Irma Duncan biography. Children of Isadora Duncan: what was their fate? Successful in career and unhappy in personal life
Isadora Duncan is a person of art, an American dancer, one of the founders (along with Loie Fuller) of the modern dance style, or free dance. This woman was also the wife of the outstanding Russian poet Sergei Yesenin. Here is the biography of Isadora Duncan, outlined briefly.
Brief biography
Who is this strange woman? So, Dora Angela Duncan was born in May 1877 in San Francisco, California. Her family was intelligent and creative.
In total there were four children in the family. Young Dora went to school early, but also left it early - at the age of 13, because, in her opinion, the American education system was useless for life. According to another version, this happened due to the extreme poverty of the family, and the girl was forced to earn her living by dancing lessons.
It was at this age that Isadora became seriously interested in music and dancing. Not only her - all her brothers and sisters also sang and danced well.
At 18, Duncan committed brave act who predetermined her future fate. She moved to Chicago, where she met dancer Loie Fuller. They performed together, and their style - free, plastic dance - was immediately loved by the audience. Isadora's image was truly extravagant: for example, she performed in a Greek chiton and barefoot (or in light sandals).
Isadora Duncan was familiar with such outstanding Russian figures of art and politics as:
- Konstantin Stanislavsky (theater director and teacher).
- Anatoly Lunacharsky (People's Commissar of Education).
- Sergei Yesenin (poet).
The fate of Isadora Duncan is inextricably linked with the fate of Russia. When she came here for the first time, she met Konstantin Sergeevich Stanislavsky, the great Russian theater director and teacher.
At the same time, the young dancer met Sergei Yesenin and soon became his wife - they got married the same year. Their love story is incredibly romantic, but the marriage was not easy and lasted only three years. Yesenin and Isadora Duncan were unable to build a happy family: in 1924, the two creative people separated due to accumulated contradictions in their views.
The dancer was not destined to become a happy wife and mother. A few years after the divorce ex-husband Isadora and the love of her life died, and some time after his tragic death, she followed him into Eternity. As it turns out, nationality doesn't matter in love...
Isadora Duncan had three children from different men, but they all died at an early age. But six students of the great dancer grew up and continued her work of improvement. dance art. Wikipedia has articles about several of them.
Isadora Duncan died in Nice in 1927 under rather tragic circumstances. She was driving a car, and her long, beautiful scarf got caught in the wheel axle. The great dancer died from strangulation with her own beautiful accessory. She was then only fifty years old. The death of this woman was an irreparable loss for the entire dance world.
Isadora Duncan was buried in a cemetery in Paris.
Contribution to art
The work of this great dancer preached freedom from conventions and artificial beauty. According to Isadora, dance is absolutely not true art if it does not bring heartache, dreams and spirituality. A line is not beautiful in itself - it must have deep meaning, otherwise it's just a line.
A significant place in Duncan’s life was occupied by the fight for women’s rights, and for the freedom of a woman to be herself.
Isadora Duncan's dance largely inherits the traditions of the Greek classical school. Ancient dances attracted her from her early youth. The following can be considered the main features of this dancer’s work:
- Improvisation and freedom of movement.
- Sincere expression of thoughts and feelings.
- Lack of artificiality, flirtatiousness, falsehood.
To consolidate her ideas in the history of dance art, Isadora Duncan wrote a book, published under the title “Dance of the Future.”
In 2016, the film “Dancer” about Duncan was released, where the main roles were played by Lily Rose-Depp and Louis Garrel.
Like any great person, Isadora Duncan had something for which she was called strange, even crazy. The reader will be interested to know that the famous dancer was:
- Bisexual orientation.
- An atheist.
- An innovator.
She wholeheartedly supported the Great October Revolution, not being afraid to go to post-war Petrograd to organize a dance school. We must pay tribute to the courage that Isadora Duncan showed every day.
Some people called Isadora crazy, others called her great. Both were right, because every genius is a little crazy... But with her death, the world lost a person who was ready to throw everything on the altar of art.
Isadora Duncan can rightly be called a great dance artist. Her contribution to contemporary art difficult to overestimate. It is solely thanks to such dedicated masters that creative thought continues to develop, gradually leading humanity to new and new stages of development. Author: Irina Shumilova
Isadora Duncan is an American dancer, the founder of free dance, and the wife of a Russian poet.
Isadora Duncan was born on May 26, 1877 in San Francisco. Born Dora Angela, she was the youngest of four children of Joseph Charles Duncan (1819-1898), a banker, mining engineer and noted art lover, and Mary Isadora Gray (1849-1922). Soon after Isadora's birth, the head of the family went bankrupt, and the family lived in extreme poverty for some time.
Duncan's parents divorced when she was not even a year old. The mother moved with the children to Auckland and found work as a seamstress and piano teacher. There was little money in the family, and soon young Isadora dropped out of school to earn money with her brothers and sisters by teaching dance lessons for local children.
Dancing
Since childhood, Isadora perceived dancing differently than other children - the girl “followed her imagination and improvised, dancing as she pleased.” Dreams of big stage brought Duncan to Chicago, where she unsuccessfully auditioned for various theaters, and then to New York, where in 1896 the girl got a job in the theater famous critic and playwright John Augustine Daly.
In New York, the girl took lessons from famous ballerina Marie Bonfanti, but, quickly becoming disillusioned with ballet and feeling undervalued in America, Isadora moved to London in 1898. In the capital of Great Britain, Isadora began performing in rich houses - good earnings allowed the dancer to rent a studio for classes.
From London, the girl headed to Paris, where her fateful meeting with Loie Fuller took place. Loi and Isadora had similar views on dance, viewing it as a natural movement of the body, rather than a rigid system of practiced movements, as in ballet. In 1902, Fuller and Duncan went on a dance tour around European countries.
For many years of her life, Duncan traveled with performances throughout Europe and America, although she was not at all enthusiastic about touring, contracts and other fuss - Duncan believed that this distracted her from her true mission: training young dancers and creating something beautiful. In 1904, Isadora opened her first dance school in Germany and then another in Paris, but it was soon closed due to the outbreak of the First World War.
Isadora's popularity at the beginning of the 20th century is not in doubt. Newspapers wrote that Duncan's dance defined the power of progress, change, abstraction and liberation, and her photographs, which depicted the “evolutionary development of dance”, each movement born from the previous one in an organic sequence, became famous throughout the world.
In June 1912, the French fashion designer Paul Poiret organized one of the most famous evenings, “La fête de Bacchus” (a re-creation of Louis XIV’s “bacchanalia” at Versailles), in a luxurious mansion in northern France. Isadora Duncan dressed in Greek evening dress, sewn by Poiret, danced on tables among 300 guests who managed to drink 900 bottles of champagne in a few hours.
After another tour in the USA in 1915, Isadora had to sail back to Europe - the choice fell on the luxury liner Lusitania, but due to a quarrel with creditors who threatened not to let the girl out of the country until she paid $12,000, Duncan ended up I had to board another ship. The Lusitania, torpedoed by a German submarine, sank off the coast of Ireland, killing 1,198 people.
In 1921, Duncan's political sympathies brought the dancer to Soviet Union. In Moscow, People's Commissar of Education of the RSFSR A.V. Lunacharsky invited the American woman to open a dance school, promising financial support. However, in the end, Isadora paid most of the expenses for maintaining the school from her own money, while experiencing hunger and everyday inconveniences.
The Moscow school quickly grew and gained popularity. The first performance of students of the institution took place in 1921 on stage Bolshoi Theater in honor of the anniversary of the October Revolution. Isadora, together with her students, performed a dance program, which, among others, included the dance “Warsawianka” to the melody of a Polish revolutionary song. The program, during which the revolutionary banner was picked up from the hands of fallen fighters by full-strength fighters, was a success with the audience.
However, not everyone was impressed. Some were puzzled that this “older woman” risked going on stage too naked. Short (168 cm), with flabby full thighs and a not so elastic bust, Duncan could not be as light and graceful as in her youth - the years were taking their toll.
The dancer lived in Soviet Russia for 3 years, but various troubles forced Isadora to leave the country, leaving the management of the school to one of her students, Irma.
Personal life
In her professional and personal life, Isadora violated all traditional principles. She was bisexual, an atheist and a true revolutionary: during her last tour of the United States, during the last chords of a concert at Boston's Symphony Hall, Isadora began waving a red scarf over her head, shouting: “It's red! And I’m the same!”
Duncan gave birth to two children out of wedlock - daughter Derdri Beatrice (born 1906) from theater director Gordon Craig and son Patrick Augustus (born 1910) by Paris Singer, one of the sons of Swiss tycoon Isaac Singer. Isadora's children died in 1913: the car in which the kids were with their nanny was on full speed ahead fell into the Seine.
After the death of her children, Duncan fell into a deep depression. Her brother and sister decided to take Isadora to the island of Corfu for a few weeks, where the American became friends with the young Italian feminist Lina Poletti. The warm relationship between the girls caused a lot of gossip, but there was no evidence that the ladies were in a romantic relationship.
In his autobiography “My Life. My Love,” published in 1927, Duncan described how, desperate to have another child, she begged a young Italian stranger—the sculptor Romano Romanelli—to have sex with her. As a result, Duncan became pregnant by Romanelli and gave birth to a son on August 13, 1914, who died shortly after giving birth.
In 1917, Isadora adopted six of her charges, Anna, Maria Theresa, Irma, Liesel, Gretel and Erica, whom she taught while still at school in Germany. The group of young talented dancers was nicknamed “Isadorables” (a pun on the name Isadora and “adorables” (“charming”).
After graduating from school, where Isadora’s sister Elizabeth later taught (Duncan was constantly on the road), the girls began performing with Duncan, and then separately, having huge success with the public. A few years later, the team broke up - each girl went her own way. Erica was the only one of the six girls who did not connect her future life with dancing.
In 1921, in Moscow, Duncan met the poet Sergei Yesenin, who was 18 years younger than her. In May 1922, Yesenin and Duncan became husband and wife. The dancer accepted Soviet citizenship. The poet accompanied Duncan on her tour of Europe and the USA for more than a year, not hesitating to spend her money on prestigious housing, expensive clothes and gifts for relatives. At the same time, Yesenin experienced a strong longing for Russia, which he indicated in his letters to friends.
After two years of communication without knowledge of languages (Isadora knew hardly more than 30 words in Russian, and Yesenin even less in English), friction began between the spouses. In May 1923, the poet left Duncan and returned to his homeland.
There are no direct dedications to Isadora in Yesenin’s poems, but the image of Duncan is clearly visible in the poem “The Black Man.” The poem “Let you be drunk by others..” is dedicated to the actress Augusta Miklashevskaya, although Duncan claimed that the poet dedicated these lines to her.
Later, Duncan began an affair with the American poet Mercedes de Acosta - they learned about this relationship from letters that the girls wrote to each other. In one of them Duncan admitted:
"Mercedes, lead me with your little ones strong hands, and I will follow you - to the top of the mountain. To the ends of the world. Wherever you want."
Death
In the last years of her life, Duncan performed little, accumulated many debts and was known for scandalous intimate stories and a love of drinking.
On the night of September 14, 1927, in Nice, Isadora left her friend Mary Desty (the mother of Preston Sturges, director of the film Sullivan's Wanderings) and got into the Amilcar car with the French-Italian mechanic Benoit Falcetto, with whom the American woman probably met tied up romantic relationship.
Scarf and car wheel - cause of death of Isadora Duncan As the car began to move sharply, the wind lifted the edges of the dancer's long, hand-painted silk scarf into the air and dropped it over the side of the car. The scarf immediately became entangled in the spokes of the wheel, and the woman was pressed into the side of the car. Duncan died instantly. The body was cremated; The urn containing the ashes was placed in a columbarium at the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris. The car that killed the American dancer was sold for a huge sum at that time - 200,000 francs.
She needed fast movement like air. Isadora, child of freedom, loved speed no less than dance. “Even if I could have known that this trip would be my last, I would have ordered to drive at full speed. “I’m in love again,” she said minutes before her death. And she got into the car with her “Greek god with a chariot”...
…Favorite red scarf was her constant companion - a piece of scarlet fabric as a symbol of freedom, as an image of flashes of fire - passion and thirst for life.
...She believed that the goddess Terpsichore herself taught her to dance. Isadora had a blood relationship with Greece. Her dance numbers were like scenes from an antique vase come to life. Wearing a Greek tunic instead of a tutu, barefoot, she shocked the respectable public of the early 20th century and made them bow and tremble.
“Dunka’s scarf,” that’s what her second husband, Sergei Yesenin, called her famous scarf. In love as much with Duncan as with her fame, the singer of the “country of birch calico” could not understand the full depth of her personality. For Duncan, this love was love-despair.
Dance "Apache". His Isadora dances in Moscow. She fled to the Land of Soviets from Paris for a new free life- away from the excessive, as it seemed to her then, bourgeois art. She is the most popular woman Russian capital in 1921. She dances a mystical dance with a scarf as with her partner. Apache, bully, - Isadora. Red scarf - beautiful, passionate woman. The flexible body of the scarf curls in the hands, the fingers squeeze the throat of the partner scarf and break the backbone. The corpse of the ghostly partner lies immobilized on the floor. The audience applauds. Yesenin sees himself in him: “The heart is compressed. It’s exactly me lying under her feet. This is definitely the end of my life." This scarf, bright, red, disturbing, will play the most tragic role in the fate of the famous dancer. Just like the car.
She has been in car accidents more than once. There were many warning signs in her fate. The biggest tragedy of her life was connected with the car. In 1913, she and her children returned to Versailles from Paris, where they dined with the father of her son, millionaire Paris Singer. She went out to Neuilly to see how the students at her dance school were rehearsing. Old Reno with her children, Patrick and Deirdre, and their governess, drove further along the Seine embankment. After 100 meters, the car almost collided with a taxi, braked sharply and stalled. The driver went out to start it with the crank and forgot to put the car on the brake. The car quickly slid into the river. They were able to lift the car with passengers only after an hour and a half. Of course, it was already too late.
For many years she lived with this pain. She was haunted by visions. The third child, whom she gave birth to to numb her inescapable pain, lived only a few hours. Her numerous novels were doomed: “Art and love are unable to live together.” Her golden-haired boy, Sergei Yesenin, hanged himself in the same room at the Angleterre Hotel where they were once so happy together. Life has come to a standstill. She was 50. And, despite her proud posture, just like thirty years ago, she felt extremely tired.
September 14, 1927. Nice. After the concert she went to dinner with friends at small cafe on the Quai des Anglaises - with Ivan Nikolenko, with whom they discussed filming her dance, and longtime friend Mary Desty. Mary had premonitions - she begged Isadora not to go anywhere else today. But Isadora already had a date. She had a new love - “handsome as a Greek god” Benoit Falchetto, owner of the Helvetius garage. She so needed at least a drop of warmth and tenderness.
He appeared in front of the cafe in his two-seater racing car, Isadora ran down the steps, not even wanting to put on a coat, threw her red scarf over her shoulder, with a yellow bird, azure asters and hieroglyphs, got into the car and exclaimed “Farewell friends, I’m going to glory " The car started moving. Mary screamed “Your shawl, Isadora, your shawl” - the red scarf stretched to the ground like a red trickle of blood. After driving 9 meters, the car stopped. However, it was already too late. Isadora was dead. The scarf hit the wheel axle and broke her neck. Death was instant. She didn't have time to feel anything.
At 9.30 at the Saint-Roch clinic, doctors recorded the death of the great dancer. Benoit kept repeating, “I killed Madonna.” But was it his fault? Witnesses to the incident left conflicting statements about both the name of the driver and the make of the car. It was not a Bugatti, as is still commonly believed. Peter Kurth, Duncan's biographer, studied all the newspaper articles about the tragic incident in Nice - it was the Amilcar Grand Sport racing car, which was super popular in France in the twenties. That model did not have a wing - nothing prevented the scarf from falling directly onto the wheel.
Killer car and killer scarf. Two accomplices tightening the noose around the neck of the dance goddess.
Isadora's body was taken to Paris in a carriage littered with flowers, cremated and buried in the Père Lachaise cemetery, next to her mother and children. All of Paris mourned her, a great dancer and a woman with a tragic fate.
Biography of Isadora Duncan. Career and dance. Husband Sergey Yesenin. Personal life, fate, children. Causes of death. Evil rock car. Quotes, photos, film.
Years of life
born May 27, 1877, died September 14, 1927
Epitaph
My heart went out like lightning,
The pain will not be dulled by the years,
Your image will be treasured forever
Always in our memory.
Biography of Isadora Duncan
Biography of Isadora Duncan - a vivid story of a talented and strong woman . She never gave up, never gave up, and no matter what, she believed in love. Even her last words, before she got into that ill-fated car, her scarf wrapped around the wheel, were: “I’m going to love!”
Isadora was born in America and, as she liked to joke, began dancing in the womb. At the age of thirteen, she left school and took up dancing seriously, feeling this was her destiny. At eighteen she was already performing in clubs in Chicago. The audience greeted Isadora with delight, her dance seemed so outlandish and exotic. They, however, had no idea that this girl would soon become famous throughout the world, and Isadora Duncan dance will fascinate millions of fans of her talent.
Dance of Isadora Duncan
She was considered a brilliant dancer. Critics saw Duncan as a harbinger of the future, the founder of new styles, and said that she overturned all existing ideas about dance at that time. Isadora Duncan's dance gave joy, extraordinary aesthetic pleasure, it was full of freedom- the one that was always in Isadora and which she did not want to give up.
Taking ancient Greek traditions as a basis, she created a new free dance system. Instead of a ballet costume, Duncan wore a chiton and preferred to dance barefoot rather than in pointe shoes or shoes that constrained her movements. She was not yet thirty when she created own school in Athens, and a few years later - in Russia, where she had many admirers.
Isadora and Sergei Yesenin
It was in Russia that Duncan met him - her only official husband, poet Sergei Yesenin. Their relationship was bright, passionate, sometimes scandalous, but nevertheless both had a beneficial effect on each other’s work. The marriage did not last long - two years later Yesenin returned to Moscow, and two years later he committed suicide.
But a failed marriage or unhappy romances were not the only tragedies in Duncan's life. Even before the meeting of Yesenina and Duncan the dancer lost two children- the driver of the car containing the children and their nanny got out of the car to start the engine, and the car rolled down the embankment into the Seine. A year later, Duncan had a son, but died within a few hours. After the death of the children, Duncan adopted two girls, Irma and Anna, who, like their adoptive mother, were engaged in dancing.
Cause of death
Isadora Duncan's death was instantaneous and tragic. Duncan's cause of death was strangulation by her own scarf wrapped around a car wheel.. Isadora Duncan's funeral took place in Paris; Isadora Duncan's grave (she was cremated) is located in the columbarium of the Père Lachaise cemetery.
Life line
May 27, 1877 Date of birth of Isadora Duncan (correctly Isadora Duncan, née Dora Angela Duncan).
1903 Pilgrimage to Greece, Duncan initiates the construction of a temple for dance classes.
1904 Meeting and getting in touch with director Edward Gordon Craig.
1906 Birth of daughter Derdri by Edward Craig.
1910 The birth of a son, Patrick, from businessman Paris Singer, with whom Duncan had an affair.
1914-1915 Concerts in Moscow and St. Petersburg, meeting Stanislavsky.
1921 Meeting Sergei Yesenin.
1922 Marriage to Sergei Yesenin.
1924 Divorce from Sergei Yesenin.
September 14, 1927 Date of death of Isadora Duncan.
Memorable places
1. San Francisco, where Isadora Duncan was born.
2. The Isadora and Raymond Duncan Center for Dance Studies in Athens, founded by Duncan and her brother.
3. Duncan House in Paris.
4. Hotel Angleterre in St. Petersburg, where Duncan lived in early 1922.
5. Isadora Duncan’s house in Moscow, where she lived with Yesenin and where the dancer’s choreographic school-studio was located.
6. Hall of Fame National Museum dance in New York, where the name of Isadora Duncan was introduced.
7. Père Lachaise Cemetery, where Isadora Duncan is buried.
Episodes of life
During a tour of Russia in 1913, Duncan had a strange premonition, as if she could not find a place for herself, and during her performances she heard a funeral march. One day, while walking, she saw two children’s coffins between the snowdrifts, which scared her very much. She returned to Paris, and soon her children died. Duncan could not come to her senses for several months.
Yesenin decided to break with Duncan not only because he lost interest in the woman in love with him, but also because he was tired of being in Europe he is perceived exclusively as the husband of a great dancer. He began to drink and insult Duncan. The Russian poet’s pride suffered greatly, and he returned to Russia, and soon sent Isadora a telegram in which he wrote that he loved another and was very happy, which inflicted a deep mental wound on her. But more Yesenin’s death was a tragedy for her. She even tried to commit suicide. “Poor Serezhenka, I cried so much for him that there are no more tears in my eyes,” said Duncan.
Despite the fact that Isadora Duncan toured and taught a lot, she wasn't rich. With the money she earned, she opened dance schools, and sometimes she was simply poor. She could make good money on her memoirs after Yesenin’s death, but she refused the money, wishing that her fee be transferred to Yesenin’s mother and sisters.
Shortly before Duncan's death, a girl came into her room and said that God ordered her to strangle the dancer. The girl was taken out, she turned out to be mentally ill, but after a while Duncan actually died, strangled with a scarf.
On the left is Isadora with her own children, on the right - with Sergei Yesenin and her adopted daughter Irma
Testaments and quotes
“If my art is symbolic, then this symbol is only one: the freedom of women and her emancipation from the ossified conventions that underlie Puritanism.”
“In my life there were only two driving forces: Love and Art, and often Love destroyed Art, and sometimes the imperious call of Art led to the tragic end of Love, for there was a constant battle between them.”
Television story about the life of Isadora Duncan
Condolences
“The image of Isadora Duncan will forever remain in my memory as if divided. One is the image of a dancer, a dazzling vision that cannot help but amaze the imagination, the other is the image of a charming woman, smart, attentive, sensitive, from whom the comfort of home emanates. Isadora's sensitivity was amazing. She could accurately capture all the shades of the interlocutor’s mood, and not only fleeting ones, but also everything or almost everything that was hidden in the soul ... "
Rurik Ivnev, Russian poet, prose writer
Isadora Duncan (1877-1927) - the famous American innovative dancer, was the founder of free dance. She was responsible for the development of an entire system and movement associated with ancient Greek dances. Duncan has been repeatedly voted the greatest dancer in the world in polls.
Isadora is also known for being the wife of the great Russian poet Sergei Yesenin.
Childhood
Isadora was born on May 27, 1877. This happened in the American state of California, in the city of San Francisco on Giri Street. Her real name is Dora Angela Duncan.
Her father, Joseph Charles Duncan, pulled off a major banking scam, after which he took all the money and fled, leaving his pregnant wife and three children without a livelihood.
The mother of the future dancer, Mary Dora Gray Duncan, experienced this tragedy in her own way; she could not eat anything except oysters, which she washed down with cold champagne. Subsequently, when journalists asked Isadora the question at what age she first started dancing, the woman jokingly replied that, probably, even in the womb, this is how champagne and oysters made themselves felt.
The girl's childhood cannot be called happy. The mother could barely carry four children on her shoulders and for a long time fought off the investors deceived by their father, who every now and then rallied under their windows.
We must pay tribute to Isadora’s mother, the woman was not broken by such troubles and troubles. She promised herself that she would raise her children, provide them with everything they needed and raise them to good people. My mother was a musician by profession, and in order to support her family, she had to work very hard, giving private lessons. Because of this, she simply physically could not pay due attention to her children, especially the little Dora.
In order not to leave the baby at home alone for a long time, she was sent to school at the age of five, while hiding the girl’s real age. Those unpleasant memories and feelings from childhood, when she felt uncomfortable and lonely among older, prosperous classmates, remained forever in Isadora’s heart and memory.
But in childhood there were girls and good points, albeit rare. In the evenings, the selfless mother belonged only to her children; she played them the works of Beethoven and other great composers, read William Shakespeare, early years instilling a love of art. The children, like chickens around a hen, united around their mother, forming a strong and united Duncan clan, which was ready to challenge the whole world if necessary.
Passion for dance
We can say that already at the age of six, Dora opened her first dance school. It was then that she created them all over the world, and then the little girl and her sister simply taught the neighboring children to dance, to move beautifully and gracefully. And by the age of ten, Duncan was already earning her first money by dancing. She not only taught younger children, but also came up with new ones beautiful movements. These were her first steps in creating her own style of dancing.
Very early on, Isadora became interested in representatives of the opposite sex. No, she was not a promiscuous nymphet at all, she was simply amorous from a young age. For the first time, she liked a young man, Vernon, who worked in a pharmaceutical warehouse. Dora was only eleven years old at that time, but she was so persistent in seeking attention to herself that Vernon had to lie, saying that he was engaged. And only when the young man assured Isadora that he would soon marry, she left him behind. The girl was still very young, her love turned out to be childishly naive, but even then it became clear that she would grow into a persistent and eccentric person.
School program was difficult for Dora. And not because she didn’t understand something; on the contrary, Duncan was very capable. It was just that schoolwork made Isadora terribly bored. The girl ran away from class many times and wandered along the seashore, listening to the music of the surf and inventing light airy sounds to the sound of the waves. dance moves.
Isadora was thirteen years old when she dropped out of school, declaring that she did not see any point in learning, considered it a useless activity, and in life she had nothing to do with it. school education can achieve a lot. She began to seriously pay attention to music and dancing. At first, the girl educated herself. But soon she was lucky, without anyone’s patronage or recommendations, without cronyism or money: she ended up with the famous American dancer and actress Loie Fuller, who was the founder of modern dance.
Fuller took Isadora as her student, but soon young Duncan began performing with her mentor. This went on for several years, and by the age of eighteen the talented student set off to conquer Chicago.
She showed her dance routines in nightclubs, where she was presented to the public as an exotic curiosity, since Isadora performed barefoot and in a short ancient Greek chiton. The audience was shocked by Duncan's manner of performance; she danced so sensually and tenderly that it was impossible to take your eyes off her movements and rise from the chairs after the end of the dance. Such a length of a dress in those days was unthinkable even for progressive America, however, no one ever called Isadora’s dances vulgar, they were so light, graceful and free.
Isadora's performances were successful, which allowed her to improve her financial condition and set off to conquer Europe.
In 1903, she came with the entire Duncan family to Greece. Already in 1904, Isadora’s deafening performances took place in Berlin, Munich, and Vienna. In Europe she quickly gained fame.
In 1904, Isadora's first tour took place in St. Petersburg. Then she came to Russia more than once, where there were many admirers of her talent.
Despite this success, Duncan was not rich woman, she spent all the money she earned on opening new dance schools. There were times when she had no money at all, then Isadora’s friends helped her.
Personal life
After the apothecary warehouse employee Vernon, with whom Isadora fell in love at the age of eleven, for six years she was exclusively occupied with dancing, work and a career. Her young years passed without love affairs.
And starting from the age of 17, Duncan experienced all the feelings that are subject to a woman on Earth - love, disappointment, happiness, grief, pain, tragedy. She, a principled opponent of marriage, had a too turbulent personal life. Her lovers were different men: old and young, married and single, rich and poor, beautiful and talented, or none at all.
When she performed in Chicago nightclubs, a Polish emigrant, artist Ivan Mirotsky, fell madly in love with Isadora. He was not considered handsome; he wore a beard, and his head of hair was a bright red color. Nevertheless, Duncan took a liking to him, even though the man was almost thirty years older. Their affair with walks in the woods, kisses, and courtship lasted a year and a half. Things began to move towards the wedding, and its date had already been set when Isadora’s brother found out that Mirotsky was married, his wife lived in Europe. Duncan suffered painfully from this breakup; it became the first serious tragedy in her life. To forget about everything, she decided to leave America.
Then the failed actor Oscar Berezhi appeared in her life. She was 25 years old, Oscar became Isadora's first man, despite the fact that she constantly moved in bohemian circles. The wedding again did not work out, since Berezhi was offered a lucrative contract, and he chose a career over Isadora, leaving for Spain.
Four years later, Duncan met theater director Gordon Craig. Isadora gave birth to a daughter from him, but Craig soon abandoned them and married his old friend.
Heir to the famous dynasty that invented sewing machines, Paris Eugene Singer is the next man in Duncan's life. He really wanted to meet the dancer and one day after a performance he himself came to Isadora’s dressing room. She did not marry Singer, although she gave birth to a son from him.
Tragedy with children
She had a unique gift: Duncan had a presentiment when death was walking nearby. It happened more than once in her life that nature itself sent her some kind of sign, and soon after that one of Isadora’s relatives, friends or acquaintances died.
Therefore, when in 1913 she began to be tormented by terrible visions, the woman lost peace. She constantly heard funeral marches and saw small coffins. She was going crazy, worrying about her children. Duncan tried to make the kids' lives absolutely safe. WITH common-law husband and as children they moved to a quiet, cozy place called Versailles.
One day Isadora was with her children in Paris, she had urgent business there, and she sent the kids with a driver and governess home to Versailles. On the way, the car stalled, the driver got out to find out the reason. At that moment, the car drove off and fell into the Seine River; the children could not be saved.
Isadora’s depression was terrible, however, she found the strength to speak out in defense of the driver, realizing that he also had small children.
She was like a stone, did not cry and never spoke to anyone about this tragedy. But one day, while walking by the river, I saw the ghost of my little children, they were holding hands. The woman screamed and became hysterical. A young man passing by rushed to her aid. Isadora looked into his eyes and whispered: “Save... Give me a child!” From this fleeting relationship she gave birth to a baby, but he lived only a few days.
Duncan and Yesenin
In 1921, the greatest love came into her life. She met the Russian poet Sergei Yesenin.
A whirlwind romance began immediately on the day they met. She fell in love with him because Sergei reminded her of her little fair-haired son with blue eyes. The difference of eighteen years did not prevent them from becoming spouses in 1922; this was the first and only marriage in Duncan’s life.
Yesenin loved Isadora madly and admired her, they traveled around Europe and America, were happy, but not for long. He didn't know at all English language, and Isadora is Russian. But not only these difficulties in linguistic communication disrupted their idyll. Yesenin was depressed that everyone abroad perceived him only as the husband of the great Isadora Duncan. The passion passed, and an eternal love union did not work out. Sergei returned to Russia two years after the wedding, and Isadora continued to love him.
He died in 1925, and Duncan lost another blond, blue-eyed, and most beloved person in his life.
Death
One close friend she said about Isadora that for her, moving quickly was as necessary as breathing. Duncan spent her entire life running around like crazy, stopping only to eat and drink. She had all the prerequisites to crash her car at least twenty times.
Cars became some kind of obsession in Isadora’s life and played a mystical role. Her children died in a car accident, and the dancer herself crashed more than once while driving cars across Russia. During the European trip with Yesenin, they changed four cars, because Duncan simply terrorized the drivers, demanding to drive as quickly as possible, and several times these demands of hers ended in failure.
It was as if she had been playing with cars all her life: who would win? Cars brought her pain, disappointment and tragedy, and she again sat down and raced. On September 14, 1927, the final came in Nice, Duncan lost. She had a date with her next lover, Benoit Falchetto. Isadora sat in the passenger seat of his two-seater sports car and did not notice how the edge of a long shawl was left over the side and caught on the rear wheel. Benoit gave the gas, the car moved, the shawl stretched like a string, and in an instant broke Isadora’s neck. At 9.30 pm at the Saint-Roch clinic, doctors recorded the death of the great dancer.
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