There was an occasion, during one of her appearances at the Metropolitan Opera House, when she walked with that especial Isadorian grace to the footlights and gave the audience, with special reference to the boxholders, the benefits of the following speech:
“Beethoven and Schubert,” she said, “were children of the people all their lives. They were poor men and their great work was inspired by and belongs to humanity. The people need great drama, music, dancing. We went over to the East Side and gave a performance for nothing. What happened? The people sat there transfixed, with tears rolling down their cheeks. That is how they cared for it. Funds of life and poetry and art are waiting to spring from the people of the East Side.... Build for them a great amphitheatre, the only democratic form of theatre, where everyone has an equal view, no boxes; no balconies.... Why don’t you give art to the people who really need it? Great music should no longer be kept for the delight of a handful of cultured people. It should be given free to the masses. It is as necessary for them as air and bread. Give it to them, for it is the spiritual wine of humanity.”
As for the ballet, she continued to have none of it. She once remarked: “The old-fashioned waltz and mazurka are merely an expression of sickly sentimentality and romance which our youth and our times have outgrown. The minuet is but the expression of the unctuous servility of courtiers at the time of Louis XIV and hooped skirts.”
Isadora’s European successes led to the establishment of schools of her own, where her theories could be expounded and developed. The first of these was in Berlin, and as her pupils, her “children,” developed, she appeared with them. When she first went to Russia, the controversy she stirred up has become a matter of ballet history; and it is a matter of record that she influenced that father of the “romantic revolution” in ballet, Michel Fokine.
Russia figured extensively in Isadora’s life, for she gave seasons there, first in 1905, and again in 1907 and 1912. Then, revolutionary that she was, she returned to the Soviet in 1921, established a school there and, in 1922, married the “hooligan” poet, Sergei Essenin. Throughout her life, Isadora had denounced marriage as an institution, disavowed it, fought it, bore three children outside it, on the ground that it existed only for the enslavement of woman.
There had been three Duncan seasons in America before I brought her, in 1922, for what proved to be her final visit to her native country. The earlier American series were in 1908, when she danced with Walter Damrosch and the New York Symphony Orchestra, at the Metropolitan Opera House, prior to a tour; in 1911, when she again danced with Damrosch; again in 1916, when she returned to California, early the next year, after a twenty-two years’ absence. She also visited New York, briefly, in 1915, impulsively renting a studio at Fourth Avenue and Twenty-third Street, with the idea of establishing a school. It was during this brief visit that she made history of a kind by suddenly improvising a dance to the French national anthem at the Metropolitan Opera House.
As I have pointed out, enlightened dance criticism, so far as the newspapers were concerned, in those days was almost non-existent. For those readers who might be interested, however, there are available, in the files of The New York Times, penetrating analyses of her performances by the discerning Carl Van Vechten.
The story of Isadora’s intervening years is marked by light and shadow. Hers was a life that could not long retain happiness within its grasp. Snatches of happiness were hers in her brief association with England’s greatly talented stage designer, that misunderstood genius of the theatre, Gordon Craig, the son of Ellen Terry, by whom Isadora had a child; and yet another child by the lover who was known only as Lohengrin.
Her passionate love of children was touching. Never was it better exemplified than by her several schools, her devotion to the girls and her concern for them. Most of all was it apparent in her selflessness in her attitude towards her own two children. It is not difficult to imagine the depth of the tragedy for her when a car in which they were riding on their way to Versailles toppled into the Seine, and the children were drowned. A third child, her dream of comfort and consolation, died at birth.
It was in an attempt to forget this last tragedy that she brought her school to New York. That same Otto Kahn, who had made Pavlova’s first visit to America possible, came to her rescue and footed the bills for a four weeks’ season at the old Century Theatre, which stood in lower Central Park West, where Brother Augustin held forth with Greek drama and biblical verse, and Isadora and the “children” danced. The public remained away. There was a press appeal for funds with which to liquidate a $12,000 indebtedness and to provide funds with which to get Isadora and the “children” to Italy. Another distinguished art patron, the late Frank Vanderlip, and others came to the rescue with cash and note endorsements. Thus, once again, Isadora put her native America behind her in disgust. Her parting shot at the country of her birth was a blast at Americans living and battening in luxury on their war profits while Europe bled.