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 …
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 …
Express Yourself! When Madonna released her 1989 hit single “Express Yourself,” little did she realize how directly her lyrics echoed themes expounded by American women at the end of the nineteenth century. Riding on the momentum produced by the twin forces of industrialization and urbanization (which included increased educational opportunities …
