Monday 29 September 2014

Possible murder of Isadora Duncan,part 1.

   Eighty seven years ago Isadora Duncan was killed in a car incident. Althought  the cause of her death was clear, not everybody of her friends belived that it was just an accident. Some of them hinted or  openly declareted that she was assassinated.
   There are, at least, three versions of her death. The first one is official . Her death was caused by scarf that stuck in  a wheel of  the car.
 The second one - Isadora was cursed. According to Mary Desti's book "Isadora Duncan's end" and Brooklyn Daily Eagle Newspaper, she was cursed by a very famous film vamp. One day in Paris , Mary and Duncan were ridding in a car with a vamp actress and her young man. Isadora had just "packed off" a man, feeling that "his only salvation was in getting away" from the vamp. He was in a highly nervous state owing to the girl's spiritualistic experiments. The famous "vamp" rose sudddenly and majestically to her feet in the car and screamed, "You have taken my mate from me. What about my child?"

Sunday 28 September 2014

Isadora Duncan dance in honor of Rodin.Velizy, 30 June 1903

Isadora danse en l'honneur de Rodin à Vélizy. Photogtapher: Jean François Limet

                                                      Paris, musée Rodin. Inventory number : Ph.742   
                                                                   http://www.musee-rodin.fr                     

Monday 15 September 2014

Unidentified dance of Isadora Duncan. Perfomed by Anna Duncan,1942.



Music: Johannes Brahms (music added to video in 2007)
Recorded at Jacob's Pillow: August, 1942 
Recorded at Jacob's Pillow: 
August, 1942
Recorded at Jacob's Pillow: 
August, 1942
Recorded at Jacob's Pillow: 
August, 1942

Sunday 14 September 2014

The death in a car accident 87 years ago

Raymond and Elizabeth Duncan on Isadora's funeral. Nice, 16 September, 1927. De Sumatara Post, 15.10.1927.
14 september 1927 Isadora Duncan has died in a car accident. At that evening, a french  driver came to dancer with a car to  take her for a short driving,by the other sorces,to demonstrait a vechicle or teach her driving. Isadora was suggested to wrap herself in a cape and the driver offered her his leather jacket . But Isadora refused, and wrapped herself with a shawl or put it around her neck. The loose of the shawl was laying on the ground,but nobody noticed it. Only when the car started to move, Mary Desti, who acompanied Duncan to the auto, saw that and сried to her friend: "Isadora! Ton chale! Ton chale!" But she wasn't heard and everything hapened too quickly.  A scarf stuck in a wheel,broke her neck and cut carotid artery.The  vechicle of the car was strong. The arrived doctor said that there was nothing that he could do about that.The death was instant.

Wednesday 10 September 2014

Isadora Duncan's letter to Henry Ford, January 1926(1927)

© ‘Courtesy Sotheby’s’


Isadora Duncan's letter was sold on Sotheby's auction for $3,750. Note that the letter have two dates. At the begining it was dated as January 1927, at the end Isadora, by her hand, wrote January 1926.

Here what catalogue note says:
Isadora Duncan lectures Henry Ford on modern dance and "the sex instinct."  In 1926, Ford and his wife began a campaign to save the young people of America from the Charleston, the black bottom, and other lascivious dances.  They advocated a return to the minuet, the waltz, the quadrille, and other respectable forms of dance.  Duncan writes, "... I think you are making an error, however, for all the so-called ball-room dancing, whether it be the old-fashioned Polka and Valse, or the modern charleston and Black Bottom, springs from the same source.  The form may differ, but the expression is the same.  The source of all is the sex instinct, and I believe that all these dances, whether of 1851 or of 1927 are inadvisable in the education of children ....The dance which should be taught to the children of every school in America is the great American dance as I discovered it, inspired by the work and courage of the first Forty-niners, inspired by the vast plains, the Rocky Mountains ... the spontaneous American dance which sprung from the inspiration of our only Bard Walt Whitman ....
"... Just as you would not teach a child of any free Republic the doctrines of Louis XV or George III, so you would not teach to a child the servile courtesan movement of the Minuet or the coquettish sex expression of the Polka.  and I would as soon think of teaching a child to repeat a string of foul language as to allow it to dance either the charleston or the Black Bottom.
"Dear Mr. Henry Ford, if you want to teach dancing to the children in your cities, send me an invitation and I will come with joy and teach them all to participate in a dance which will express all the highest visions of America as seen by the heroes of the Revolution and the great pioneers; a dance which will be worthy of Abraham Lincoln.  Speak the word and I will come ...."
with: a copy of Ford's "Good Morning": After a Sleep of Twenty-five Years, Old-fashioned Dancing is Being Revived.  Dearborn, 1926

You can view Ford's "Good morning" here.

Thursday 4 September 2014

Russian publicist,philosopher Vasily Rozanov about visiting Isadora Duncan

I visited Isadora Duncan. As it should be expected , she is not childless. At my request to give a portrait during goodbye,she shook her had ("no") and, taking off the table,showed me a portrait of two kids, almost naked, in marvelous classical  poses."Only".On the one photo - she is with children. On the other two - children in different poses.
                Duncan, Isadora 78 / photograp... Digital ID: isadora_0078v. New York Public Library

            Duncan, Isadora 79 / photograp... Digital ID: isadora_0079v. New York Public Library

Tuesday 2 September 2014