Isadora - Revolutionary in Art and Love

!

ISADORA ^L

Revolutionary in Art ana Love

^r

Allan ROBS Macaougall

$

THOMAS NELSON

& SONS

Edinburgh

NEW YORK Toronto

All of the photographs are reproduced by courtesy of the New York Public Library. Many of the photographs, and also letters quoted in this book, are

from the Irma Duncan Collection

Copyright, I960, by

in the

&

York Public

Thomas Nelson

All rights reserved under International lished in New York by Thomas Nelson

Canada, by Thomas Nelson

New

Library.

& Sons

and Pan-American Conventions. Pub-

& Sons and

simultaneously in Toronto,

Sons (Canada), Limited.

Library of Congress Catalog Card No.: 59-15034

Manufactured

in the

United States of America

DESIGNED BY FRANK KARPELES

reface Preft

^

ISADORA DUNCAN

died in a bizarre accident, far from her native land, over three decades ago. An international legend during her own star-crossed lifetime, there has since grown up around her name and

confused and luxuriant thicket of myths, misinformation, and complete misconception. Many of these growths sprang up and flourished from seeds which she herself dropped, for she delighted in leading friends and inquiring artistry a

reporters down the garden path with a gaily tossed-off quip or a rococo explanation of some simple fact "Yes, this emerald brooch was given to me in India by a Maharaja." How was a reporter to

had never set foot in India? And in her extraordinary autobiography which she spasmodically wrote and dictated during the last years of her life most often when far removed from documentary aid or easily consulted facts and verifiable datesshe sometimes strayed from the austere road of truth into romantic bypaths

know

that she

of exaggeration. Often, to please her delighted listeners I was happy to be of that small band on many occasions in Paris and Nice very often, she dwelt wordily, though amusingly, in a nevernever land of fantasy. What Leo Stein has called "the problems of memory and its peculiar operations" seldom troubled her. 'Who was Isadora?" a young Italian journalist asked me in Bordighera a few years ago. The name had come up when I was brief-

Preface

Gordon Craig, who was then about to visit ing him on her friend, the Riviera resort after a twenty years' absence from Italy, I was only aware that my youthful intermomentarily shocked, for I was quite in a war-shattered Europe, a chaotic world locutor had grown up both were part of a where events moved at a feverish pace. and puppet polistars movie of names the ephemeral society where the in sustained ticians of press and on

We

today

radio

and

TV

through

publicity

are naturally better

known than

those of the greatest

statesmen of yesterday. stage figures or Yet even I I to whom the names of Duse, or

Woodrow

Wilson,

or Chaliapin, or Keir Hardie mean something can also ask rhetori"Who was Isadora?" I saw her plain; I travelled with her; I cally:

lived with her; I loved her as a great

human

admiring her as one of the world's great

being and never ceased artists.

As

I

have read

material about her, however,

through the vast amount of published I have been as baffled as many others

who have known

her only

from second-hand accounts.

Who

was Isadora?

Was

she the personality tersely

summed up

in

a French encyclopaedia?-"DUNCAN, (1877 [sic]-1927) born San Francisco (California) dancer whose existence was particrenew the dance through the inspiraularly tormented. She wished to Isadora.

tion of antique

monuments and founded

Europe and America/'

Was

she the

schools

of dancing in

woman whose name

occasionally

appears in a syndicated American newspaper column: "TODAY'S FAMOUS BIRTHDAYS. MAY 27," in company with those of Arnold Bennett, Jay Gould, Julia Ward Howe, Cornelius Vanderbilt, and followed by the notation: "Isadora Duncan, 1878-1927. Unpredictable eccentric whose fame rests as much on the anecdotes told about her

unusual behavior as on the

memory

of her great talents as a classical

dancer.'*?

Was

she the performer seen through the childishly uncomprehending eyes of the young Agnes de Mille? "A fat, cross-eyed woman in dull costumes

made

Or that seen by von Hofmannsthal, when she first Hugo "She looked like a Pan, intoxicated with of material like portieres."

the young Austrian poet,

appeared in Vienna?

youth; like a young god, melancholy and ardent with love." Was she the solo dancer whose first appearance in St. Petersburg in 1905,

Preface

7

according to the founder of the Ballets Russe, Serge Diaghilev, "gave an irreparable jolt to the classic ballet of Imperial Russia"? Or was she then, as a famous Russian ballerina later wrote, "A New Engthe who could be curtly dismissed by one [sic] miss/' torians of the Russian Ballet, Prince Peter Lievin, with: "It was a of

land

pity

that as a dancer

Duncan was

his-

a dilettante and did not possess

an adequate technique"?

The

Isadora Duncan described by one of her French contempora." and the IsaYvette Guilbert, as "The greatest American dora Duncan denounced in the evangelist Billy Sunday's hysterical diatribe: "That Bolshevik hussy who doesn't wear enough clothes .

ries,

.

pad a crutch," have little in common. The famous French singer was speaking of the distinguished performer whom she had so often seen and admired; the fundamentalist ranter was speaking of a woman whom he had never even seen and only knew from newsto

paper caricatures and distortions. Writing about the dancer and the contradictory views published about her, I have quoted on another occasion the remark of the

"We

are apt to confuse the man and the artist on the pretext that hazard has united them in the same body." It seemed to me that the pattern of Isadora's fifty years was

French

writer, Jules

Renard:

On one frame ran the design of her art, and wholly unique consistently fashioned with simplicity and movthe other on frame ran the fabric of her private life, as ing beauty; richly colorful as the first but with snarls and knots in the warp and woven on

a double loom.

The

design here was seldom symmetrical or complete rather, of designs and, if always original and striking, a succession perhaps, marred still continually by the often perverse hand of the weaver.

woof.

No

dancer has ever been more extensively portrayed in line and her time. Yet, even in these sculptural form by the great artists of works, the eye may see either a beautiful figure, seemingly escaped from some ancient frieze, or a rather demented looking, Irish house-

maid, prancing uninhibitedly and half-naked towards Bedlam. No dancer was more written about in poetry, perceptive prose, and ever spoke pedestrian journalism. Surely, too, no stage personality at or such such and wrote of her own art with length, uncertainty worried by seeming contradictions. After all, did not her literary

8

Preface say:

"Do

I

contradict myself." The mass of material at

hand

is

idol

Walt Whitman

contradict myself?

Very

well,

consider. Since staggering to

meeting the dancer almost forty years ago,

first

have been collecting

I

the poems and drawings, photographs;

I

it:

critical articles;

the paintings, and obiter the memoirs of her contemporaries; the serious writings of yellowing dicta of the extremely articulate artist herself. The piles

back to 1899; some, still pristine and filled newspaper articles date and with factual errors myths, were written only yesterday. Out of all these various materials, together with my own memories

and those vagaries of

of her friends

human

and mine-mindful always of the

recollection

I

have

tried to set

down a

fantastic clear pic-

and remarkable woman. Isadora Duncan, "a militant and mighty woman/' as Max Eastman termed her, was and veritable leader of those who put on their courage "the ture of this unique artist

symbol armor and fought In writing this book

like

biographical wisdom

is

for the affirmation of life in America." it

has seemed to

to describe a

life

me by

that the better part of adhering to the clearest

This was something to which

possible chronological development. Isadora herself paid little heed, and

which sometimes makes for considerable confusion in her own lively book. "She didn't give a damn about dates," Gordon Craig said. Nor were fixed numbers or

ever absolute: forty little pupils probably sounded periods of time more important than the actual twenty; a few months' stay, more or in retrospect to a rounded given locality, easily lengthened could acts certain for reasons always be unconsciously glorified year; moment even never motives later vaguely thought of at the lofty

less, in a

by

of their happening, or they could be minimized into insignificance if

necessary.

pant,

often catches more revealing deeye of a detached onlooker of a happening than that of the emotionally involved particiartistic event or an unimportant triviality. whether it be a

And

yet

The tails

great

it is

sometimes dangerous to

trust

wholly to the onlooker's

octogenarian Greek diplomat told me once of having seen the last performance of Isadora, whom he greatly admired ever since her first appearance in Greece in 1903. "She was wonderful,"

memory. An

he said. "She danced completely nude not lasciviously, mind youl She was like a great marble work of art!" She was indeed! But she

9 did not dance

Preface

nude

at that final performance in Paris or, for that

matter, at any of the very many performances I ever witnessed in public or in private. I, too, was present at that Paris performance in July, 1927. She danced unforgettably, but she was not I have been chary, therefore, of personal memories,

nude.

except where they could be matched and checked with factual accounts. For this

have leafed through contemporary periodicals, magazines, and programmes in the libraries of Europe and America. Where I have found myself caught up in a maze of contradictions, I have tried to set my course warily and to avoid taking as gospel what the subject herself, or her friends, have said as definitely "Thus" or "So". As Isadora herself wrote at length of her emotional life, I have sought to stress especially her artistic growth in the art for which she is celebrated today and which was her most important gift to the I

world.

ALLAN Ross MACDOUGALL

Contents

PREFACE

$

5

PART

I

America 1878-1899

15

PART

II

Europe and America 1899-1914

49

PART

III

Europe-America-Europe 1914-1920

147

Russia-America-Russia 1921-1924

183

Berlin-Paris-Nice 1924-1927

251

PART IV

PART

INDEX

V

285

Parti 1828-1899

^

AMERICA

these I answer: wer: they no ey see n

^rjM fcrt

>

I

M#Jr

Part

103 It is the

ideals of

mission of

man.

What

all art

n/EtmopE AND AMERICA

to express the highest

and the most beautiful

ideal does the ballet express?

No, the dance was once the most noble of all arts; and it shall be again. the great depth to which it has fallen, it shall be raised. The dancer of the future shall attain so great a height that all other arts shall be

From

helped thereby.

To that

what is the most moral, healthful and beautiful in art the mission of the dancer, and to this I dedicate my life.

express

is

That Isadora Duncan's reputation as a particularly articulate apostle of a new style of dancing had preceded her to St. Petersburg cannot be doubted. And the audiences that welcomed her were composed not only of the curious and the sensation-seekers anxious to see this much-publicized semi-nude American girl, but also, as elsewhere in Europe, of a body of the city's intellectual elite. The the writers, the musicians, as well as the leading dancers, were

artists,

well represented.

When

Moscow after her preliminary appearance among those who saw and admired her so much was the great actor-director of the famous Moscow Art Theatre, Constantin Stanislavsky, who never missed one of her performances. In she went on to

in St. Petersburg,

his autobiography, albeit a little

My

Life in Art, he

hazy on dates

like

tells

of Isadora's appearance,

the lady herself:

appeared at Isadora Duncan's concert by accident. ... I was very surprised that in the rather small audience that came to see her there was a tremendous percentage of artists and sculptors with Mamontov I

much

at their head, many artists of the ballet, and many first-nighters and lovers of the unusual in the theatre. The first appearance of Duncan on the

stage did not

make

a very big impression. Unaccustomed to see an almost stage, I could hardly notice and understand the art of

naked body on the

The first number on the program was met with tepid apand timid plause attempts at whistling. But after a few of the succeeding numbers, one of which was especially persuasive, I could not longer remain indifferent to the protests of the general public and began to applaud the dancer.

"

demonstratively. When the intermission came, I, a newly baptized disciple of the great artist, ran to the footlights to applaud. To my joy I found myself side

by

side with

When

Mamontov, who was doing

exactly

what

the general run of the audience saw that

plauded were well-known deal of confusion.

The

Moscow

artists

hissing stopped

.

.

and .

I

was doing.

among

those

actors, there

the applause

who

.

.

.

ap-

was a great

became

general,

104

Part H/ISADORA

and was followed by curtain

calls,

and

at the

end of the performance by

an ovation.

not get to Although for some reason he did

know her upon

that

Moscow, Stanislavsky received her as a guest of honor at the Moscow Art Theatre during her second visit in 1907. The refirst visit

to

became general, he says, "for our entire company joined me, as they had all come to know and love her as an artist/ And as the leading ballerinas of Moscow and St Petersburg came to know her they, too, loved and respected her as an artist. Isadora had strong ception

feelings

7

about the ballet as an

art

form but these did not extend to

great practitioners. For Kschessinskia, Pavlova, Karsavina, Nijinsky and many of the other stars of the Imperial Russian Ballet, she had its

admiration which she always unreservedly little-girl in their own field. Long years after all artists before great displayed her first visit to St. Petersburg she recalled how touched she was at her colleagues' kindness and warm hospitality. She told in detail how the same humble,

the prima bdlerina assoluta, Mathilda Kschessinskia, visited her and extended an invitation in the name of the ballet company to a gala

performance at the Maryinsky Theatre. Afterwards there was a mag-

famous ballerina's palace, where Isadora was presented to the Grand Duke Michael and various other members of the aristocracy, as well as to the leading dancers and artists nificent supper party at the

of the capital. Even more than in her appearances in Paris at the Sarah Bernhardt or in Berlin at the Kroll, the first appearances of the new dancer at the Salle des Nobles were not completely successful in conquering The fervent ballet lovers waiting for some out-

the whole audience.

ward

the dancer's "technique" were deceived and thoroughly disappointed by her apparent simplicity. The music lovers were divided among themselves about the propriety of her use of visible sign of

great music

which the composers had not intended for anything but The composer Rimski-Korsakov

instrumental or vocal performance. on this point wrote to a friend:

Concerning Duncan, I must tell you that I have never seen her. She presumably very graceful, a splendid mime and so forth. But the thing that repels me in her is her foisting her art upon, tacking it on to, music that is very dear to me and does not need her and on is

company,

which

its

Part II/EtmopE AND

105 composers had not counted.

How upset I

my

mimetically explained Antar, or Easter Overture!

He

goes on to remark:

".

.

that

.

if I learned that Miss Scheherazade for instance,

should be

Duncan danced and or

AMERICA

my

when miming

foists itself

un-

bidden upon music, it only harms it by diverting attention from it." One may be allowed, in passing, to wonder what he would have said

had he

lived to see the 1910 Diaghilev ballet set to his Scheherazade,

having no connection with the

original

scheme of the music and with

the attention diverted from

it, not only by the gorgeous costumes and sets of Bakst, but by the miming of Nijinsky and Karsavina and the titillating Oriental orgy. His family, it is said, did their best to

all

prevent the misuse of Rimski-Korsakov's music by the ballet company.

When

Isadora

Duncan showed Fokine and

others that

it

was pos-

dance to instrumental, operatic or orchestral music, most probably never intended by the composers to be a vehicle for any

sible to

Terpsichorean fancy, she also showed them how it was possible to respect the rhythm and inner meaning of such music. In her dancing of Gluck's Orpheus, Beethoven's Seventh Symphony, the pianistic morceauK of Chopin, and the seventeenth-century pieces of her Dance Idylls which all comprised her various programmes in Russia, she

neither distorted nor did violence to the composer's musical line or rhythm. There cannot be much ground for disputing the fact that

Fokine's Les Sylphides, Carnival, Cleopdtre, and the Greek-styled Acis et Galatee and Eunice were directly inspired by the ideas which

the American dancer

made

manifest before and during her appear-

ances in St. Petersburg in 1905. Today, fifty years later, the argument

still

continues about the

jus-

7

tice of dancers or choreographers

use of symphonic, instrumental, or vocal music never remotely intended by the composer for their use. Music lovers still find it difficult to excuse the uses to which masterpieces by Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Bizet, Chausson, and even Mahler have been put by contemporary choreographers. The forthright

George Jean Nathan has set down his opinion about the use of the last-named composer's Kindertotenlieder. This, for the choreographer's purpose retitled Dark Elegies, prompted Nathan to remark on the effort to combine choreography with Gustav Mahler's song cycle:

Part H/ISADORA

106

Inasmuch as Mahler composed this music after the death of a particularly beloved child and inasmuch further, as it reflects his deep and intimate sorrow, the idea of accompanying it with a troupe of kickers and posturers comes about as close to the obscene and ridiculous as is humanly imagi-

nable.