The pupils of Isadora Duncan's Moscow school during their tour.

 

During 1928-1930 the 11th of most talented students from Isadora's Moscow school with Irma was touring abroad. This tour was arranged by Soul Hurok by Isadora's last request.The series of American concerts had good reviews. Except dances, the girls also was singing while dancing. But after the tour, Irma refused to take the them back home. Instead, she proposed  to stay with her and promised them a splendid career. The students declined the proposition and decided to return to Russia.Having no money to buy tickets, they started  to perform in universities. Lily Dikovskaya,the one of these pupils, in her book "In Isadora's steps" explaining this situation, wrote that Irma stole their honorars from tour and expacted that her students would return to her on any terms.
That's why they had to collect money by dancing to students.

The dance "Dubinuska" (Workman's Song)

Irma in her autobiography gave another version of this event. She said, that soviet government demanded  to bring  the pupils back. Washington's soviet ambassador Borovskiy gathered  the girls on  a secret meeting and told them to return to Soviet Russia, threatening reprisals to their relatives. Later, Irma read in newspapers that the girles, after retuning, was imprisoned for not sending the money from their concerts to government. But the truthfulness of this news couldn't be checked by her due to lost contact with  students. Herself, she didn't want to return to Moscow because of the lack of financing of school.
When the girls arrived to Soviet Union,they found out that the government wasn't expacting their return anymore and during American tour, the school was superseded from the building on Prechistenka.