The legend of Isadora Duncan: France

Thursday, 11 February 2016

Isadora Duncan's second school in France.

In 1914 Isadora Duncan, with the help of Paris Singer, founded the school in Paris. It was her second try to teach children her art and to make them harmonious developed people. Her previous school was in German,Grunewald,which she headed with her sister Elizabeth. But,mostly,due to financial problems and Elizabeth's plan of opening her own school , it was closed. Isadora hoped to spend the rest of her days at Bellevue and to leave as a legacy the result of her work. With the help of her senior students, brother and some friends, she selected 20- 30 children from different countries.
In biography she didn't write in details about school regime and teaching. So, to understand better what the school represented, the best illustation would give the memoir of actrees Elsa Lanchester,who was Duncan's student for a short time, "Elsa Lanchester herself'":

When I was about eleven, Raymond Duncan told Biddy that his sister, Isadora Duncan, was opening a school for talented children in Paris - “ To Teach the World to Dance." All expenses would be paid. I was a chosen child, one of about twenty in the world-lsadora's world.

The school building at Bellevue had been given to Isadora Duncan by a very wealthy gentleman called Paris Singer, of the Singer Sewing Machine family. Bellevue had been a large hotel with 150 bedrooms. It was still furnished in the manner of the nineteenth century,with brass bedsteads glittering with knobs that we would all screw on and off during idle hours and on wet days. We each had our individual grand suite with vast black-and-white tiled bathrooms with bidets. After getting over the shock of what a bidet was for, we children had a lot of fun with our miniature Versailles.