Michel Fokine's letter to Mr. Martin about Isadora Duncan's influence on him.

Isadora Duncan was often named by some  dance researchers and ballet dancers, who knew Michel Fokine, as the one who  greatly influenced  Fokine and his chareography.  The ballet perfomer  objected this statement in his letter to Mr. Martin and there  he explaned why it's happened. Here are the excerpts from this letter:

The whole letter you can read in  St. Petersburg State Theater Library

The famous Russian ballet dancer Michel Fokine shares his point of view about Isadora Duncan's art in his autobiography

Michel Fokine, 1936. Photo by Howard Coster.  © National Portrait Gallery, London

Michel Fokine saw Isadora Duncan's  perfomances for the first time  in  Saint-Petersburg, in 1904, during her Russian tour. Fokine was impressed by her, and,according to his colleges and Duncan researchers, was greatly influenced by  Isadora's ideas and dances, so it greatly affected on his choreography and his vision of ballet. He saw in Isadora the changes, that should be done in ballet, the thing that  he was thinking about for long time. But here what Fokine by himself thought about the barefoot dancer:
I wish to talk about Isadora Duncan in some detail. She was the greatest American gift to the art of dance. Duncan proved that all the primitive, plain, natural movements - a simple step, run, turn on both feet, small jump on one foot - are far better than all the richness of the ballet technique, if to this technique must be sacrificed grace, expressiveness, and beauty. It is true that one should not sacrifice beauty or grace to the execution of technical difficulties. The error is in the supposition that technical difficulties could not be executed with grace, as if beauty and expressiveness may be associated only with simple movements.