Like many of her contemporaries, Isadora Duncan felt the draw of Europe and soon she left for London and then Paris where she first saw Loïe Fuller dance at the 1900 Universal Exposition. Duncan was deeply influenced by the Hellenistic revival in the late-nineteenth century and her evocation of classical Greek culture helped elevate dancing from being mere entertainment to being considered an art in its own right.

Many discussions comparing the work of Loïe Fuller and Isadora Duncan quote Louis Vauzcelles’s famous quip: “Isadora sculpts, Loïe paints. Useless to compare them” (qtd. in Albright 159). Indeed, Fuller and Duncan are often portrayed as the polar opposites. If Fuller is aligned with theatrical artifice and modern technology, Duncan is seen as the embodiment of nature and the ancient Greeks. If Duncan is mythologized standing, waiting for divine inspiration, Fuller is pictured with her sleeves rolled up, ready to experiment with the latest lighting effects. If Fuller is categorized as a modernist, Duncan is seen as a romantic. Fuller’s body disappeared under a mass of silk, while Duncan’s body was shockingly revealed by her light tunics. One was perceived as androgynous or masculine, the other as highly feminine. And yet in Paris at the beginning of the twentieth century, both dancers were seen as enterprising, independent, and eminently American women. If we shift the dynamic of their comparison from an either/or to a continuum, we can begin to discuss their differences and similarities without setting up a hierarchy of importance.

Classroom Activities

• Research: Divide the class into two groups with one group researching Loïe Fuller’s “Fire Dance” and the other group researching Isadora Duncan’s “Ave Maria.” Discuss the differences between a dance with realistic imagery (of a mother and child) and one that is inspired by a more general and abstract concept (fire).
• Move: Based on the research project, have students in the two groups create a short (3 minute) dance evoking some aspect of the two choreographies. Perform the works and have the audience write a description of what they saw. Read them aloud and compare these descriptions with the historical information about these dances.

Albright, Ann Cooper. Traces of Light: absence and presence in the work of Loïe Fuller. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2007.

In My Life, Duncan describes her seminal artistic moment:

I spent long days and nights in the studio seeking that dance which might be the divine expression of the human spirit through the medium of the body’s movement. For hours I would stand quite still, my two hands folded between my breasts, covering the solar plexus. . . . I was seeking and finally discovered the central spring of all movement, the crater of motor power, the unity from which all diversities of movements are born, the mirror of vision for the creation of the dance. (75)

In Fifteen Years of a Dancer’s Life, Fuller remembers her great discovery:

The mirror was placed just opposite the windows. The long yellow curtains were drawn and through them the sun shed into the room an amber light, which enveloped me completely and illumined my gown, giving a translucent effect. Golden reflection played in the folds of the sparkling silk, and in this light my body was vaguely revealed in shadowy contour. This was a moment of intense emotion. Unconsciously I realized that I was in the presence of a great discovery, one which was destined to open the path which I have since followed.

 

Gently, almost religiously, I set the silk in motion, and I saw that I had obtained undulations of a character heretofore unknown. I had created a new dance. (33)

For Duncan, inspiration was the quasi-religious energy (some might call it soul) that emanated
from the core of the body out through expressive gesture into the world to awaken a public to the “truth” of movement. Although it is easy to make fun of Duncan’s romantic language, the fact
still remains that much modern dance throughout the twentieth century was committed (despite stylistic differences) to a similar vision of the dancer as a vehicle for the expression of inner forces. Even for Fuller, whose description of her great discovery focuses on the visual display rather than the internal source of movement, there was clearly a sense of energy vibrating out of her upper body.

Classroom Activities

• Read: Read the prose portrait of Isadora Duncan by Gertrude Stein entitled “Orta, or One Dancing.”  Experiment with reading sections in a call and response pattern with a partner. Then try reading a section aloud in a canon structure, with one partner beginning to read after a paragraph or two.
• Analyze: Look at the watercolors by Abraham Walkowitz on the Primary Sources page and discuss the physical dynamics (spatial reach and energetic quality) suggested by the ink sketches and color shadings.
• Move: Inspired by the Walkowitz sketches and while listening to two people reading the Stein prose portrait, improvise a dance. Allow the rhythmic quality of the writing to influence your movement.
• Write: Reflect in writing on the experience of moving to the Stein prose portrait. How does this internal experience affect your knowledge of the historical context?

Duncan, Isadora. My Life. New York: Boni and Liveright, 1927.

Fuller, Loïe. Fifteen years of a dancer’s life : with some account of her distinguished friends. Boston: Small, Maynard, 1913.

These dancers shared a core physical experience: the exchange between expansion and contraction and the resultant opening up or condensing of the space around them. In Duncan’s movement, this most often took the form of simple under-curves and over-curves, punctuated by vibrant extensions of the upper body out into space around her. In Fuller’s dancing, the central torque of her body launched the silks into the air, and she rode that cycle of momentum and flight into increasingly complex figure eights. Both Fuller and Duncan harnessed their breath (inspiration) to elaborate this cycle of suspension and release with
in their movement phrasing as well.

Both Fuller and Duncan started with a bodily practice, producing a physical language that focused on breath rhythms, the dynamic use of the torso, and the articulation of gestures that galvanized space in new ways. In addition, they articulated the cultural potency of their artistic work in manifestos (Fuller’s “Light and the Dance” and Duncan’s “The Dancer and Nature“) that described the meanings of their life missions.

Classroom Activities

• Move: Working in a studio or gym space, have the students lie down on the floor, curled to one side. Ask the students to begin to extend their bodies into the space around them by using their breath (inhalation and exhalation) to motivate the movement. Ask them to attend to the differences between extending their core spine and extending and folding their limbs. Then have the students work beyond their own reach space by extending and moving through the space of the room. What is the difference between extension and expansion?
• Choreograph: Have the students experiment with dancing with a scarf or long piece of light material (silk) or a ribbon stick. Ask them to explore which kinds of movements create the longest suspensions of the fabric in the air.
• Write: Using large sheets (or rolls) of paper, have the students draw the lines in space created by the silk or ribbon of the exercise above. What do those drawings tell us about capturing movement on the page? How do they compare to the artistic representations of Loïe Fuller and Isadora Duncan?

Final Discussion

Bringing in all the modes of inquiry that we have used in this module – movement explorations, historical readings, visual analyses and discussions of the autobiographical and artistic manifestos – discuss what we have learned about these two exemplars of ‘Modern Motion.’

Jowitt, Deborah. Time and the Dancing Image. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989.

Inside the classroom, the students developed a strong, scientific basis of technique. They put on yearly pageants, often performed outside, which would allow the community to witness their dancing. The pageants were performed to classical music and often had natural or historical themes. Hundreds of students were involved in these pageants. The 1927 pageant “Our Lady’s Juggler” was so popular that a repeat performance was created in 1939.

However, fashions change. As the larger dance world began to experiment with more pared down movement, structure, and gesture, Oberlin followed suit. Dance at Oberlin has continued to evolve, staying at the forefront of movement of the time from the advent of Graham to the development of experimental dance in the 1970s.

For more on early dance at Oberlin, see Stephanie Woodard’s article, “Pioneers in Ohio.”

Classroom Activities

• Move: In groups, read about and execute your interpretation of the movement test from University of Michigan’s 1928 issue of “Nike.” Discuss whether the instructions were familiar or unfamiliar. Do you have an equivalent examination system? What would you want to measure in a movement test?
• Analyze: Review the images on the Program Covers for the “Natural Dancing Classes” at Oberlin College in the early twentieth century and discuss the intersection of grace and nature.
• Read: Why Dance?, a poem written by Lorraine Maytum that was included in a program for the Natural Dancing Classes at Oberlin College. Read aloud in class, and discuss how the poem reflects the themes of this module, particularly freedom from social restraint and moral uplift.
• Research: What is the history of dance and dance education in your local area? Go into the archives of your school, institution, theatrical dance venue, or public library and research the local history. Can you find dance in any yearbooks, programs, or photographs? Focus in on the early 20th century. Do you see any influences from Delsarte, Duncan, Fuller or other figures discussed in this module?

The video below shows Fuller’s choreography and lighting techniques, though the dancer in the video is not Fuller herself.

Learn more about Loïe Fuller and her work.

For more extensive information and resources about Fuller outside of this site, visit the Dance Heritage Coalition’s website.

The video below shows Duncan’s choreography.

Learn more about Isadora Duncan and her work.

For more extensive information and resources about Duncan outside of this site, visit the Dance Heritage Coalition’s website.

Learn more about Pearl Primus and her work.

In the years that followed, Graham created more than 180 ballets and developed a unique technique of movement based upon principals of contraction and release. Early ballets by Martha Graham had names like Claire de Lune, Desir, Danse Languid, and Maid with the Flaxen Hair. Yet within a few years titles such as Revolt, Immigrant: Steerage, Strike and Poems of 1917 revealed her commitment to the contemporary world.  For example, Heretic, in 1929, staged “the essence of the eternal struggle of the individual with something new to offer, coming up against the blank wall of conservatism in any field,” a theme that was repeated often throughout her career. As an artist, and particularly as a woman artist, she was a rebel in conventional American society.

Graham made a sympathetic portrait of an American woman through Frontier (1935), a dance that must have had special resonance for Americans during the Depression and as America’s heartland (some of it settled in the 1860s) became America’s Dust Bowl. Her 1936 Steps in the Street (which was part of a larger work called Chronicle), subtitled “devastation, homelessness, exile,” might have referred to any of the tragedies of the period (among them, the Depression and the Spanish Civil War which many American artists commented upon). American Document (1938), which included structural elements from minstrel shows and words from writings such as the Declaration of Independence, a letter from Red Jacket of the Senecas, and Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, made reference to America’s troubled history. Graham’s own heritage, perhaps, allowed her to apply a broad lens to American history.

Learn more about Martha Graham and her work.

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 ask “What is an American?”

Classroom Activities

Read: Read aloud excerpts from the text accompanying Martha Graham’s 1938 dance American Document.

Discuss: Talk about what becoming “American” might mean for immigrants arriving in the United States, in the past and in the present. Ask students to comment on the different perspective of the First and Second Episodes.

Write: Free-write a response (5 minutes) to the American Document text, asking students to pay particular attention to their experiences of becoming “American.” (How) Do they identify themselves as Americans? Does the history present in American Document resonate with them?  List documents, events, attitudes, social and cultural practices such as holidays, material goods and the like that contribute to that identity. Do they know people who have come to America as immigrants?  What about their own families? Discuss their experiences.

Move:

• Break into groups of four or five and share a movement learned based upon their own cultural identity (See Jawole Willa Jo Zollar).
• Teach the movement phrases to the other members of the group and discuss how the movement phrases relate to their sense of identity.
• Share the ideas created during free-writing. Does anything in the writings suggest movements or text that might contribute to a dance about American identities?

Expand:

• Keeping in mind the lists created during free-writing and discussion during your in class work, find text that defines your “American-ness.”  This might include excerpts from documents such as the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, advertising slogans, poetry, or excerpts from novels and speeches.
• Read Mona in the Promised Land or another novel dealing with identity and the immigrant experience.
• Students might research and analyze any of the documents from the text of American Document. The full text of American Document is available in Needham, Maureen ed., I See America Dancing, 206 – 215.

Final Project

• In their previously established small groups, students review the movement phrases they worked on and the materials brought into class.
• After agreeing upon a theme, students collaborate to create a movement study, using compositional techniques such as call and response, theme and variation, or phrase accumulation, and integrate the music, spoken text, design, or whatever artwork inspired their theme into the choreography.
• Students present their studies to their peers.
• Through free writing, students respond to the experience of embodying their distinctive American identities.  In writing, they compare and contrast their own movement studies with themes and movements in any of the dances that they have studied: Martha Graham’s American Document, Steps in the Street or Frontier; Pearl Primus’s The Negro Speaks of Rivers, Strange Fruit, Hard Time Blues;  Jawole Willa Jo Zollar’s Walking with Pearl.
• Students share their responses in a final discussion.

Classroom Activities

Watch: View Strange Fruit and Hard Time Blues. Ask students to observe with the following in mind: What movement elements do you see in the dances: spatial patterns (for example, straight line, circular, rectangular, lines at right angles), body shapes, and different movement qualities, i.e. light/strong, fast/slow, direct/indirect? How does Primus express themes of social commentary and protest in her work? What gestures does she use?  How do the movement elements support the meanings of these dances?

Discuss: What do Primus’s dances tell us about 1940s America?  Comment on the irony of Americans fighting to liberate Europeans during World War II, while racism continued in America.

Compare: Can you isolate and describe the differences between Primus’s and Graham’s dance expressions of social commentary and protest themes?

Move: Set up a movement experience that allows students to explore gestures and movement qualities present in Primus’s work and that students might relate to contemporary protest. This might be done through a technique class, improvisation, or dance making experience.

Read: Read the information on Pearl Primus from Margaret Lloyd’s chapter “New Leaders—New Directions” from The Borzoi Book of Modern Dance. Do some research on America in the 1940s and list some events important to African Americans in the 1940s.

Expand: Can you think of examples of social commentary and protest as reflected in popular culture today? Bring in examples of contemporary artists who use details from their lives—their experiences, their travels, their personal relationships—as inspiration for the creation of their music, visual art, literature and poetry, or dance.

Connect: You might also create a project that asks students to interview senior members of their community and collect oral histories of the Great Depression.

Research: Find American literature that reflects themes of social and political protest. Poetry is a good choice to focus on since that is the literary form Primus drew upon to inspire several of her dances.