dim our awareness of the originality, depth and boldness of her thought.

Childhood

Isadora was born during 1878 in San Francisco. Her father was a prominent San Francisco banker. Hrr father’s bank failed after her birth. Shortly afterwards her parents were divorced and her father remarried.

Her mother had to give piano lessons to support her four children. The two boys found odd jobs, while young Isadora and her sister Elizabeth taught dancing to neighborhood children.

Isadora Duncan danced as soon as she could walk. When not teaching, or in school, Isadora explored the beach and would later say that her earliest ideas of dance came from watching the rhythms of the waves. Despite the poverty, she grew up in a childhood filled with imagination and art. Her mother introduced her four children (Isadora was youngest) to classical music, as well as Shakespeare, poetry, literature and art.

The children read every book, good or bad, that chance flung in their path, and when chance was busy with other people's problems, Isadora went to the Public Library. There she met Ina Coolbrith. Ina possessed a rare talent. She not only created beauty, but she had the gift, as well, of inspiring the creative instinct in others. Isadora was an eager pupil. Her reading carried her back to the classical culture of ancient Greece, and the natural, unaffected, spontaneous Grecian art became her inspiration and dream. Toe-dancing, social gymnastics, was to be scorned. She demanded, from the very beginning, self-expression unrestrained by rule and custom.

Isadora spent many hours playing and dancing upon the beach, and even taught dance classes to younger children as a way to earn a little extra money for the struggling family. When she was 14 years old, pupils, children of neighbors, came to her to be taught to dance. The Oakland classes grew and then there were classes across the bay in San Francisco. Every day Isadora and her sister, Elizabeth, took the ferryboat to San Francisco and then walked from the Ferry building to Sutter and Van Ness Avenue. There, in the old home they had rented—the Castle mansion—they taught the young hopefuls of San Francisco society forms of the dance that were 50 years ahead of their time.

Teenager

Isadora as a teenageer traveled to Chicago and New York with some of her family members, working and performing in various productions such as Mme. Pygmalion, Midsummer's Night Dream or vaudeville shows with limited success.

Acceptance

It was not until she reached London, however, that Isadora began to find acceptance for her dancing. She performed in private "salons" for ladies of social standing and their guests in London and Paris. Gradually her popularity grew, and she began performing on great stages throughout Europe.
Figure 1.--A picture of the Hendericks Dance School in Dallas, Texas during 1931. The three boys in the school (Billy Heffington, Billy Nihols, and Dan Betts) are at front left.

Interperative Dance

Isadora Duncan's dance style was characterized by free and flowing moments expressing inner emotions and intended to portray the movement of such natural forces as waves, winds, birds, and insects. At first she met strong oposition, chiefly from adherents of traditional dance forms such as ballet with its conventions and restrictions. Desite this oposition, the dance style she founded came into wide favor. Dancer, adventurer, revolutionist, ardent defender of the poetic spirit,

Isadora Duncan was a thinker as well as poet, gifted with a lively poetic imagination, a radical defiance of "Things as they are," and the ability to express her ideas with verve and humor. To best understand Isadora, she was a theorist of dance, a critic of modern society, culture, education and a champion of the struggles for women's rights, social revolution and the realization of poetry in everyday life.

Preaching art

Virtually alone, Isadora restored dance to a high place among the arts. Breaking with convention, Isadora traced the art of dance back to its roots as a sacred art. She developed within this idea, free and natural movements inspired by the classical Greek arts, folk dances, social dances, nature and natural forces as well as an approach to the new American athleticism which included skipping, running, jumping, leaping, tossing.
Figure 2.--This photograph shows some of Duncan's pupils.

Travels

Duncan visited the Soviet Union and her dance technique had considerable influemce on Russian balet. She was the insiration for a new style of dance, known as interpative dancing.

Teaching

She was especially interested in teaching children and inspiring a love of dance in them. She founded dance schools in Berlin (1904), Paris (1914), Moscow (1921), and other locations. The financial drain of her schools (schools were also established in Russia and Paris at various points in her life) forced Isadora to tour and perform considerably, leaving her sister Elizabeth in charge of the schools and pupils.

In the Athenian hills Isadora gathered a class of small Grecian boys about her. She taught them the dances of ancient Byzantium, as well as Greek choruses and songs. bare-legged, with sandaled feet and flowing draperies, the Duncans danced from village to village, and the world called them mad. A year passed, and their purse was empty. Bidding a tearful farewell to the peasants who had learned to love the lady on Kopanos Hill, Isadora and her kin returned to modern civilization and Vienna.

She tourned Europe and America giving dance recitals with her pupils who were known as Duncan dancers. She published her autobiograph, My Life in 1926-27.

Personal Life

Her personal life was tragic. She endured poverty as a child. An unfortunate mairage terminated in divorce. Though not a believer in what she saw as the chains of marriage, Isadora did have two children, Deidre and Patrick, with two of her lovers, Gordon Craig and Paris Singer. Tragically the two children drowned with their governess in the Seine river in 1913.
Figure 3.--This photograph shows modern pupils doing interperative dance.

The following years were difficult for Isadora, and she stopped dancing for a time. Finally, however, she found a renewed artistic energy when she returned to her schools and her "foster" children, the school pupils. She even adopted six of those children, the "Isadorables" as they were billed by the press later when they began to perform with Isadora.

She experienced severe financial difficulties in her last years. She was killed in an car accident.

Schools

Interperative dance schools for children were opened throughout Europe and America during the 1920s and 1930s. They were popular with girls, but less so with boys. Many mothers felt, however, that that such cultural pursuits were an important part of a boy's education. She instructed young children to listen to the music with their souls and in doing so they would feel an inner self awaken to give them strength. This awakening of the soul was the first step in dance as she conceived it.

Costumes

Duncan is best known for her natural technique based upon daily movements such as walking, running, skipping and leaping. Her style has dancers wearing loose robes with bare feet so as to reflect the swaying of trees and the rocking of ocean waves. In contrast to classic ballet movements, there are no stiff postures or rigid movements because straight lines do not occur in nature. Duncan's motivation for dance was to "express the feelings and emotions of humanity" and thus her dance movements emanate from the soul to become an embodiment of individuality and extreme passion.
Figure 4.--This photograph shows modern pupils doing interperative dance.

Isadora danced in free-flowing costumes, bare feet and loose hair. She advocated similar costumes at her schools. Dancing costumes varied widely at the different schools, depending on the directors ideas about costume an dance. Ducan's school often had the children, boys and girls, dress in loose, flowing costumes reminesent of Greece. Many of the other schools introduced similar costumes. At the Texas school pictured on this page the children wear such costumes, although two of the three boys at lower left dance in white shirts and shorts with dance slippers. One of the boys, the one in bangs, wears the same Grecian outfit as the girls (figure 1).

Sources

Isadora Duncan, My Life.




Christopher Wagner

histclo@lycosmail.com


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Last updated: May 20, 1998