Isadora Duncan, 1920.

"Isadora Duncan's Russian days and her last years in France" by Irma Duncan, Allan Ross McDougall. Victor Gollancz LTD,London,1929.

This is so good when information about Isadora Duncan become available to public time after time. I hope you would find this link usefull.

The three of Isadorables. Margo,Lisa,Anna, c.1920

Library of Congress. Bain News Service 

  Library of Congress. Bain News Division.

Library of Congress. Bain News Service

Library of Congress. Bain News Service

Maria-Theresa Duncan,1927.

Isadora Duncan's program booklet, December 1920.

"Courtesy Diktats "

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.

Lisa Duncan, circa 1925

© Henri Martinie / Roger-Viollet

This image could not be shared in social networks such as Facebook or Pinterest according to "Terms of use"

Isadora Duncan Finds "True love" in a "Child of Apollo". The Miamy News, July 18,1926.

 

Possible murder of Isadora Duncan,part 2.

The third version
The third version is that the death of the great dancer was planed before head. This theory advances Valentina Pashinina in her book "The unknown Esenin". In this work she suppose that Isadora Duncan was killed by soviet agents. But why and for what? 
The years that was spent in Soviet Russia showed truth about the socialism regime  and the environment around country. Semi hunger, lots of homeless children, worker families without homes, insanitary in hotels,thievery,lawlessness in service, trains which arrived and set off not by timetable and other things. But the most she didn't like is how the government lead their life. Well dressed, living in good apartments and houses (some of them with servants),singing  foreign songs, having what to eat, at the time when  people die from starvation, some  of them lost their homes - such things couldn't disturb Isadora. She called them for that “the new bourgeoisie”. Later, in her European tourney, she would tell that she haven’t mat a real Bolshevik in Soviet Russia, only outside.  Who knows, maybe this effected on poor situation of school?
 Also, the soviet government almost didn’t help celebrated dancer with a dance school.  A year after the foundation of Moscow school they stop to help and didn’t send a money on its maintaining. . In vain she asked the government to help her. But they ignored her. Isadora only wanted warm room in winter and some food for her pupils, good electric, water, salary for teachers and some cloth for costumes. She was prohibited to dance “Slavic march” because of the royal anthem, which was in this march. Also, the dancer knew about shooting of royal family in a basement of the house in Yekaterinburg and about this was not desirable for people to know. If she told all this, then already fragile reputation of country was severely damaged. And that she would possible begin anti-bolshevik propaganda. And that’s why they didn’t want Isadora to write about her Russia days in  autobiography.
Secondly, her relationship with Esenin could be another cause of her murder. It is known, that lots of those who knew closely poet or somehow was attached to him, was eliminated or died by mysterious circumstances.

Thirdly, Isadora’s ideas of free body and mind didn’t suit with the politics of communist party, where interests and view of citizens were subordinated to the state or to the leader.

Who was the killer of Isadora?

Pashinina states that it was ex-white guard officer Peter Morgani and his companion  Vanjusha.

That at that day when Isadora was going to seat in the car, she offered her friend her coat and the driver his jacket. But she refused. Her body was covered by woolen shawl, which Duncan usually wore. Ivan, who followed her to the car, threw shawl on her shoulders, not listening her protests.

After that the car moved only on ten yards. Such thing couldn’t be called driving and at such speed the scarf couldn’t flew up to the air. The author suggests that Isadora’s scarf were geared for the spokes of a wheel machine, only in such case  asphyxiation would happen.

The second thing on which writer emphasis is that there wasn’t any wild crowed, which saw her death and tore the shawl on pieces and  witnesses who saw the death . At 9:30 pm  in the  autumn not much people you would see.

The third evidence is the difference in evidences. Mostly, there were two main witnesses of car accident, Mary Desti and Peter Morgani. It was Morgani, who wrote about wild crowd. As well,

 he describe Duncan as “ sad woman with red eyes “, unlike Desti, who showed a dancer as cheerful and carefree person.  In his writing “ The last letter of Isadora Duncan” he indented  postponed his meeting with Isadora on September, to put away the suspicion from him.

 Here how he describes his month with Isadora. Having heard about lonely famous dancer, who lives in red villa, they decided to meet with her. His friend Vanjusha was already in love with Isadora Duncan, although he never saw her before. After their meeting Isadora fell in love with young men too. Two weeks his love lasted for her, and then he moved away to Belgium.  More 20 days later the tragedy happen. But, the accident was on 14^th September!

Month later Vanjusha died in  the car crash.

Who was Peter Morgani, not much known. It could be possible that he was Isadora’s Russian secretary in need who agreed to help her to write a memoir. In the letter to Irma she wrote that she finely found well up secretary. Interesting thing, the first pages of  her days in Russia for the second book of biography was lost right  after the death.

Here is the version of  Valentina Pashinina.

P.S. Not long time ago I saw BBC documentary about the causes of death of Marilyn Monroe.

I think the Isadora Duncan death could be a good material for their next documentary.

The end.

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.

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.