The Ultimate Dancer, Isadora Duncan! Quiz

Answer: San Francisco

Isadora was born in 1877, the youngest of Joseph and Dora Duncan's four children. Her given name was Angela but at the age of sixteen she started using her mother's name, Isadora. Her father, a businessman and thirty years older than her mother left soon after she was born, due to a banking scandal.

Her mother taught music to give the family an income (supposedly)! I have found so many different accounts of Isadora's early life, it's impossible to be sure. In Isadora's autobiography, she says they were so poor, almost starving, that she put her hair up (pretending to be sixteen rather than eleven) and went out to work.

However, her ballet lessons, for one, suggest to me that there may be more to this story!

Answer: "Ugly and against nature"

More than anything, Isadora believed that dance should be spontaneous, with natural expressive movements. Classical ballet, she believed was constrictive and unnatural and therefore was "Deforming the beauty of the woman's body". Dance, she said, was the "movement of the human body in harmony with the movements of the earth." The popular theatrical dance of the day she found too superficial.

Isadora and her elder sister, Elisabeth, developed their style of dancing, and Isadora was just six years old when they both started teaching young children the beauty of dance. All of her dances were original. All movements expressed her deepest feelings. Inspired by nature, such as the motion of the sea and the swaying of the trees in the breeze and also inspired from Greek art and themes.
She was the first woman to dance to classical music in this form. Her daring and originality soon found her fame among the avant-garde of the day. Two of here favourite composers to dance to were Chopin and Mendelssohn.

Answer: Thin, loose, simple clothing often inspired by ancient Greek attire

At this period of time women wore clothes that hid their bodies and their arms and legs. Isadora believed that her dance clothes should restrict the bodies movements as little as possible. Most dance costumes, at the time, would have made it impossible to run, jump and skip.

She also wanted her audience to see clearly the movements her body made and always danced bare foot. Not all, at the time, felt this very moral but in one sense her dance was about the restrictions placed on women and their bodies.

Answer: Sergei Yesenin

In 1922, Isadora met and married Sergei Yesenin, a Russian poet, who was eighteen years younger than herself. The marriage did not last long. Yesenin was a belligerent drunk, who was later committed to a mental asylum. He committed suicide a year after being released at the age of thirty in 1925.

"So that ends my first experience of matrimony, which I always thought a highly over-rated performance." (Isadora)

Previously, Isadora who believed in free love, had had many love affairs. One with Gorden Craig, a theatre director and also the son of Dame Ellen Terry, a famous actress. Another with Paris Singer, the sewing machine millionaire. Isadora never had a relationship with Aleister Crowley, the occultist and magician but she did meet him. A great friend of of Isadora's was Mary Desti, one of Crowley's students. Many women appeared to fall under Aleister Crowley's spell but not Isadora. She found him an "odious man".

Answer: London

Isadora left for England with her family at the age of 22 in 1899, although other sources say she left for London in 1897, but whichever of these dates is right, it was London where she first found the words to describe her ideas of dance. She was inspired by her visits to the British museum by Greek art and clothing and Greek ideas on dance of course! She won the hearts of private and public audiences with her free movement, her dance and her charisma!

Answer: None

Her first child, Deirdre (born in 1906) was the daughter of Gordon Craig, and her second, Patrick (born May 1, 1910) her son by Paris Singer. Tragically, both children drowned in the River Seine, Paris in April 1913. The car they were travelling in rolled down the embankment into the river because the driver had forgotten to put the handbrake on. Their nurse also drowned.

It is hard to imagine the agony and grief a mother must feel losing a child, unless this has happened to you, and losing both brought Isadora to the lowest point in her life. She spent several months in Greece recovering with her brother, Raymond, and her sister, Elisabeth. Isadora's third child, a boy, was born in Paris as World War I broke out. He lived for only a few hours.

Answer: Bared her breasts on stage, while waving a red scarf

In 1922-23, Isadora paid her last visit to the United States. She was really only ever well received in New York. Her views had always been liberal and had became more radical after witnessing poverty in New York and after visiting the new revolutionary Russia.

In Boston, while she waved her red scarf, she shouted "This is red! So am I!" Her husband at the time, Sergei Yesenin a Russian poet, was constantly drunk and in fits of temper he destroyed hotel rooms. He was perhaps a wannabe pop star! Although Isadora moved to Russia she quickly became disillusioned when the promised money for her dance school was not forthcoming.

In 1924 she left and spent the rest of her life living in France.

Answer: All of these things

Isadora's speech was also published in a pamphlet. It received a great deal of publicity and became the foundation stone for modern dance. The speech also became a feminist classic and Isadora a feminist icon.

"The dancer of the future will be one whose body and soul have grown so harmoniously together that the natural language of that soul will have become the movement of the body. The dancer will not belong to a nation but to all humanity. She will dance not in the form of a nymph, nor fairy, nor coquette but in the form of a woman in its greatest and purest expression. She will realize the mission of woman's body and the holiness of all its parts. She will dance the changing life of nature, showing how each part is transformed into the other. From all parts of her body shall shine radiant intelligence, bringing to the world the message of the thoughts and aspirations of thousands of women. She shall dance the freedom of women ...".

Answer: Mercedes de Acosta

Isadora never had problem with love between two people, whatever their gender.
Mercedes de Acosta, poet, playwright and novelist, was not successful in her professional life and is best known for her affairs with Hollywood icons including Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich. Following the death of her two children, Isadora spent time recuperating with the actress Eleanora Muse but there is no evidence to suggest their relationship was anything more than platonic.

Answer: "Goodbye, my friends, I'm off to glory!"

Isadora died in Nice on 14th September, 1927. She climbed into an open top car with Benoît Falchetto, a young and by all accounts a very handsome mechanic. As they sped away, Isadora's long scarf became wrapped around the rear wheel and she was strangled.

She was just fifty years old. Mary Desti at the time claimed that Isadora's last words to her were "Adieu, mes amis. Je vais à la gloire!" ("Farewell, my friends, I'm off to glory!") Later, however, it was claimed that Mary had lied as she had found Isadora's last words embarrassing.

Instead it is believed that Isadora said "Je vais à l'amour!" ("I'm off to love!"). Isadora was cremated and her ashes placed in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, next to her two children.