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.

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.

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 and more leisure time for middle-class women), the first generation of modern dancers believed that bodily movement could be an expression of inner feeling, a physicalization of one’s “true” self. The word “expression” means “to press out,” and Madonna’s exhortations to communicate one’s true feelings resonate with the new approach to movement and gesture developed by the first generation of “modern” dancers 100 years earlier. In the late nineteenth century and first decades of the twentieth century, proponents of “expressive” or “interpretive” dancing flooded the theaters, living rooms, college gymnasiums, and community stages of America, helping to lay the cultural foundations for later generations of women performers to “express” themselves – just like Madonna.

This module explores the cultural context of early modern dance, delving into the dress reform, temperance and early feminist movements that contributed to its rise in America. Dance pedagogy, both in higher education and in early movement systems like Delsarte, was influenced by the scientific leanings of the time. The cultural landscape, in turn, was influenced by individuals, from ballroom dance sensation Irene Castle and the fictional Gibson Girl to the dance icons Loïe Fuller and Isadora Duncan. Despite differences in personal temperament and artistic sensibilities, these two innovators shared strong wills and the experience of working to support themselves early in their lives. Eventually, both became world-renown dancers, rivaling even Madonna’s star power. Through examining their manifestos, autobiographies, photographs and and artistic renderings of their performances, we will understand more fully how these two dancers came to embody not only a new manner of moving for women in the early twentieth century, but a new way of being in the world.

Next Section: Moving into the Twentieth Century