In her autobiography, she says this about her birth: The character of the child is already determined in the womb. She could not eat anything except oysters, which she washed down with ice-cold champagne. she and her family made a pilgrimage to Greece. By the 1980s, classical dance had returned to its starting point, while modern dance, or by this time already contemporry dnce, had become a highly technical weapon of professionals not far from politics.
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Introduction……………………………………………………………………….….3
CHAPTER I. Isadora Duncan, the founder of modern dance
1.1 History of dance. Modern dance…………………………………………….…5
1.2 Isadora Duncan is the founder of a new direction……………….8
CHAPTER II. Biography and work of Isadora
2.1 Ancient Greek sculpture of Isadora…………………………………….....9
2.2 The famous "sandal"………………………………………….……......11
Conclusion……………………………………………………………….……...17
References………………………………………………………...........20
INTRODUCTION
The life of Isadora Duncan promised to be unusual from the very beginning. In her autobiography, she says this about her birth: “The character of the child is already determined in the womb. Before my birth, my mother experienced a tragedy. She could not eat anything except oysters, which she washed down with ice-cold champagne. If they ask me when I started dancing, I answer "in the womb. Perhaps because of the oysters and champagne."
As a child, Isadora was unhappy - her father, Joseph Duncan, went bankrupt and ran away before she was born, leaving his wife with four children in her arms without a livelihood. Little Isadora, who, having hidden her age, was sent to school at the age of 5, felt like a stranger among prosperous classmates. This feeling, common to all Duncan children, rallied them around their mother, forming the “Duncan clan”, challenging the whole world.
At the age of 13, Isadora left school, which she considered completely useless, and took up music and dancing seriously, continuing her self-education.
At the age of 18, young Duncan came to conquer Chicago and almost married her admirer. It was a red-haired, bearded, forty-five-year-old Pole Ivan Miroski. The problem was that he, too, was poor. And in addition, as it turned out later, he was also married. This failed romance marked the beginning of a series of failures in her personal life that haunted the dancer all her life. Duncan has never been absolutely, unconditionally happy.
The relevance of the work. Isadora insisted that dance should be a natural continuation of human movement, reflect the emotions and character of the performer, and the language of the soul should become the impetus for the emergence of dance. All these ideas, innovative in nature, naturally came into conflict with the ballet school of that time. A sharp assessment of the ballet itself, however, did not prevent Duncan from admiring the grace and artistry of two Russian ballerinas, Kshesinskaya and Pavlova. Moreover, with the latter, they later even became good friends who sincerely appreciated each other's talent.
The performances of the dancer began with secular parties, where she was presented as a piquant addition, an exotic curiosity: Isadora danced barefoot, which was new and shocked the audience.
The tour significantly improved Duncan's financial situation, and in 1903 she and her family made a pilgrimage to Greece. Dressed in tunics and sandals, eccentric foreigners caused quite a stir in the streets of modern Athens. Travelers did not limit themselves to simply studying the culture of their beloved country, they decided to make their contribution by building a temple on Kapanos Hill. In addition, Isadora selected 10 boys for the choir, which accompanied her performance with singing.
Goal of the work : consider the work of Isadora Duncan.
Tasks :
1. Show Isadora Duncan as the founder of modern dance;
2. Describe the biography and work of Isadora.
CHAPTER I. Isadora Duncan, the founder of modern dance
1.1 History of dance. Modern dance
Historically, dance has been used by people as part of religious rituals and public holidays. Evidence of this is found in many documents of the prehistoric era. Probably court dances have existed for as long as kings and queens. The variety of dance forms included folk, social, ballroom, religious and experimental and other forms. A major branch of this art was Theatrical Dance, which originated in the Western World. The roots of modern ballet, the dance we all know, go back to sixteenth century France - the Renaissance.
Most choreographers and dancers of the early 20th century were extremely negative about ballet. Isadora Duncan thought it was ugly, pointless gymnastics. Martha Graham (Graham) saw in him Europeanism and imperialism, which have nothing in common with the Americans. Merce Cunningham, despite using some of the basics of ballet technique in his teaching, approached choreography and performance from a position directly opposite to traditional ballet.
The 20th century was definitely a time of separation from everything that ballet relied on. A time of unprecedented creative growth for dancers and choreographers. A time of shock, surprise and spectators who changed their idea of dance. A time of revolution in the full sense of the word.
The sixties marked the development of postmodernism, which changed course towards simplicity, the beauty of small things, untrained bodies and artless, simple movements. The famous "No" manifesto, which rejects all costumes, plots and "window dressing" in favor of raw, unprocessed movement, is perhaps the brightest extreme of this wave of new thought. Unfortunately, the lack of costumes, plots and props do not contribute to the success of the dance show and after a short time, "settings", "artwork" and "shock level" reappeared in the lexicon of contemporary dance choreographers.
By the 1980s, classical dance returned to its starting point, and modern dance (or, by this time already contemporary dance) became a highly technical weapon of professionals, not far from politics. The two forms of dance, contemporary dance and classical ballet, peacefully coexist side by side, experiencing only a tiny fraction of the former hostility towards each other and almost without entering into rivalry. Today, dance art is imbued with creative competition, and choreographers often strive to ensure that their work is called the most shocking. However, there is still beauty in art, and the dance of modernity amazes with such professionalism, strength and flexibility, which have never been before.
To understand what modern dance is today, it is necessary to turn to its history, starting from the reason for the emergence of a new direction.
So, at the beginning of the 20th century, a new dance direction appeared in America and Europe (called modern by the Americans and contemporary dance by the Europeans), as an alternative to the existing classical ballet, as one of the ways of expressing new feelings and thoughts characteristic of art. of that time, boldly rejecting the conventions of ballet forms, differing from it in greater freedom and expressiveness of means.
Several major figures stood at the origins. The ideas of the French teacher, composer F. Delsarte (1881-1971), who argued that only a natural gesture, freed from conventions and stylization, were able to convey human feelings, had a huge impact on the new vision of dance.
The Swiss educator and composer Jacques-Dalcroze (1865-1950) associated the teaching of music with the movement. The music must be "embodied". On the ideas of Dalcroze in the 1920s, the Institute of Rhythm worked in Leningrad, whose employees sought to create "dancing music".
If Delsarte and Jacques-Dalcroze are theorists, authors of the concept of new dance, then the famous American dancer Isadora Duncan (1877-1927) is considered the direct founder of modernity, who turned the idea into movement. Accusing classical ballet of soullessness and artificiality, Duncan tried to reproduce the free plasticity, the plasticity of Ancient Greece, she danced barefoot in light transparent tunics. It is difficult to describe modern dance more precisely than Duncan herself did in her autobiography “My Confession”: “Freedom of body and spirit gives rise to creative thought, body movements should be an expression of an internal impulse. The dancer must get used to moving as if the movement never ends, it is always the result of internal reflection. The body in the dance must be forgotten, it is only an instrument, well-tuned and harmonious. In gymnastics, only the body is expressed by movements, while in the dance, feelings and thoughts are expressed through the body. “Isadora made me consider the art of dance important and noble. She made him consider it art” (Agnes de Mille).
It should be noted that the very time the beginning of the 20th century was a fertile ground for the emergence and development of ideas that reflected a new perception of oneself and the world by a person. The language of ballet dance, so familiar and predictable, no longer responded to the changed life, as it painted a person in whom faith had been lost. The ballet remained a classic, and emerging art movements such as expressionism and surrealism found expression in productions by modernist choreographers in Europe and America.
DANCE MODERN, one of the directions of modern foreign choreography, which originated in the late 19th - early 20th centuries. in the USA and Germany. The term "modern dance" appeared in the United States to refer to stage choreography that rejects traditional ballet forms. Having come into use, he supplanted other terms (free dance, Duncanism, barefoot dance, rhythmoplastic dance, expressive, expressionist, absolute, new artistic) that arose in the process of development of this direction. Common to the representatives of modern dance, regardless of which trend they belonged to and in what period they proclaimed their aesthetic programs, was the intention to create a new choreography that, in their opinion, would meet the spiritual needs of a person of the 20th century. Its main principles are: the rejection of the canons, the embodiment of new themes and plots with original dance and plastic means.
In an effort to achieve complete independence from traditions, representatives of modern dance eventually came to the adoption of certain technical techniques, in the confrontation with which a new direction was born. The installation for a complete departure from traditional ballet forms in practice could not be fully realized.
The ideas of modern dance were anticipated by the famous French teacher and stage movement theorist F. Delsarte, who argued that only a gesture freed from conventionality and stylization (including musical) is capable of truthfully conveying all the nuances of human experiences. His ideas gained currency in the early 20th century after they were artistically realized by two American dancers who were touring Europe. L. Fuller performed in 1892 in Paris. Her dance "Serpentine" was based on a spectacular combination of free body movements, spontaneously generated by music, and a costume - huge fluttering bedspreads, illuminated by multi-colored spotlights.
1.2 Isadora Duncan - the founder of a new direction
However, A. Duncan became the founder of a new direction in choreography. Her preaching of renewed antiquity, the “dance of the future”, returned to natural forms, free not only from theatrical conventions, but also from historical and everyday ones, had a great influence on many artists who sought to free themselves from academic dogmas.
Duncan considered nature as a source of inspiration. Expressing personal feelings, her art had nothing in common with any choreographic system. It appealed to heroic and romantic images generated by music of the same nature. The technique was not complicated, but with a relatively limited set of movements and poses, the dancer conveyed the subtlest shades of emotions, filling the simplest gestures with deep poetic content. Duncan did not create a complete school, although she opened the way for something new in choreographic art. Improvisation, barefoot dancing, the rejection of the traditional ballet costume, the appeal to symphonic and chamber music all these fundamental innovations by Duncan predetermined the path of modern dance
CHAPTER II. Biography and work of Isadora
2.1 Ancient Greek sculpture of Isadora
Had she been born not on May 26, 1878, but in Ancient Hellas, the priests would have seen in her gift an earthly incarnation and a revived "practice" of the muse Terpsichore. Had she not lived in the agitated Europe of the beginning of the bloody 20th century, modern feminists would have made her their tribune and role model. If she were not mortal, people would never have known that even the frantic grief of loss cannot extinguish in the heart of a woman who has devoted herself to art, the desire to find her male god, the inspiring god Apollo. Well, the most surprising thing about her romantic fate was that a rare biographer did not experience a feeling of confusion from a huge number of mystical details, the cloying and concentration of which for a fictional literary image could become a reason for criticism to accuse the writer of promoting fatalism and of the far-fetched plot. Are you a vessel in which there is emptiness, or are you a fire flickering in a vessel? This was not said about her, but nevertheless one day a bright spark of divine fire flared up for her, illuminating the path in art, in one of the Greek vases depicting an ancient dance, which made the famous Isadora Duncan out of an aspiring American ballerina.
On that May day, when Isadora Angela Duncan was born, the mother of the future star of European scenes suffered two disappointments at once: the first sounds she heard, barely recovered from childbirth, were the furious cries from the street of her husband's bank depositors, who had fled the day before with their savings god knows Where; the first thing the unfortunate woman saw was that the newborn almost convulsively flailed the air with her feet. “I knew that a monster would be born,” she said to the midwife, “this child cannot be normal, he jumped and jumped in my womb, this is all punishment for the sins of her father, the rascal Joseph ...” She did not see in the first movements of the baby are a mirror reflection of her future fate. However, despite the complete absence of the gift of foresight, the music teacher managed to put her daughter and three older children on their feet without the help of a rogue dad, and even give them a good education. However, these efforts were of little use to Isadora: at the age of 13 she left school and became seriously interested in music and dancing. Nevertheless, the attempt to conquer Chicago ended in nothing for her, except for the first stormy romance with the fiery red seducer, married Pole Ivan Mirosky, who burned her soul to such an extent that the dancer preferred to escape from bitter happiness to Europe, not disdaining even those the only mode of transport she could then afford was the hold of a cattle ship. Foggy London breathed on her with the stiffness and intimacy of secular salons, which, in the face of fierce competition, could only be conquered with something stunning. Only here than temperament? On the other side of the English Channel, her main rival Mata Hari had already found her credo in the dance, risking to undress in front of the public, and bewitched her with oriental steps.
2.2 The famous "sandal"
In deep thought, Isadora wandered through the halls of the British Museum and searched, searched ... The grace and artistry of the outstanding Russian ballerinas Kshesinskaya and Pavlova were too academic and involved a long and exhausting drill with lessons, enslavement to a jeweled dogma. The greedy American woman had neither time nor spiritual strength for all this - she breathed a thirst for freedom in art and in life... A huge red-figure antique vase, taken from Athens, caught my eye. A slight tilt of the head, fluttering folds of the tunic, a hand flying up overhead in a graceful gesture. At the feet of the dancer, raising a cup of wine, sat a bearded warrior. There is nothing more beautiful than a galloping horse, a sailing ship and a dancing woman. Through the centuries, the artist was able to convey the deep admiration of the man for the dance of the hetaera, the representative of the most seductive, the most free from the humiliating life and the most educated female caste of the ancient world, performing at the artistic banquet of the classical era symposium. Who was this dancer, and who is her spectator? She is Thais, Aspasia or Terpsichore herself; is he Pericles, an associate of the great Alexander Ptolemy... or one of the Greek gods in earthly form? A flame of insight flashed before Isadora...
Within a few days, she found a patroness in the person of the famous actress Campbell, whom she infected with her idea dance should be a symbol of freedom, a continuation of natural grace, speak the language of emotions, and not once and for all rehearsed gestures. The prudent queen of salons made her protégé debut at one of the private receptions, where she presented it almost as an "exotic snack". And the daring Isadora did not fail, she performed barefoot and in a tunic instead of a tutu, having managed to copy ancient Greek plasticity in many respects, she saw admiration in the eyes of the audience. Success rushed ahead of her in the sandals of Hephaestus already in 1903, Isadora was able to go on tour to the coveted Greece, where she honed her plastic improvisation skills. She was applauded by the best stage venues in Europe, everywhere her performances were sold out. And the newspapermen, like hounds on a blood trail, rushed to investigate the details of the personal life of an amazing woman. And also hit a goldmine.
Finally, luck smiled at Duncan: she was engaged for a small role in the New York theater by the famous Augustine Daly. It was a chance. Ivan Mirotsky fell into despair at the thought of separation. They swore eternal love. The girl promised that as soon as she achieves success in New York, they will immediately get married. At that time, Isadora was not yet an ardent supporter of free love, for which she subsequently fought.
In New York, she was accepted into the troupe. A year later, she left with the theater on tour in Chicago. Isadora looked forward to meeting her betrothed. It was a hot summer, and every day, free from rehearsals, they went to the forest and took long walks. Before leaving for New York, Isadora's brother found out that Mirocki had a wife in London. From this news, the mother of the bride was horrified and insisted on separation.
The unique style that distinguished Isadora Duncan's dance numbers arose after her study of the dance art of Greece and Italy and was based on some elements of the rhythmic gymnastics system developed by François Delsarte. In 1898, Isadora's entire wardrobe was destroyed by a terrible fire at the Windsor Hotel in New York, so during her next performance, she went out to the public in an impromptu costume, which she herself invented. The audience was shocked - Isadora appeared on stage almost naked. From that time on, the strong, slender body of the young dancer began to fit the famous flowing clothes, tucked under the chest and on the shoulders in the antique way. She did not recognize pointe shoes and danced like Aphrodite on her fingers. Her bare feet were beautiful, strong and light.
Isadora went on a big tour of Europe and soon became the darling of the entire continent. She signed a contract with the impresario Alexander Gross, who organized her solo performances in Budapest, Berlin, Vienna and other European cities. Shocked but excited crowds besieged the theaters to see the passionate dance performance of Isadora, half-naked, improvising to the music of famous composers (Strauss' Blue Danube or Chopin's Funeral March).
Isadora was one of those who chooses men herself. And I chose, it must be admitted, with excellent taste. In Budapest, a talented actor, the handsome Magyar Oskar Berezhi preferred a career in connection with her, then the writer and teacher Henrik Tode broke down under the weight of sanctimonious morality and broke up with Isadora after the first scandal of his legal wife. Then theatrical director Gordon Craig, already engaged to another, appeared in her life. At the age of 29, the dancer received the first award in her life from this unhappy love - she had a daughter, Deirdre, which means "sorrow" in Celtic. Then, exhausted after a difficult birth, Isadora made a statement, later picked up by feminists: “Who thought that a woman should give birth in pain? I don’t want to hear about any women’s social movements until someone thinks of how make childbirth painless. It's time to end this senseless agony." And yet, after the marriage of the next "Apollo" with his former bride, the great dancer made a disappointing conclusion for herself: love and marriage do not always go hand in hand, and love itself cannot be eternal. At the end of 1907, she gave several concerts in St. Petersburg, where she met a new candidate for the role of the only man for the rest of her life. She was out of luck again Konstantin Stanislavsky, also a genius and also a handsome man, let her know that he saw in Isadora nothing more than the ideal embodiment of some of his ideas.
The world-famous "sandal" with her deafening romances with married men broke the taboos rooted in the minds of society, and those who could give her long-awaited happiness were pleased that they were her lovers, nothing more. She remained lonely on her dance Olympus, giving the ungrateful a return to the distant origins of art. At this stage of her life, she seemed to almost touch the realization of the eternal female dream, having met the sleek and handsome rich man Paris Eugene Singer, heir to the inventor of the sewing machine. He not only paid all her overdue bills, but was even ready to offer his hand and heart. However, he was so jealous that he set a condition for marriage, stipulating a place for Isadora somewhere between a toothbrush and a sewing machine. Isadora declared that she could not be bought. Almost immediately after their son Patrick was born, they broke up. The new drama broke the actress: she began to imagine either funeral marches or two children's coffins among the snowdrifts. "Insanity" turned out to be a premonition of the first real trouble, because in a series of novels, children were her only light.
In January 1913, after meeting with Singer, both of Isadora's children, together with their governess, were driving from Paris to Versailles. On the road, the engine suddenly stalled, the driver looked under the hood, pulled something. The car, knocking down the driver, rushed off and, together with the passengers, fell into the Seine. She never recovered from this loss. Isadora was haunted by visions one day she fancied that she saw her babies entering the water. A sobbing woman who fell to the ground was picked up by a passerby. "Save my sanity, give me a baby," she moaned. The young man was engaged. The boy born from their relationship lived only a few days. Isadora began to drink, newspapers even changed her name to Drunken (drunk).
Duncan tried to lose herself in the dance. “Isadora dances everything that others say, sing, write, play and draw,” Maximilian Voloshin said about her, “she dances Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony and Moonlight Sonata, she dances Botticelli’s Primavera and Horace’s poems.” But it was more a look back at the past than real life. Even a short romance with the Russian pianist Viktor Serov could not resurrect her. She tried to commit suicide ... A couple of days after she was pumped out, on September 14, 1927, in Nice, Isadora Duncan got behind the wheel of a sports car. It was cool, but she refused to put on a coat, tying a long scarf around her neck. The car pulled away, but did not drive even a hundred meters. The end of the scarlet scarf was pulled into the spokes of the wheel by a gust of wind ... The head of the 50-year-old dancer fell sharply, poking her face into the car door. The scarlet scarf strangled her.
It is hardly worth looking for an allegory in this, they say, the founder of the new philosophy of natural dance was killed by the symbol of the revolution fluttering in the wind, just as the proletarian noose itself strangled free art. Dying, she managed to say: "Farewell, friends, I'm going to glory!". And in this glory was her happiness. Honored. Even if not as desirable by her as simple female happiness given to many.
Duncan's innovation was admired by dance lovers, and soon she was met with crowded theaters and concert halls throughout Europe. During her first visit to Russia in 1905, she attracted the attention of Sergei Diaghilev. The ballerina's personal life was also a constant subject of newspaper headlines. As in art, she constantly violated the taboos rooted in the minds of people. She gave birth to two children without marrying either father. In 1913, a tragedy struck the ballerina in Paris. The car, in which her children and the nanny accompanying them, fell into the Seine, and all three drowned.
1920 marked a new stage in the life of the ballerina: she was invited to Soviet Russia to organize her own ballet school. One of the first among the artists of the West, she welcomed the young revolutionary state, and this decision was quite consistent with her nature.
Acquaintance with the poet Sergei Yesenin, who was 17 years younger than her, ended with their marriage in 1922. Duncan decided to tour the United States and went there with the poet. But the timing was bad: America was frightened by the "red threat" - and they were greeted as Bolshevik agents. The obstruction arranged in Boston, when she introduced Yesenin to the public during one of the performances, forced her to leave her homeland with the words: “Farewell, America! I will never see you again."
It was also unfortunate to stay in Europe. Yesenin left her, returned to the USSR and soon committed suicide. And two years later, in 1927. Isadora also tragically died when, during a car ride, a long scarf thrown around her neck fell under a car wheel and strangled the artist.
CONCLUSION
Behind a ramp of white hyacinths against the background of heavy folds of a single-colored fabric, suddenly appearing from the shadows hidden in them, slender half-girlish, half-adolescent figures in transparent chitons, vaguely revealing the outlines of their bodies, silently, in deep silence coming from the music, perform the joyful sacraments of dance ...
Among the general public, there are the most distorted ideas about this emerging art. When they say: "Plastic dances", "Ancient dances", "dances a la Duncan", "Sandals", this only indicates a deep misunderstanding of the meaning of the phenomena taking place before our eyes.
Since Isadora Duncan appeared and convinced us in her triumphal procession through Europe that the ancient element of dance has not died, everything that happens in this area has inevitably become associated with her name. But she was not the first, because she herself was a student of Louis Fuller, who, in turn, followed the path pioneered by François Delsarte. Isadora Duncan only opened the doors wide and opened the way to the future.
There is nothing more arbitrary than to look at these dances as illustrations of music, and on the other hand, treat them as a new form of ballet. The latter view is especially common. Ballet, which took on the forms of a new dance, only added to the confusion. In fact, ballet and dance are different in their very essence. Ballet is for the eyes only. In ballet, the dancer is aware of himself, but only in gesture, only on the surface of the body. In the ancient dance associated with the name of Isadora Duncan, the rhythm rises from the very depths of the unconscious essence of a person, and the whirlwind of music takes away the body, like the wind takes a leaf.
The view that this new dance is an illustration of music is also incorrect. There is a deeper connection between music and dance. Music is the sensory perception of a number. And if the orders of numbers and their combinations, on which a musical melody is built, are perceived by our being sensually, then this is only because our body in its long biological evolution was built in those numerical combinations that now sound to us in music.
Music is literally the memory of our body about the history of creation. Therefore, each musical measure exactly corresponds to some kind of gesture, preserved somewhere in the memory of our body. An ideal dance is created when our whole body becomes a sounding musical instrument and for each sound, as its resonance, a gesture will be born. That this is actually so is proved by hypnotic experiments: hypnotized people repeat the same movements with a known motive. The dances of the famous Madeleine, dancing under hypnosis, are based on this. But dancing under hypnosis is a cruel experiment on the human soul, not an art. The way of art is to realize the same, but through conscious creativity and consciousness of one's body.
To make your body as sensitive and ringing as the tree of an old stradivarius, to achieve that it becomes all one musical instrument, sounding with inner harmonies - this is the ideal goal of the art of dance.
What is more beautiful than a human face, reflecting correctly and harmoniously those waves of moods and feelings that rise from the depths of the soul? It is necessary that our whole body becomes a face. This is the secret of Hellenic beauty; there the whole body was a mirror of the spirit. Dance is the same sacred ecstasy of the body as prayer is the ecstasy of the soul. Therefore, dance in its essence is the highest and most ancient of all arts. It is higher than music, it is higher than poetry, because in dance, outside the word and outside the instrument, a person himself becomes an instrument, a song and a creator, and his whole body sounds like the timbre of a voice.
Such an ideal dance may not yet exist. Isadora Duncan is only the promise of this future dance, only the first hint of it. But the path to its implementation has already begun.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
1. Volynsky A.L. "Book of jubilations", 2000
2. Zakharov R. "Conversations about dance", "Composing a dance", "Notes of a choreographer", "Art of a choreographer", 2003
3. Smirnov "Art of the choreographer", 2002
4. G. Denis & Luc Dassville "All Dances", 2004
5. Isadora Duncan "My Life", "Dance of the Future" 2000
6. Kasatkina T.S. "Isadora", 2003
7. Kostrovitskaya. V, Pisarev A. "Classical dance school", 2004
8. Tarasov "Classical dance. School of male performance", 2004
9. Serebrennikov N.N. "Support in a duet dance, 2002
10. Stukolkina N. "4 exercises", 2001
11. Ustinova T. "Protect the beauty of Russian dance", 1999
12. Bekina S.I., Lomova T.P. "Music and movement", 1998
13. Kokh I.E. "Fundamentals of stage movement, 2002
14. M. Tobaas, M. Stewart, 1999
15. Sobinov B.M. "Dancing gymnastics", 2004 Powerful air gun Umarex SA 177
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| 1909. | Creativity S.P. Zalygin and the main types of female images in the story "On the Irtysh" | 38.11KB | |
| The work of Sergei Pavlovich Zalygin covers a wide range of such problems as the problem of humanity, the problem of man's relationship to nature, the problem of the peaceful existence of man on earth. Zalygin as a starting point in understanding the world. | |||
The work of Isadora Duncan
The work of Isadora Duncan was treated differently: some admired her art, others considered her performances too frank and even indecent. Duncan herself was not embarrassed by such assessments. She has been dancing since the beginning of her life. Maximilian Voloshin spoke about her work: “Isadora dances everything that others write, sing, play, draw. She dances the "Moonlight Sonata", the poems of Horace and the funeral march. With gestures and movements, she wanted to convey her true essence to those around her.
Among Isadora's friends was the sculptor Auguste Rodin. Having once seen his work at an exhibition, Isadora decided that she must definitely visit the workshop of the great sculptor. She was captivated by his genius. “My pilgrimage to Rodin,” wrote Isadora, “resembled a visit to the god Pan by Psyche, with the only difference that I wanted to know the way to Apollo, and not to Eros.” Rodin gave the famous dancer a short tour of his workshop, showing Duncan his creations. Isadora was amazed at the delicate modesty with which the master showed her his masterpieces: only occasionally did he quietly pronounce the names of the sculptures or simply run his hands over them. They then proceeded to Duncan's studio.
Isadora expounded her theory of dance to Rodin and, dressed in a tunic, danced in front of him. This first meeting could not have ended in a friendly way: Rodin tried to seduce Isadora, but, as Duncan wrote, "my ridiculous upbringing ... made me step back, throw a dress over a tunic and leave him bewildered." Subsequently, Isadora was very sorry about her "childish delusions" ... Two years later, she met again with Rodin, who for many years would be not only her friend, but also a teacher. Once, while making sketches of Isadora's students, he said to her: “Why didn't I have such models when I was young? Models that can move in accordance with the laws of nature and harmony! True, I had beautiful models, but none of them understood the art of movement as much as your students.
Another famous French sculptor, Emile Antoine Bourdelle, depicted Isadora dancing on the facade of the Theater on the Champs Elysées. He wrote about the American dancer: “Isadora is the embodiment of proportion, subject to elemental feeling; she is mortal and immortal, and both her faces represent the law of the divine principle, which is given to man to comprehend and merge with his life. Isadora Duncan was also familiar with the famous French artist Eugene Carriere. She often visited his studio, visited the artist's family. Isadora recalled his house, which was full of books, and Carrier himself was surrounded by family and friends. "This young American woman is revolutionizing the world!" - the artist once said about Isadora.
At that time, the general public did not yet know Isadora, but she was able to conquer lovers of high art. Duncan was especially pleased to hear from such people compliments and confirmation of the recognition of her work. “In an effort to express human feelings,” Eugene Carrier admitted, “Isadora found the most beautiful examples precisely in the art of Ancient Greece. She is inspired by the magnificent figures in the bas-reliefs, and she admires them. Endowed with the gift of a pioneer, she turned to nature, where these movements were taken from. Wanting to imitate Greek dances and revive them, she found her own way of expressing herself... Just as Greek creations come to life at some point in front of us, so we become younger, looking at her, a new hope is born and conquers in us, and when she expresses humility before inevitability, together with it we submit to fate. Isadora Duncan's dance is not entertainment, it is an expression of personality, a living work of art." These words of the artist were especially dear to Isadora's heart.
Having received the technique from the study of ancient monuments, she not only perfectly repeats them, but fantasizes herself, as if continuing what the Hellenes started.
The best that she performed with us is “Primavera” by Botticelli and Orpheus Gluck.
In Primavera, she gradually depicted all the figures of this picture. The second figure on the right: she, a baby, rejoices in spring, laughs, picks blue flowers; like a stalk, stretching towards the sun and bathed in waves of light; all victorious, smiling, shining like nature around:
“Seeing the joy of unity of the Sun, moisture and stems. Your spirit will be like a plant, Your gaze will shine brighter ... "
Here is the round dance (on the left). The girls curl, now raising their interlaced hands high, then lowering them.
Here is the middle figure - she walks slowly, solemnly, as if blessing.
Looking for a girlfriend in the underworld. He conjures with his lyre the gods; he is full of longing, wandering in terrible halls
Aida, waiting with tenderness and longing. His gait is unsteady...
But now... He recognizes her... Let there be further death and hell. He smiles, beams. She runs. A fast dance... Bacchic... a whirlwind of passion... head thrown back, hair tousled around. Purple, light tunic rushes about, flows. This is holy ecstasy. The eyes burn and, as it were, they see Bacchus himself at the top.
Then the beautiful Narcissus and Echo.
A young man enters a forest lawn. A wonderful vision of Hellas... Everything around is beautiful, like him... Sings the flute of a forest faun... Narcissus is in love with himself... He admires himself in the reflection of the stream, to which he bent down, and eagerly, eagerly looks. From each of his steps, from each glance, wonderful flowers bloom, laurels turn green, streams sing. Echo, the goddess of silence, plays with him, repeating his sighs and cries. He himself plays with Echo - hides and listens to his own shout.
Her "Les dances idylles" - "The girl's farewell to her lover" - a series of poses in which everything was primitive, simple, epic, trusting.
In Gluck's Iphigenia in Aulis, she developed a profound tragedy, and not a single gesture of affectation spoiled this wonderful bas-relief.
She alone depicted both the choir and Iphigenia, characteristic fantastic and pyrrhic dances.
Here she is running across the stage, imitating the greeting of the choir: jumping with her arms raised, she steps back, jumping. Iphigenia arrived in Aulis - and the choir rejoices and dances a circular joyful dance. The dance of the Chalkid girls from high jumps in front of each other and with blows, as if into discs, put on both hands, for which the hands alternately rise above the head, then fall to touch the disc in the other hand. Iphigenia walks slowly past, admiring the dance. She is sad not seeing Achilles.
The militant dance of the Chalkid girls, delighted with the arrival of the Greek troops: as if challenging each other to fight - jumping in one place, obviously, in front of each other. Then change places with the enemy, as if before a fight. All this with the head drawn into the shoulders and somewhat protruding forward, as if peering.
Combat: Aiming with a spear and jumping, changing places with the enemy. Kneeling on one knee, the opponents aim from the bow, and the bowstring is pulled with a hand wound behind the head from behind. The joyful dance of the Chalkid girls in honor of the approaching wedding of Iphigenia - from chasing each other and jumping next to each other.
She goes to the altar, ready to sacrifice herself for the army. Choir is sad:
When shall we dry our eyes? Will suffering always threaten us? Or only a quiet grave will return to us the peace that has long flown away?
Despair, tears, with his head bowed low, standing on one knee, with one arm wrapped around him, with the other wrapped around his bowed head. Keeping his hand on his head, he gets up and slowly walks in a circle.
Dance of the Furies - with the body bent forward, with one arm forward, the other back - extended horizontally and changing alternately. Small zigzags.
Mrs. Duncan danced the music of Chopin. In addition to purely musical interest, her dances have an interest in carrying ancient dance principles into modern times.
Unfortunately, we have no images of her poses (except for a few placed here) and therefore it is difficult to talk about the technique of her "waltzes", which are completely different from modern waltzes.
Principles of Isadora Duncan “The challenge of the modern dance school is to find those primary movements of the human body from which the movements of future dances could develop in an ever-changing, endless and natural sequence,” says Ms. Duncan.
“I intend in time to establish a school, to build a theater where a hundred little girls will learn my art - they, for their part, will improve it even more. In this school, I will teach children not to imitate my movements, but to make their own. In general, I will not accustom them to known certain movements, I will direct them to create those that are natural to them. Whoever always sees the movements of a very small child will not deny that they are beautiful - they are beautiful because they correspond to him ... "
“The coming soul and body will be so harmoniously developed that the movements of the body will be the natural language of the soul. The dancer will belong not to the nation, but to humanity. She will not try to dance fairy dances, imitate mermaids or coquettes, she will dance like a woman, in her greatest and purest manifestation. She will express in her dance the life of nature and show how one element turns into another ... "
“Its movements will reflect the movement of waves and whirlwinds and the growth of everything on earth, the flight of birds, the wandering of clouds, and, finally, the thoughts of man about the universe.”
“Modern ballet signs its own verdict, diligently disfiguring the naturally beautiful body of a woman…”
“We are not Greeks, and therefore we cannot dance Greek dances. The dance of the future will be a new movement, the fruit of the entire path traversed by mankind…”
Introduction to the discipline
Modern dance is a dance that seeks to express spiritual needs.
human spirit, it is the language of feelings, expressing the most secret movements of the spirit
shi. The naturalness and free expression of the dancers serve this purpose.
the best way. Modern dance is always a dance on the edge, to the limit
saturated with emotions. With the advent of modern dance, new
opportunities for dancers through the use of movements, expressing
exorbitant severity, as well as ugliness, since "ugly" movements
dance, along with beautiful movements, contribute to the expression
feelings and emotions.
“Improvement of body, mind and soul” remains relevant in
Nowadays. Modern dance helps the physical development of a person and
quenches him spiritually. Ballet training is based on a precise, unchanging
movement program. Modern dance rejected this program, changing and proving
that movement arises naturally and individually. Movements in dance
Art Nouveau are dictated by nature and are built according to the anatomical laws of the movement
of the human body. “True dance does not consist of various
updated pas and pos. The dancer does not need them: he only has to find
features of the movement, most truthfully expressing the movements of his soul
shi". This is a method of movement, subordinate to breathing and anatomically justified.
body movements. This is a certain dance system with its own
principles and laws of technical performance, in which the body acquired
your full language. Education of the muscular apparatus, free from
canons of classical dance, develops and liberates the human body.
It gives the ability to control oneself, to move easily and plastically, freely.
keep in life. This new type of dance was born from the principles laid down
nyh Isadora Duncan, and imbued with her psychological truth.
Section 1. From the history of the issue
The historical role of Isadora Duncan in the development of dance
"The history of modern dance is the history of personalities ...", - said in one of
interview with A. Girshon. Undoubtedly, a new dance - modern dance - began with
named after Isadora Duncan. "The charm of the first will always be for her name
light halo. Her historical role bears comparison with the roles
all the founders of new eras and styles: she was inspired by the enthusiasm
the spirit of denial, the spirit of magnificent rebellion, creative protest against
conventional art forms.
Francisco. At the age of 5, hiding her age, she was sent to school. Due to family
She was very often alone during her stays. Wandering by the sea, she betrays
indulge in your own fantasies. Everything danced around her: flowers, birds,
us, she danced too. At the age of 13, Isadora left school in order to seriously
play music and dance. In 1895, 18-year-old Isadora Duncan, accompanied by
driving her mother went to Chicago. But an attempt to conquer this go-
her art ended for her only in disappointment. Then, in
New York, she studied at the ballet school for a year, working in the theater, where she
there were pantomime performances. At the end of 1896 with the troupe of Daly Isadora
went on tour in England. Returning at the beginning of 1898, Aise-
Dora Duncan parted ways with the troupe, concentrating her efforts on her own
military independent career. Among the first dances of her repertoire were
"Ophelia" and "Narcissus" - both to the music of E. Nevin; "Breath of Spring", "Dance
joy" - both to music by Strauss; "Rubai of Omar Khayyam" - three to music
Strauss and three to music by Mendelssohn. These lyrical dances were the basis
on literary sources. In 1899 she and her mother, sister
and two brothers in the hold of a cattle ship, the only
transport, which was then affordable for them, is sent to conquer the Euro-
pu. Here she meets influential people, finds her patrons.
lei. Her tours begin. 1900-1901 - Paris; 1902 - Ber-
Lin and Vienna. Success swiftly rushed ahead of her. In 1903 Isadora
was able to go to the coveted Greece. Greek dance was the ideal for Aise-
dora. Her dances are characterized by the spirit of Greek simplicity. Greek technique,
explains Ginner, a contemporary of Duncan, begins with an assessment of the role that
ruyu is performed by every part of the body. The ancient Greeks highly valued
the beauty of a human foot that it would never occur to them to cover it
during the dance. Each part of the body had its own emotional functions.
“The meaning of the liberated body in dance is equal to the principle of pure colors
Pressionists ... Isadora Duncan was the first to dance without shoes ... ". To her
applauded the best stages of Europe, everywhere her performances
went with a full house. Its first appearance in Russia dates back to 1904-
1905 years. Her performances in Russia made a significant impression,
it was from this era that Russian ballet began to join Chopin and Schumann.
Duncan receives recognition as the inspiration for the dramatic
ballet revival in the 20th century.
In 1906, fate rewarded A. Duncan with the birth of his daughter Didra, and in
1910 son Patrick was born. Love took a big place in life
dancers. For all the novels of A. Duncan ended dramatically, and the children
were the light in the series of her unhappy love. In January 1913 both children
Isadora, together with the governess, were driving from Paris to Versailles, and
the car, along with the children, fell into the Seine. From this loss, A. Duncan is not justified
never curled.
At the beginning of her career, A. Duncan studied plastic in-
interpretation of music, the art of open improvisation (occurs in our
days). She had the rare gift of painting music, using it to pro-
awakening your own emotions, visions and dreams. "About the musical
The verses of her dances talked and argued especially a lot. Dance Duncan determined
as "a mimic illustration for music", as "the aspiration of the life of the spirit,
concentrated in music, rhythmically embody in found fanta-
ziya images". In the sounds of a musical work, she was looking for eternal
rhythms that led the hand of the creator. Not an illustration, but a translation into another language
would be the exact definition of her dance." The movement basis was
where a simple gymnastic complex. And, living in London, on tour with
Daly troupe, Isadora took ballet lessons from Katty Lanner (approx.
ballerina of the Royal Theatre). Practicing classical dance, she
more convinced of his failure. And the more she's into it
convinced, the stronger her determination to go her own way grew stronger.
She refuses classical forms, becoming a "subverter" of the class.
sic dance. Her dance is based on the principle of the naturalness of human life.
century in dance.
The school of François Delsarte had a strong influence on Isadora's dance.
(1811-1871), his theory of body movements. Plastic system F. Delsarte
contains an analysis of many varieties of gesture and body positions. Stre-
trying to figure out how movement becomes material for art
imagery, he established an extremely precise scale of functional
of each part of the body in its connection with emotions and was the first to scientifically substantiate
human gestures, giving each of them a name. Delsarte recognized the gesture
purposeful and organically connected with the experienced feeling. He
said that there is nothing more terrible and regrettable than a gesture that does not carry in itself
it makes no sense that any feeling, experience or joy a person experiences
gives through gestures, pos. And no matter what the words say, no movements
when they don't lie. His theory became widespread at the beginning of the 20th century. and lay down in
the basis of A. Duncan's creative searches. Having determined for himself that the human body
can be divided into three main areas: head - mental area, upper
torso - emotional and spiritual zone, lower torso - vital and physical
Skye, Isadora was inclined to believe that the source of movement originates in
upper torso, so in the dance she was interested in the emotional and spiritual
sides. “Movement is motivated by emotion, and the instrument of its expression
must be a human body." “With all the grace of your being, your-
with pirouettes, languor, awe of nakedness under the covers, she created
la a new language, an ensemble of metaphors capable of conveying musical
times,” wrote the composer Gustave Charpentier.
Isadora was the first to use ugly movements as an important element
dance ment. The "Dance of the Furies", created by her in 1911, showed how
ugly movements in dance can contribute to the expression of feelings and
emotions. For her, the only criterion for evaluating movement was the answers to
questions: is it natural? Is it true? Is it expressive? “She reproduced
excites in his dance the whole gamut of human emotions, - said Fokin, -
America's greatest gift to the arts."
With the outbreak of the First World War, Isadora began to create dances on
political and social themes such as "La Marseillaise" and "Slavonic
All American representatives of modern dance considered themselves to be after-
A. Duncan's followers, despite the fact that her creative path took shape in
mainly in Europe. Isadora had many followers, but to become the
the innovator of a new direction in choreography was not given to her.
. America's first modern dance school
In America, the first school of modern dance was opened in 1915 by Te
home of Shawn and Ruth St. Denis. The program of this dance school was "perfect
cultivating the body, mind and soul." The students learned Spanish
Greek and Oriental dances. The use of Greek themes and symbols
phonic music - a clear influence of A. Duncan. At school, in addition to dancing,
other forms of art and philosophy also began to develop. Much attention was paid
costume, which was considered an integral part of the plastic expressive
sti. By the technical virtuosity and pomp of the Denishawn performance
were purely compared with the Russian Ballets. The emergence of the school and creative
the search for its organizers suggests that modern dance is gradually
rotated into a certain dance system with its own principles and
technical laws. The appearance of the school was the first attempt
who systematize the "new" dance and Ted Shawn with Ruth St. Denis began
the first professional teachers of modern dance.
Saint-Denis (1879-1968) was a dancer, choreographer and teacher.
She shared the views of F. Delsarte and did gymnastics according to his system.
topic. She gained fame by performing theatrical cult
dances of the East. "Ruth St. Denis was undeniably one of the brightest
new dance stars. Some kind of, almost ideal, embodiment has been achieved in it.
nie. Along with her realism, Ruth Saint-Denis intoxicated with striking sensuality.
the subtlety of her image. Her dance is elemental, extrajudicial, insane, at the same time
deeply thought out, conscious ... Of all the considered options for Ruth's dance
Saint-Denis alone has style." Ruth Saint-Denis was passionate about oriental dance
tsem, later, after parting with Ted Shawn, she organized in New York
school of oriental dance, where he spent sessions of yoga and meditation. "Before 1963
years she performed with concerts, lectured, taught.
Ted Shawn (1891-1972) was a dancer, teacher, choreographer
rum. He started dancing at the age of 17. In 1910 he organized a school and
small troupe. In 1914 he became a partner of R. Saint-Denis. T. Shawn
led the men's dance group. "He initiated the professional
national American male dance. Using in dance performances
the general folklore of various peoples, including the American Indians, T.
Shawn has enriched the vocabulary of modern dance.” Denis Shawn's school was
professional school and lasted until the 30s of the XX century, giving
the birth of the first generation of choreographers and performers of the American
modern dance. Such well-known teachers and choreographers came out of this school.
like Doris Humphrey, Charles Weidman, Martha Graham.
Martha Graham - the founder of the modern dance system.
Principles and laws of motion in her technique
In the history of modern dance, one name stands above all. That name is Martha Grae
hem. She was born in the family of a psychiatrist in the city of Allegheny (Aleghsni),
State of Pennsylvania May 2, 1893. The ancestors of her family were the first American
Kanese settlers, Irish great-grandfather came to America from Scotland with
aiming to make a career in Pittsburgh. Babysitter Catholic Lisey, incredible you
thinker, knew many fairy tales. As a child, the future famous dance-
She was surrounded by servants in the house and gardeners - Japanese and Chinese. So about-
at once, M. Graham was influenced by two religions: Presbyterian and Roma
but Catholic. After attending college, she began a serious career in 1916.
New dance class at the Denishawn School in Los Angeles. by her teachers
were Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn. T. Shawn drew attention to the swarthy ex-
centric girl with long strong legs and gave her a leading role in
fantastic ballet "Xochitl" to the music of Grun. So the dance began
career M. Graham.
“Small, with black hair, a long face and very, very
thin. She did whatever she wanted with her body. She had a small
foot, flexible hook as well as strong. She was small in stature, but in her
lived a great power. It was God's gift of strength and flexibility...,” recalls M.
Cunningham. She was characterized by lyrical qualities and a well-learned
in "Dani-Shown" oriental style of performance.
Until 1923, M. Graham worked in the troupe of the school, performing leading
roles in performances. She is attracted to finding her own way in choreography. "IN
our days, when people are opposed to hostile and threatening re-
realities, choreography can no longer be just art - masterful
a whim of the imagination or the revival of a beautiful romantic dream.
Man wants not to forget himself, but to know himself. The dance must become an act
active participation in life, a necessity,” said M. Graham. From 1923
year, she begins dancing in the Broadway revue "Greenwich Village Follis",
staging dances for herself. Since 1926 - begins to teach at the theater
1926 M. Graham made her debut in New York with great success as
choreographer, but still retaining the exotic manner of dance taken from
Denishawn School.
In 1927, M. Graham organizes his own troupe from those devoted to her
students and begins to create his own style of dance and choreography.
This happened during the formation of the art of modern dance as
directions in choreography. It was at this time that M. Graham began to make
the first steps in creating your unique technique.
Significant influence on the formation of aesthetic views of M.
Graham was rendered by the composer Louis Horst, with whom she was deeply connected
personal and creative relationships. L. Horst was for M. Graham her
a supporting "pillar", a person who was initiated into her creative
searching. He introduced M. Graham to the ideas of Mary Wigman, a representative
German expressionist school of dance. Expressive plastic
dance M. Wigman considered a biologically natural reflection
certain moments of the psychological state of a person,
contrasting it with classical ballet. "She dances without music, and her
immaculately developed body, allowing all turns and postures, and its
dance against the background of iodine, sky and earth is opposed to all the most wonderful
frilly expressionism, as a magnificent promise of the future - organ-
the insignificance of the dance, which should not be confused with the old natural
Isadora's naturalism. Mary Wigman believed that space is the world
dancer, it is a reflection of infinity, a symbol of the ever-changing
around dance medium. Movement fills the soul of the dancer with delight
complete merging with space, and these ideas turned out to be close to M. Graham.
The dancer must "peer, ponder through space", as
if it were impenetrable, moving - “listen to
space” and “carve out” a place for yourself in it. Getting to know the views
German dancer helped M. Graham to get rid of stylization
and exoticism inherited from Saint-Denis.
In her creative search, she determined that the movement under-
obeys three basic constants: time, space, energy. He
believed that the internal energy of the performer is released and
"splashes" into space during the dance. Like K.S. Stanislavsky,
M. Graham emphasized that emotion provokes movement.
Movement, she believed, should and could define emotion more precisely,
than words. "No matter what the words say - the movements never lie... the dance
should not do anything that you can say in words. He must
be expressed in actions colored by deep feelings that can
be expressed only by movements. Having created her own school and troupe, she
She also created her own language of movements, developing its technique in detail.
An important component of her technique was the so-called internal impulse:
"She not only used our bodies, she also used our souls,
our inner life...”, her students recall.
M. Graham's technique lessons began with simple movements that
turned into long dance chains with the addition of various
positions of arms and legs and changing directions, levels of movement This new
technique and was very bold and was not limited to generally accepted
traditions and stereotypes. She started with her own beautiful body
Graham and the extraordinary movements she performed. This technique
dance was and is an opportunity to find a way of self-expression through
the movement of the body in dance, the appearance of which is largely made up of breathing. M.
Graham found the answer to her own questions by discovering new movement
body capabilities. She paved the dregs to create her own manner
dance using contraction and release. Any movement must be
motivated by the inner life of the dancer. Martha said that when
the inner life is not developed, "infertility" develops, and the lack
motivation will lead to meaningless movement, meaningless movement
Downfall. This is a completely new approach to the physics of motion, subordinate
respiration and anatomical changes during the respiratory process. M.
Graham revealed the mechanism of movement - effort and relaxation, carefully
hidden in classical dance. It became an essential element of her
technique, its concept of movement based on "compression -
release." It is an outpouring that fills the whole body. She said,
that movement should not be invented, but discovered in oneself. Martha Graham
used all sorts of ways to awaken the imagination, including in
lessons to work on hundreds of images of animals. Martha taught in free
manner, fully concentrating on the subject. Every year in class
new moves added.
In 1938, Eric Hawkins entered Martha's life. He became the first
a man in the troupe, and later - her husband. His appearance was coming
Femininity in Art M. Graham. It was a new stage in her life and
creativity. “With the advent of men, the nature of the company has changed, and with
technology has changed. What was smooth and strong is now
weightless and impetuous, like mercury, ”remember the first performers
troupe of Martha Graham.
M. Graham introduces a classical dance lesson into the work of the troupe, which
Eric Hawkins began teaching. He had a classical background and
joining the company, he danced in the Balankhin Ballet. The dancers were
shocked by the appearance of the machine in the studio. Ballet was their antagonist.
“I loved her old technique more. Yes, people hurt their knees. But this
it was more inventive, it was more exciting. A lot of
exercises with parallel legs disappeared, exercises on the floor too
were changed…,” recalls John Butler. Technology has expanded and
enriched, but the basic technical principles remained unchanged. E.
Hawkins, dancing in "American Document" (1938), added to the movement
weight, power and strength, which was not there before him. In "Letter to the World" (1940)
the created men's group participated. M. Graham has changed a lot here
his technique for the sake of creating "male" movements. Inside some
variations and parts of the scenes of the main dance of men and women kept
gender relations, but more emotionally than through
movement. The main changes were brought about by the introduction of the male
athleticism, which was a significant change in vocabulary. In the 40s. V
dancers began to come to the troupe from classical choreographic
preparation. M. Graham, taking into account and using classical dance, created
his own system of correlation between classical dance and his own technique. She
was interested in using classical dance to develop
of his technique.
M. Graham, being interested in all kinds of art, created her own “theater
dance." She approached the characterization process like a dramatic actor.
Dramatic training of performers was important in the troupe
Graham. The dramatic approach to the dance was obvious, and this was facilitated by
the inner depth of Graham's work, her superhuman strength and
a dramatic talent that was legendary. It would be appropriate here
cite the memoirs of John Butler, a member of the troupe from 1943 to 1953: “I
heard her sobs. It wasn't just crying or even despair. This
there was something bigger and deeper, almost animal suffering. These were the flows
tears. There was something extraordinary, something from gothic stories or
Greek tragedies. It happened after the break with Eric Hawkins.
Throughout Graham's life, her technique has steadily grown,
expanded and changed. But she always remained the one "... from what we
depended not only for endurance training, but also for obtaining
source of motivation for emotional satisfaction,” says Peter
Sperling, troupe dancer from 1973 to 1987, associate professor of dance at
University of Michigan. The members of the troupe helped M. Graham to create
and conducting classes and experiments, calling her studio "the temple of the pelvic
truths." In 1957, the film "The World of the Dancer" was filmed, which reveals
Graham's main ideas and her troupe is represented. Sophie Maslova and Gertrude
Schurr, while at Graham's company, made a practical Lesson Description and
created a detailed curriculum. In practice, this program has 4
level of study and takes about three years. The program includes, in addition to
studying Graham technique, studying music, composition, teaching
seminars and presentations.
In the Graham technique, the class begins on the floor. Followed
kneeling exercises, knee bending exercises that
developed into a series of movements in order to rise from the priest. movements
body and arms were performed in a standing position using various
jumping along the diagonals of the class and in a circle. New patterns have been introduced
counts: slow quarter, double count for percussive motion or count
thirds for lyrical movements. Change of accent and counting, blending
rhythms and uneven dimensionality have become familiar to modern dance.
Patterns of 10 or 5 bills have also become common. Dancers must dance
barefoot. “They have to come to class and get their bodies ready for work.
School is a disciplined place because there is only one
freedom is discipline,” said M. Graham, “I prefer to teach
their students from the age of nine. I'm biased towards having
prior training and would prefer it to be ballet. Eat
things that should be familiar: fifth position, for example, next - pile,
the use of various poses of the body, but only ordered.
In 1970, at the age of 76, being 49 years old on stage, M Graham
left the troupe. "My body can no longer do what I want," said
she. She fell into depression, losing the will to live. rebirth
occurred only in 1973: “My work must continue even if I
I can't dance anymore." M. Graham continued to live, rehearsing,
traveling, creating new dances for the troupe and watching classes at the School.
In 1984, she was awarded the Order of the Legion of Honor. Until the very last
day she remained elegant and fit. In 1991, M. Graham died.
Her book The Notebooks of Martha Graham, published in 1973, sheds light on
sources of Graham's creativity as a dancer and choreographer.
Having traced the life path of M. Graham, we can confidently say that
her dancing technique changed as her personality changed
a performer who has transformed in her aesthetic perception,
in an intuitive search for movements that would reflect social
Problems. "You have so little time to prepare for your birth in
a moment, for a moment,” noted M. Graham.
"We remember Martha" - under this name the series is published
interviews and memoirs edited by Joseph X. Mazo. Author creates
portrait of a purposeful, devoted to art artist, faithful
certain principles and values of evolutionary change. This is a portrait
a woman who, realizing her strength, is ready to admit mistakes and start
re-create: “She could be ruthless with her
dancers and generously inspire them. She could be sharp and tactful
she had a sharp mind and loved to laugh, adored "soda", counted sweat in
classroom "pure pretense", was practical. And those who worked with her,
understood that they were communicating with a genius.
At the beginning of the XX century. she, in fact, became the oracle of the choreography of the new
time. Various ideas of European and American modern dance found
in her work the most holistic and versatile implementation. At the same
time, the art of M. Graham was the fruitful basis of a new stage
development of modern dance. Directly or indirectly, her work influenced
almost all foreign choreographers who came to the stage at the beginning
fifties of the XX century. M. Graham School of Modern Dance,
established in 1927 in New York, is now the largest center
Isadora Duncan, queen of the dance.Perhaps, one can say about this woman in the words of Pushkin: “All life. mine was a guarantee of a faithful date with you. In the memory of many, she remained as the beloved of S. Yesenin. But she had her own, no less dramatic and difficult life. The father left the family when the children were still young, and although the Duncan sisters received a good education, they had to earn their own living early.
Later, Isadora said with irony that her father became rich several times and went bankrupt just as many times. There were four children in the family, and they all devoted themselves to art. Elizabeth was the first to create her own school.The idea of creating her own dance came to Isadora gradually. In the beginning, she just wanted to dance to the music. She is attracted by the music of E. Novin, and she composes dances for his "Narcissus", "Ophelia" and "Water Nymphs". Later, Duncan will use the music of Beethoven, Gluck, Chopin, Tchaikovsky. She made her stage debut in 1899, but was never able to find permanent work in America. Not wanting to waste her talent in cabarets and theaters in minor roles, she moves with her mother and brother to Europe. Duncan tries to perform at the evenings of artists, artists, believing that only here he can prove himself as an artist. However, gradually the circle of her viewers is expanding, and on the recommendation of some of her patrons, she begins to prepare large dance programs. Soon Duncan signs a contract and begins to give concerts in different cities of Europe. At the same time, she began teaching the art of dance in private schools, first in Germany and then in France.In l904, Duncan opened her own school near Berlin, and in 1914, with the outbreak of the First World War, she moved to Paris. She expressed her impressions about the art of dance in a special lecture. Duncan believed that the main quality of the dance is the maximum emancipation of the performer. That's why she abandoned traditional ballet shoes and danced only barefoot or in sandals. The main quality of a dancer, according to Duncan, is the ability to control your body. Only in this case will beauty and expressiveness come. Ancient Greek frescoes, vase painting and sculpture served as Duncan's ideal. The actress had a great talent for pantomime. and was an excellent improviser. She replaced the traditional ballet costume with a light Greek tunic and danced without shoes.Hence the name "sandal dance". Duncan's plasticity consisted of elements of walking, running on half-fingers, light jumps, and expressive gestures. The creative credo of the dancer is determined by two principles - life and love. Perceiving theater as the art of liberating the individual, she defends the right of a woman to love and have children of her choice, without marrying. She has two children - Darry and Patrick. The girl's father is the famous artist-designer Edward Gordon, with whom Isadora voluntarily broke up so that everyone could serve their own business. The second son was born from P. Zinger, a famous millionaire, heir to the inventor of the sewing machine. In her notes, Duncan even called him Lohengrin, the hero of R. Wagner's opera.Both Duncan children tragically died in a car accident in 1913. Some believed that they were killed on the orders of one of Patrick's father's competitors, P. Zinger. Duncan's first meeting with Russia took place during the years of the first Russian revolution, then she came here repeatedly, trying to organize a dance school at the Maly Art Theater and teach the art of her dance to the actors of the imperial theaters. Then she met with K. Stanislavsky and A. Pavlova, whose art excited and fascinated her. It was then that she was seized by the ideas of a revolutionary change in the style of dance, and Isadora Duncan even prepared several dances, reflecting in them the revolutionary pathos of the time. Contemporaries remembered her dance "La Marseillaise" for a long time. In 1921, at the invitation of the People's Commissar of Education A.V. Lunacharsky Duncan again comes to Russia to organize a school here, similar to those that she had already created in Europe. Duncan hoped that her Russian students would not dance just for the sake of enrichment, and dreamed of using them to make her new dance popular. While visiting one of the Moscow cafes, she met with Sergei Yesenin.Isadora was seized by a desire to love, as if by this feeling she wanted to shield herself from the world and forget about the tragic death of her children. It is interesting to compare the opinion of several people about it at once. One of the poets and friends of Yesenin, A. Mariengof, assessed her very skeptically and unfriendly: “Yesenin was captivated not by Isadora Duncan, but by her world fame. He married her glory, and not this one - an elderly, heavy, but still beautiful woman with skillfully dyed hair - in a dark dark red color. Gorky's review was no less harsh: in his opinion, she was an "elderly, heavy woman, with a red, ugly face." True, one can see Isadora in a purely feminine way and somewhat differently, the way A. Miklashevskaya remembered her; actress of the Chamber Theater, to whom Yesenin dedicated his famous cycle of poems “Love of a Hooligan” and who became a happy rival of Isadora: “And for the first time I saw Duncan close: she was a very large woman, well preserved; She struck me with her unnaturally theatrical appearance.She wore a transparent chiton with golden lace, girded with a golden cord with golden leaves, and on her feet were golden sandals and lace stockings. Not a woman, but some kind of theatrical king. Probably, Duncan wanted to love not only herself, but also to find love and understanding from Yesenin, to find a little personal happiness with him. In her attitude towards Yesenin, the “tragic greed of the last feeling” was already felt, as the poetess N. Krandievskaya, the second wife of A. Tolstoy, once noted. But he and Yesenin were completely different. And the point is not only that Isidora - as Yesenin called her - was fluent in English, French, German, and Yesenin only in Russian, and that they grew up in a completely different social and cultural environment. Let us turn again to the words of Mariengof: “Yesenin was loved, Isadora was loving.Yesenin, as an actor, turned his cheek, and she kissed. They were husband and wife for only a year and a half and parted. After the death of Yesenin, Isadora even tried to commit suicide, but she was saved. In 1924, she left the USSR forever. After her departure, the school, which lasted until 1949, was run by the ballerina's adopted daughter Irma. Unusual plasticity Duncan tried to capture many artists. Thanks to L. Bakst, the image of her magnificent neck has been preserved. In a dance with V. Nijinsky, O. Rodin tried to capture her, who made many sketches. The tragic death of Isadora in September 1927 is also covered in legends. She liked to wear long transparent shawls that she wrapped around her neck. Once, when she was about to get into the car, the end of the shawl got under the wheel and, tangled in the knitting needles, squeezed Duncan's throat. The strong tissue fractured the spine and severed the carotid artery. Death came instantly. Although Duncan did not create a professional dance system, her searches enriched not only female, but also male dance. The art of the great dancer had an impact on modern choreographic art, on the work of Russian choreographers M. Fokin, A. Gorsky, K. Goleizovsky. Duncan's ideas inspired Fokine to create the so-called "continuous dance". The work of Isadora Duncan is not forgotten in her homeland, America. The bow, nicknames of the once famous ballerina, among which were the famous dancers Ruth Saint-Denis Ted Schon, created in memory of Isadora improvisational dance technique.
Isadora Duncan crossed out all the conventions of the classical school, removing the pointe shoes from the ballerina and offering to feel the energy of the stage with bare feet. She refused the tutu, put on a tunic: the body, not squeezed into a corset, breathes, lives, dances. Classical ballet gives rise to mechanical, artificial movements, a memorized combination of poses and movements, even very beautiful and verified ones, closes the soul. And you have to dance with your soul and soul. It is the human body that is able to catch and transmit the breath of the wind, the mutiny of the sea waves, the peals of thunder and the radiance of the sun. A person in dance is a continuation of the existence of nature, in all its grandeur and smallest manifestations.
Isadora Duncan considered the art of dancing to be in the public domain. She advocated the development of mass schools, where children, learning to dance, would learn the beauty of the movements of their bodies. She opened such schools in Berlin, Paris, Greece, America. The search for funds and a place for his idea of \u200b\u200blife led Duncan to Russia. Researcher Gordon McVeigh in his work "Sergey Yesenin and Isadora Duncan" quotes from the article by the People's Commissar of Education A. V. Lunacharsky "Our Guest", published in 1921, a month after Isadora arrived in Moscow: "... Duncan's dreams She is thinking of a large public school of 500 or 1,000 students, but for now she is willing to start with a small number of children who will be educated through our teachers, but develop physically and aesthetically under her guidance... Duncan herself, for now that, imbued with a very militant communism, which sometimes causes an involuntary, of course, extremely kind and even, if you like, a tender smile ... Duncan was called the queen of gestures, but of all her gestures, this last trip to revolutionary Russia, despite the fears inspired by her , is the most beautiful and deserves the loudest applause."Duncan's first performance in Moscow took place on November 7, 1921, on the stage of the Bolshoi Theater on the day of the celebration of the fourth anniversary of October. The Duncan school in the USSR worked until 1929. Isadora herself tragically died in 1927, and left Russia in 1924.
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The first international symposium dedicated to the work of Isadora Duncan was recently held in the American capital, at the George Washington University. It brought together more than fifty participants, including dancers, choreographers, dance researchers, psychologists and teachers from various states of America, as well as specialists from Germany and Russia. It was visited by the Russian art researcher Duncan Elena Yushkova, candidate of art criticism, author of the book "Plasticity of overcoming: brief notes on the history of plastic theater in Russia in the 20th century".
- At the symposium it was discussed, - says Elena Yushkova, - does Isadora Duncan's dance exist today, in the 21st century? And if so, what is happening to it: has it frozen in some ossified forms or does it continue to develop? Since the dance was passed only from hand to hand - from female students to female students, and only at the end of the 20th century was recorded on paper using labnotation (a movement recording system invented by the German choreographer Rudolf Laban), what is left of it today? Why is the Duncan dance needed and to whom?
The main ideas of Isadora Duncan were expressed more than a century ago and live to this day. First of all, this is the musicality of movement and sensitivity to the slightest nuances of music, movement from the center (which in the human body is located approximately in the area of the solar plexus), the harmony of all parts of the body in the process of movement, fluid smooth movements that at first glance seem very simple. Even now, there are many myths about the Duncan dance - they were analyzed by the dancer and teacher Valerie Dernham, one of the organizers of the symposium. For example, it is believed that it is so simple that anyone can perform it with little or no preparation, that Isadora's dances were not "staged", but were simply improvised by her on stage, that when she died, her dance died with her... All professional Duncanists are wonderful they understand the absurdity of these claims, they know how difficult it is to master this technique and that the Duncan dance is not just a historical heritage that needs to be preserved, but also a living, modern and still very expressive art form.
Today, new possibilities for Duncan's choreography are also opening up. The body and psyche are interconnected, and individual changes in the emotional or mental sphere cause changes in all these areas. Often people with a high degree of bodily tension are not aware of their feelings. A muscle clamp is an unexpressed emotion that prevents a person (who often does not realize it) from feeling like a whole person. And if, with the help of dance, you activate the body, release tension, then they will be released, which means that feelings will become aggravated. Improving coordination, achieving harmonious possession of the body, it is possible to harmonize the inner emotional world of a person.
As Elena Yushkova noted, that is why the Isadora system is in demand - numerous studios in different US cities do not lack students. There are even studios for the disabled, where people with disabilities learn Duncan's philosophical choreography in practice and, as one of the participants in the symposium demonstrated on video, quite successfully practice certain elements of the dance, those that people with limited mobility can perform. Sadly, today's children are no less squeezed than in puritan times, although now they do not wear corsets. Now children spend most of the day in front of computers. This distorts their muscles, the chest cannot move normally, a person cannot breathe normally ... is it necessary to continue this semi-medical chain?
In the process of training according to the Duncan system, children and adolescents begin to gradually release their breath, liberate the body, and soon literally bloom. The main advantage of the method is that fluency in the musculoskeletal system becomes a tool for harmonizing the personality. Therefore, we can safely say that education through the Duncan dance is not only aesthetic in nature." The school in Russia was closed for ideological reasons, as promoting "morbid, decadent art brought to our country from America." Time corrected this formulation by revealing the true meaning Duncan's creativity is innovation, spiritual purification and aesthetics of optimism through the harmonious development of personality. That is why her dance is in demand even today, after a hundred years.
The amazing life of the "divine sandal", marked either by luxury or poverty, was full of violent passions and terrible tragedies. She was respected for her skill and talent. She was envied - for the love of the public, the independence of behavior, the patronage of the strong. Her last love with a fair-haired Russian poet played a strange role in the fate of the dancer. This love, closeness to Yesenin's entourage and admiration for the revolution in Russia are remembered more often than the bright creative life of the great dancer Isadora Duncan.
First Impressions
To a simple question from journalists, when she made the first steps, Isadora invariably answered: "In the womb. Probably under the influence of Aphrodite's food - oysters and champagne." The mother, left by her husband, was in a state of constant irritation and depression. She cared little about the diversity of the diet of the unborn baby and strangely quenched her gastronomic addictions - she ate only oysters, washing them down with plenty of ice-cold champagne. The child was born extremely mobile and frisky. A year later, a favorite family fun appeared - a tiny girl in a vest was placed on the center of the table, and she moved amazingly to any melody that was played or hummed to her. The years will fly by swiftly, and in the grown-up Isadora the rare gift of painting feelings with movements will grow stronger. She will never question the thought dear to her: the richness of human life depends on the depth of feelings. She trusted this postulate unconditionally, although she constantly became a victim of this "sensual" idea.When emotions, unable to remain at the peak of passions, weakened, a cloudless and happy time ended almost suddenly. A new biography page has begun. All of them, these pages of fate, are filled with an almost mystical ritual meaning.... The first vivid impression of life was a fire, when two-year-old Isadora was thrown out of the window of a burning house into the hands of a policeman. The spontaneous movement of bright tongues of flame has become a symbol of Duncan's fiery, irrepressible, unrestrained dance...
Last dance
At the end of her creative life, one of Isadora's most popular dances was the Scarf Dance. She loved to perform this phantasmagoric dance in the presence of Yesenin. The poet's excited fantasy painted a strange picture: "She is holding a scarf by the tail, and she is dancing herself. And it seems that it is not a scarf - but a hooligan in her hands ... The hooligan hugs her, and pats, and strangles ... And then suddenly "one! - and the scarf is under her feet. She tore it off, trampled on it - and the lid! No hooligan, a crumpled rag is lying on the floor ... My heart contracts. It's like I'm lying under her feet. It's like a lid to me." Isadora often repeated the scarf dance for an encore. So it was at a concert in Nice on September 14, 1927. : On the same day, effectively throwing a fatal scarf around her neck, she freely sprawled on the car seat. Behind the wheel is a young Italian, the last passion of fifty-year-old Isadora. Smiling, she said: "Farewell, friends, I'm going to glory!" These were her last words - her head jerked sharply and hung like a broken puppet. The scarf hit the axle of the wheel of a car picking up speed and dug into the neck like a noose.
"The dance is free and clean"
Those who saw Isadora dancing at least once never forgot her. The subversive of the foundations of classical dance, she had no doubt that true dance should be born "from the spiritual need to express a person's inner experiences." Dance and life were synonymous for her. Rejecting the classical dance education, she always exclaimed: "Yes, and is it possible to teach dancing?". In the American studio Stebbins, where Isadora took her first steps, they taught the plastic interpretation of music, the art of open improvisation. A simple gymnastic complex served as a movement basis.
Duncan created her own style, free from stereotypes and schools. Her dance expressed the "excitement of the soul" (Rodin). For her, beauty was important, simple and complex, like nature itself. Isadora's movements did not require the most severe, exhausting preparation. Duncan's program included the technique of transforming into an image, the ability to make music a symbol for the movements of the soul, and to give expressive gestures picturesqueness. The artistic result is improvisational in its essence, on stage it looks like an intuitive insight. Claiming that the only important thing is the world of feelings, she, of course, was cunning. For she herself was fond of philosophy, taught foreign languages, comprehended German in order to read Schopenhauer and Kant in the original. In Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason" she drew inspiration for her dance. A dance of watercolor purity, impressionistic innuendo. The bodily harmony of her movements reached the spiritual richness of the music.At first, Duncan was inspired by antiquity - its harmony of forms, beauty of poses, respect for nature. Greek, in fact, was Duncan's stage costume. She danced in light chitons, appearing on stage barefoot and almost naked: a transparent tunic did not hide the soft lines of her beautiful body. At a time when dancers were "packed" in matte silk leotards, this was an almost revolutionary step.Duncan's body was amazing. Once, Archduke Ferdinand, seeing Duncan on the shore in her loose bathing suit - also a tunic of transparent crepe de chine with a deep neckline and bare legs (impudence unheard of at that time), whispered: “Oh, how good this Duncan is! How wonderfully good! Spring is not as good as it is...".The movements of her dance - a step, an easy run, low jumps, free batmans with a leg lift no higher than 45 degrees, expressive postures and gestures, sometimes melodious, sometimes passionate, sometimes gentle, sometimes sharp - resembled drawings of ancient frescoes and vase paintings. Emotional freedom triumphed in the dance. The movements were not subject to any rules. How I feel is how I dance. The dance did not need a dramatic plot, or costumes, or scenery. Only music, light, tunic and performer.Criticism wrote enthusiastically about her: "Duncan dances naturally, simply, as she would dance in a meadow, and with all her dance she struggles with the dilapidated forms of the old ballet." "These beautiful raised hands, imitating playing the flute, playing the strings, ... these hands splashing in the air, this long strong neck ... - I wanted to bow to all this with live classical worship!"Portraits and photographs cannot convey the divine melody of Isadora's movements. The most faithful "document" are reviews: poets. For Isadora's dance is associative and metaphorical. "Isadora Duncan dances everything that other people say, sing, write, play and draw. Music is realized in her and comes from her" (Maximilian Voloshin). "In her dance, the form finally overcomes the inertia of matter, and every movement of her body is the embodiment of a spiritual act" (Sergey Solovyov). ": She is about the unspeakable. There was a dawn in her smile. In the movements of her body - the aroma of a green meadow. The folds from the tunic, as if murmuring, beat foamy jets when she gave herself up to a free and clean dance" (Andrey Bely). A portrait of Isadora was placed in the central place of Blok's office...
"Dance and Love is my life"
Dance is the first and main passion of her life: Love is the second, worthy rival of dance in terms of the power of passion. She was called the courtesan of the twentieth century. She painfully foresaw love, anticipated it, patiently waited. From the youngest, crystal-clear girlish years. 1902 Budapest. One of the first concerts of Isadora. Early spring. The air is filled with the fragrant smells of blooming flowers. Ovations after the concerts, carefree people around, the warm languor of awakened nature - "everything awakened the consciousness that my body is not only an instrument expressing the sacred harmony of music." The young actor Oscar Berezhi felt this awakening passion of the young dancer. They escaped from the hotel into the world of her first passion.Having gone through this hobby, she will say that there is nothing higher than love and passion. And he will pass a verdict - marriage is impossible, because this is an institution for the "enslavement" of a woman. Only free love. She will change her conviction only once, registering her marriage with Yesenin in the Soviet registry office.After the Budapest romance, which flashed like lightning, Isadora comprehended the dance even more inspired, "reading" the music of Richard Wagner in plastic. With Bayreth, the land of Wagner, where she arrived at the invitation of the composer's widow, another adventure is connected. One night, looking out of the hotel window, she saw a small man under a tree. It was a German art historian - Heinrich Thode, passionately in love with a young dancer.Throwing on her coat, Isadora ran out into the street and brought Heinrich to her. “I was seized by an unearthly impulse, as if I were floating on clouds. Tode leaned towards me, kissing my eyes and forehead. But these kisses were not kisses of earthly passion.: Neither this night, which he spent with me, nor the next to me with earthly lust. He conquered me with one radiant gaze, from which everything seemed to blur around, and my spirit on light wings rushed to the mountain heights. But I did not want anything earthly. My feelings, dormant for two years, now poured into spiritual ecstasy." To combine bodily joy and spiritual passion - so Duncan dreamed of earthly love - she never had to. Each novel ended in pain: This was the finale of the relationship with Tode.
First meeting with Russia
1904 Tour in Russia. Endless snowy plains, frosty air, long Russian feasts, the heat of a Russian bath: "Snow, Russian food, and especially caviar, cured me of exhaustion caused by Tode's spiritual love, and my whole being yearned for communion with a strong personality that stood in front of me in face of Stanislavsky. He is passionate about Duncan's dance and often visits her backstage. He is amazed that "in different parts of the globe, due to conditions unknown to us, different people are looking for the same natural principles of creativity in different areas of art:". In a strange American woman, he felt an artist of the same blood. The theater reformer, Konstantin Sergeevich turned out to be very conservative in love relations. One evening, looking at his noble handsome figure, broad shoulders, black hair, slightly silvering at the temples, Isadora threw her arms around his strong neck, pulled his head and kissed him on the lips. He tenderly returned the kiss to her, but his face was filled with utter astonishment. Then she tried to draw him even closer to her, he recoiled and exclaimed: "But what are we going to do with the baby?!" "What kind of child?" Isadora asked. "Ours, of course. What will we do with him? I will never agree that my child is brought up on the side ...".The child was still too far away, and Isadora burst out laughing out loud. Stanislavsky turned away in confusion and hurried away. "All night, waking up, I could not help laughing, but, laughing, I was beside myself with anger." The novel didn't work.And after the departure of Isadora, the music of Chopin and Schumann sounded on the Russian ballet stage; the heroes of the ballets by Mikhail Fokin, Alexander Gorsky, and a little later - by Kasyan Goleizovsky seemed to have descended from the frontal Greek bas-reliefs; ballerinas began to lighten their costumes, and sometimes even parted with the steel toes of pointe shoes ...
Motherhood
Isadora, Deirdre and Patrick, 1913
The father of her beautiful and long-awaited daughter was another great reformist director. Gordon Craig was the ruler of theatrical thoughts. His experiments with theatrical space were inspired by the mythopoetics of Shakespeare's cosmos, and the idea of the "superplasticity" of an actor dissolving himself in the space of the theater was a paraphrase of Isadora's own thoughts. In 1904, after one of the Berlin performances, an angry man burst into Isadora's dressing room. "You are amazing!" he exclaimed. "Extraordinary! But you stole my ideas. And where did you get my scenery?" "What are you talking about?! These are my own blue curtains! I came up with them at the age of five and have been dancing against them ever since!" Isadora replied. "No! These are my scenery and my ideas. But you are the creature that I imagined among them. You are the living embodiment of my dreams." This is how the novel began:"We were not two, we merged into one whole, into two halves of one soul." But after the first weeks of intoxication with passion, clarification of family functions began. Craig wanted to see Isadora at home, peacefully leading the household and helping her husband in his work. Is it worth writing that it was impossible? The union, undermined by "creative quarrels", a little later and jealousy, broke up pretty quickly.Isadora had a girl, whose father came up with a poetic Irish name - Dirdre. "Oh, women, why should we learn to be lawyers, painters and sculptors, when such a miracle exists? Finally, I knew this great love, exceeding the love of a man ... I felt like a god, higher than any artist."
Paris was shocked by the tragedy of Isadora and her courage. Nobody saw her cry.
At the end of the first decade of the new century, Duncan created a delightful miniature "Musical Moment", which enjoyed constant success. On her second tour in Russia, she invariably encored this dance at least six times, each dancing in a different way. "Musical moment" absorbed the happiness of motherhood and another easy love affair. Isadora was overwhelmed by the desire to create a dance school in order to educate children in the spirit of Hellenistic beauty, and later the pupils themselves would introduce many others to the beautiful. And life on earth will be unrecognizably transformed - the idealist Isadora thought so. She opened a school, but there were not enough funds to maintain it. "I have to find a millionaire! I have to save the school." The desire came true - the dancer met Paris Eugene Singer, the son of a well-known manufacturer of sewing machines, one of the richest people in Europe.Singer offered to take on the costs of maintaining Duncan's school so that she could safely create new dances. Singer presented luxurious gifts. Perhaps for the first time Isadora could not think about money. Receptions, masquerades, expensive dinners during marvelous journeys. Son Patrick was the most expensive gift. She was holding the baby again. "Only instead of a white house trembling from the wind, there was a luxurious palace, and instead of the gloomy restless North Sea, there was a blue, Mediterranean one."At one of the costume balls in the studio of the Parisian house, Singer became jealous of Isadora. A stormy showdown ended with his departure to Egypt and the refusal to build a theater for Isadora.
Tragedy
Another trip to Russia is associated with a premonition of tragedy. She is haunted by mystical nightmares - in the outlines of snowdrifts she sees the outlines of two coffins, at night she clearly hears Chopin's Funeral March. Angrily, she improvises to the sounds of this march on stage, without preparation and rehearsal. Trusting her intuition, she falls into a deep depression. Returning to Paris, she went with her children to Versailles on vacation. Singer, who had returned from his travels, invited her and her children to lunch in the city. Fears leave Isadora - she is happy again. They are happy to meet, full of dreams of a brighter future. There are children nearby: three-year-old Patrick and six-year-old Dirdre - they look like angels. And life is approaching an idyll. After lunch, Singer left on his own business, Dirdre, Patrick and the governess drove back to Versailles, and Isadora went to rehearsal in her atelier."Art, success, wealth, love and, most importantly, lovely children," Isadora thought to herself, smiling, preparing for the rehearsal, and suddenly she heard an inhuman scream. She turned around. Singer stood at the door, swaying like a drunk. Falling to his knees in front of her, he groaned: "Children ... children ... died!". The car with the governess and children stalled. The driver went out to check the engine. Suddenly the car began to roll backwards towards the Seine. The driver rushed to the door, but could not open it, the handle jammed, the car tilted and slid into the river. When the car was finally pulled out of the river, the passengers were dead.Can there be greater grief than the death of children? Upon learning of the tragedy, Isadora did not cry; she fell into prostration. The state of feverish excitement did not leave her even in the crematorium, when three coffins were burned before her eyes. She supported Singer, who fell ill immediately after the tragedy, interceded for the driver, who was detained by the police. "He is a father, and I need to know that he has returned to the family."Paris was shocked by the tragedy of Isadora and her courage. Nobody saw her cry. “When I returned to my atelier, I firmly decided to end my life. How could I stay alive after losing my children? And only the words of the little students around me: “Isadora, live for us. Are we not your children?" gave me back the desire to quench the sadness of these children, weeping over the loss of Deirdre and Patrick." Until the end of her life, she subconsciously believed that the students had saved her, and the creation of schools, the education of students became almost an obsession.She tried not to talk about children with anyone. But their images constantly haunted her. Once she saw them in the waves of the sea, she rushed to meet them, but the children disappeared in the water spray. Frightened that she was going crazy, Isadora fell to the ground and screamed loudly. And then someone touched her head. A young man bowed before her: "Is there anything I can help you with?" - he asked. In desperation, Isadora replied: "Yes, save me. Give me a child." Their relationship was short-lived: the young Italian was engaged. She believed that the new child would be one of the lost children returned to her arms.Hearing the cry of her son, Isadora almost suffocated with happiness. She is once again holding her own child in her arms! This happiness was short-lived: a few hours later the boy died. “It seems to me that at that moment I experienced the greatest suffering that can be assigned to a person on earth, since in this death the death of the first two children seemed to be repeated, the old torments were repeated and new ones were added to them.”
"...to the source of light"
Duncan's true passion was not only dancing, but also the desire to teach it to people. Of course, children are the most receptive little creatures to art, who have not yet gone far from nature, sincerely believing that running and jumping is much easier than just walking. The craving for dance pedagogy lived in Duncan almost from childhood. In any case, a "thin and strange child" at the age of ten, she and her sister organized their own school, where "teachers" "taught what was called "secular dances."Throughout her life, a chain of studios will stretch, brought to life by her "disgust" for the theater with its elves dressed in long tunics "of white and gold gauze with two tinsel wings." The desire to create her own school was unrestrained, but the end of her undertakings was always predetermined - a complete financial collapse. She opened schools in Germany, France, America and they existed, as a rule, for a short time."My dance ideas were to depict the feelings and emotions of a person", the purpose of the classes was "to lead the child's soul to the source of light." The most important task is to educate a new harmonious person of the future by means of dance and music. How to achieve this? "Teach your child to raise his hands to the sky, so that in this movement he comprehends the infinity of the Universe, its harmony and perfection." Instill in the baby faith in the wonders of the surrounding endless movement and then tell him: "Since you are the most perfect in the kingdom of nature, your movements should include all the beauty of nature, but moreover, the beauty of your human mind and your understanding of the beautiful ...".In the autumn of 1921, an announcement was placed in "Working Moscow" announcing the opening of "the Isadora Duncan school for children of both sexes aged 4 to 10 years." It was stated that "preference for admission is given to the children of workers." The children (initially there were more than a hundred) went to school every day for preparatory classes. Later their number was reduced to forty. This was the maximum that could be fed and warmed up in the hungry and cold Moscow of the twenties. Duncan sent a telegram to her American impresario: "Can you organize my performances with the participation of my student Irma, twenty delightful Russian children and my husband, the famous Russian poet Sergei Yesenin." However, these first foreign tours of the Moscow studio did not take place due to the fact that the American authorities refused visas to students of the school, and subsequently deprived Duncan of American citizenship "for Soviet propaganda" and loyalty to revolutionary ideas.After Duncan's departure, the school in the old mansion on Prechistenka was run by her adopted daughter and devoted student, Irma Duncan, and the director-administrator of the studio, Ilya Shneider.
