In the 1890s Loïe Fuller created an extraordinary sensation in Paris with her manipulations of hundreds of yards of silk, swirling high above her and lit dramatically from below. She embodied the fin-de-siècle images of woman as flower, woman as bird, woman as fire, woman as nature. One of the most …
The word inspiration can mean to be filled with excitement, to be motivated, or to be moved by a great idea or a creative act. It can also mean to breathe life into something. In fact, in French, inspire (inspirer) is an actual verb meaning to breathe. This etymological relationship …
In a chapter entitled “The Search for Motion” in her book Time and the Dancing Image, Deborah Jowitt writes of Duncan: “She thought of herself as a dynamo” (90). Referencing the early twentieth-century cultural fixation on electricity, Jowitt claims that Duncan’s use of her solar plexus as the center of …
Just as Irene Castle, Isadora Duncan, and Loïe Fuller influenced the fashion and movement of the times, the influences of “natural dancing” and Delsarte began to make their way into higher education. Oberlin College, a small liberal arts school in Ohio, proved to be a pioneer in this regard. While some …
Loïe Fuller was born in 1862 in Fullersburg, a small town just outside of Chicago. A verbally precocious child, Fuller began performing in her teens, first as a temperance speaker and later as a member of the buffalo Bill troupe, touring American on the vaudeville circuit. Her various dramatic roles …
Isadora Duncan was born in California in 1877 into a free-spirited, artistic family. She and her mother, brothers and sister lived in San Francisco where they taught social dancing until Isadora decided to try a career in the theater. Eventually Isadora persuaded her mother and siblings that she needed to …
Pearl Primus (1919-1994) was born in Trinidad and moved with her family to New York City when she was three years old. While she was growing up, her family instilled in her a sense of the cultural heritage of her West Indian and African roots. When she became interested in …
Martha Graham was born in 1893 in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, and moved to Santa Barbara, California as a teenager. Her father was a graduate of the College of Physicians and Surgeons in Baltimore and a specialist in nervous disorders. George Graham’s influence on the young Martha was profound. “Bodies never lie,” …
Martha Graham’s dance theater piece, American Document (1938), featured text written by the choreographer. It was revised by Graham in 1989 and inspired a new work of the same name created by the Martha Graham Dance Company and Ann Bogart’s SITI Company in 2010. All of these iterations sought to …
Pearl Primus was a member of the New Dance Group where she was encouraged by its socially and politically active members to develop her early solo dances dealing with the plight of African Americans in the face of racism. Strange Fruit (1945), a piece in which a woman reflects on …
