I
During the last part of the past and the beginning of the present century, when the outside world was ignorant of the existence of the Russian ballet, circles of more serious-minded students of art began to voice protest against the cult of skirt and fire dancers, jongleurs and kickers, and the time was ripe for any movement that would bring relief from the prevailing deterioration of such a noble art as dancing. Even the general public grew bored of acrobatic performances and as during every period of decadence ‘there were a few teachers who consistently resolved to impart to their pupils only what was good and beautiful in dancing, whose voices, feeble as they sounded, were nevertheless strong enough to carry weight and rescue their art from the deplorable condition into which it had for the time fallen,’ as a dancing critic of that time aptly writes. One of the most ardent advocates of a new classic art of dancing during this time was Mrs. Richard Hovey. In all her teaching and preaching Mrs. Hovey based the principles of the prospective style upon the plastic art of the ancient Greeks. She made a vigorous propaganda for this in New York, Boston and California. Whether directly or indirectly Miss Isadora Duncan, who had been interested in initiating a reform of human life in its least details of costume, of hygiene and of morals, felt the impulse of Mrs. Hovey’s propaganda and joined the worthy movement.
The fundamental principle of Mrs. Hovey’s propaganda was the return to nature. According to the theory of this new movement, dancing was declared an expression of nature. Water, wind, birds and all forces of nature are subject to a law of rhythm and gravity. Not the tricky, broken lines, spinning whirls and toe gymnastics, but soft, curved undulations of nature, are close to Mother Earth. Thus also man in his normal life and savage state, moved rather in slow curves than in quick broken lines. This, briefly, was the principal argument of the few reformers who inspired Miss Duncan. Already Noverre and Petipa had emphasized the fact that ancient Greek sculpture and Greek designs gave the best ideas of graceful lines and pleasing human forms. But the votaries of the new school explained that in a return to the natural gesture of human life Greek art was the only logical criterion. Miss Duncan in her essay, ‘The Dance,’ says:
‘To seek in nature the fairest forms and to find the movement which expresses the soul of these forms—this is the art of the dancer. It is from nature alone that the dancer must draw his inspirations, in the same manner as the sculptor, with whom he has so many affinities. Rodin has said: “To produce good sculpture it is not necessary to copy the works of antiquity; it is necessary first of all to regard the works of nature, and to see in those of the classics only the method by which they have interpreted nature.” Rodin is right; and in my art I have by no means copied, as has been supposed, the figures of Greek vases, friezes and paintings. From them I have learned to regard nature, and when certain of my movements recall the gestures that are seen in works of art, it is only because, like them, they are drawn from the grand natural source.
‘My inspiration has been drawn from trees, from waves, from clouds, from the sympathies that exist between passion and the storm, between gentleness and the soft breeze, and the like, and I always endeavor to put into my movements a little of that divine continuity which gives to the whole of nature its beauty and its life.’
Thus Miss Duncan started her career by interpreting natural qualities by means of natural movements. ‘I have closely studied the figured documents of all ages and of all the great masters, but I have never seen in them any representations of human beings walking on the extremity of the toes or raising the leg higher than the head. These ugly and false positions in no way express that state of unconscious Dionysiac delirium which is necessary to the dancer. Moreover, movements, just like harmonies in music, are not invented; they are discovered,’ writes Miss Duncan. To her the only mode of dancing is barefoot. According to her ‘the dancer must choose above all the movements which express the strength, the health, the grace, the nobility, the languor or the gravity of living things.’ Gravity to Miss Duncan is natural and right. A ballet dancer, a Pavlova, Nijinsky and Karsavina, eager to defy the laws of gravity, is to her a freak.
Prince Serge Volkhonsky, who has been a conspicuous figure in the Russian dance reform-movement, writes of Miss Duncan’s school in comparison with that of Jacques-Dalcroze: ‘Her dance is a result of personal temperament, his movements are the result of music; she draws from herself, he draws from rhythm; her psychological basis is subjective; his rhythmical basis is objective; and, in order to characterize her in a few words, I may say Isadora is the dancing “ego.” This subjective psychological basis of Isadora’s art I find clearly emphasized by Mr. Levinsohn’s words: “The images or moods (Stimmungen) created in our mind by the rational element—music—cannot be identical with every one, and therefore cannot be compulsory. Just in that dissimilitude of moods and uncompulsoriness of images resides the best criterion for the appreciation of Isadora Duncan as a founder of a system. Her dance is precisely not a system, cannot found what is called a ‘school’; it needs another similar ‘ego’ to repeat her. And according to this it seems quite incomprehensible that some people should see in Miss Duncan’s art ‘a possibility for all of us being beautiful.’ No, not at all for all of us; for not every temperament, while embodying ‘images or moods’ called forth by music, will necessarily create something beautiful; one cannot raise the exceptional into rule. In order to be certain of creating something beautiful, no matter whether in the moral or the æsthetical domain, it is not in ourselves that we shall find the law, but in subjecting ourselves to another principle which lives outside of ourselves. For the plastic (choreographic), this principle is Music. It is not instinct expressing itself under the influence of music—which with every man is different, and only in few chosen natures beautiful in itself—but the rhythm of music, which in every given composition is an unchangeable element subjecting our ‘ego.’ This is the basis of living plastic art. And in this respect Isadora’s art satisfies the double exigencies of the visible and the audible art as little as the ballet. Her arms are certainly more rhythmical than her legs, but as a whole we cannot call her rhythmical in the strict sense of the word, and this appears especially in the slow movements: her walk, so to speak, does not keep step with music; she often steps on the weak part of the bar and often between the notes. In general it is in the examples of slow tempo that the insufficiency of the principle may be observed. The slower a tempo the more she ‘mimics,’ and the farther, therefore, she strays from the music. If we look at the impression on the spectators we shall see that all in the paces of the quick tempos the movement must enter into closer connection with the music; in cases of very minute divisions of the bar the simple coincidence of the step with the first ‘heavy’ part already produces a repeated design which makes ear and eye meet in one common perception. If the representatives of that particular kind of dance were to realize this they would endeavor to introduce into slow tempos the rhythmical element instead of the mimic, which leads them out of the music and converts the dance into a sort of acting during the music, a sort of plastic melo-declamation.”’
These critics have pointed out the subjective nature of Miss Duncan’s dance and her impatience of rules and formal technique. They believe that because of these two qualities of her art it cannot be repeated, except by ‘another similar ego.’ But as if in direct answer to these charges come Miss Duncan’s pupils. They are by no means highly selected material or ‘similar egos,’ but each (among the more mature pupils) is a beautiful and individual dancer. To each she has transmitted her spirit; in each she has preserved the native personality. They are the best evidence thus far obtained of the truth of Miss Duncan’s dictum of the ‘possibility for all of us being beautiful.’ Moreover we must not suppose that Miss Duncan’s contempt for formal technique is a contempt for technical ability. She herself is a marvellously plastic and exact dancer, and she demands, ultimately, no less of her pupils. The limited range of her technique, so often complained of, is the deliberate result of her belief that the only movements proper to the dance are the natural movements of the human body. She stakes the success of her art upon the proposition that these movements alone are capable of the highest absolute and interpretive beauty. As to the truth of this proposition each observer must judge for himself from the results. Again, Miss Duncan does not always ‘dance the music’ literally, note for note, according to the theory of the Jacques-Dalcroze system. Her interpretation is frankly emotional and subjective, but it does not pretend to transcend the music.
In further justice to her efforts we should consider Isadora Duncan as much a prophet of a new movement, as a dancer of a new school. Her influence has been more far-reaching in Russia than anywhere else. She practically brought about a serious revolution among the Russian dancers, of whom we shall speak in another chapter. She influenced the art of dancing in Germany, France, Italy and England. She was the striking contrast to all the deteriorated stage dances of the early twentieth century in America. She has given a powerful impulse to all dance reforms by counteracting the academic and time-worn views. She is the indirect motive of the Diaghileff-Fokine break with the old Russian ballet and their striving for new rules and ideas in the art of dancing. To her is due the gradual increase of refined taste and higher respect for the stage dance. Personally we have found that her dances failed to tell the phonetic story of the music. Her selection of the compositions of Gluck, Schubert, Chopin and Beethoven has not been uniformly successful, since most of them were never meant by the composer to be danced. Compositions of this kind lack the necessary choreographic episodes and often even the plastic symbols. No genius, we believe, could visualize the slow cadences and solemn images of any symphonic music of those German classics, whose works have been the choice of Miss Duncan. With a few exceptions, such as the Moments Musicals and some other pieces, we have never been able to grasp the meaning of the phonetoplastic images of Isadora Duncan’s dances.
Duncan