*
Elena Yushkova
Isadora Duncan’s Dance in Russia:
First
Impressions and Discussions.
1904–1909
Abstract
This article analyzes the ways in which Isadora Duncan’s dance
oeuvre was perceived
in Russia by di16 Journal of
Russian American Studies 2.1 (May 2018)
art, literature and theater in the
West, the English-language accounts of Duncan’s
experiences in Russia and
the Soviet Union are quite insuElena Yushkova, Isadora Duncan’s Dance in
Russia 17
abroad and even surpassed its
French and Italian counterparts, which were
technically the ‘parents’ of Russian professional dance in the eighteenth
century.4
A special ballet school in St. Petersburg prepared about 150
professional dancers
for the stage during the period of 1779–1896.
Nevertheless, at the beginning of
the twentieth century, certain ballet
traditions were becoming obsolete. The young
choreographer Mikhail (Michel)
Fokine, was deeply unsatis18 Journal of Russian American Studies 2.1 (May
2018)
background of the 1900s. Organic forms of Art-Nouveau architecture
decorated
Moscow and St. Petersburg streets, and magazines attracted
readers’ attention by
publishing images of home grown and authentic Russian
design.
Spiritual aspirations penetrated all kinds of arts. The magazine, Mir
Iskusstva
(World of Art), published in
St. Petersburg in 1899–1903 represented a
new
approach to analyzing painting, architecture, and theater, paving the
way for a
new kind of art criticism. This art criticism was be based on a
canon of reyned
aesthetics and it acknowledged
the importance of spiritual content in
art, and
allowed for discussions about the human soul. “Mir iskusstva
was committed to
exploring the category of beauty, and this credo, along
with its alignment with
European modernist art, made it anathema to Russia’s
more utilitarian-minded
critics.12 New aesthetics
penetrated into theater as well. Even
in the realistic
works of Moscow Art
Theater led by Konstantin Stanislavsky, a
spiritual
atmosphere prevailed during the performances of Vsevolod Meyerhold
in Vera
Komissarzhevskaya’s plays.
Theater tried to create a
hypnotic inElena Yushkova, Isadora Duncan’s Dance in Russia 19
be a
spiritual act involving the public emotionally and intellectually like Russian
theater directors of that time (Stanislavsky, Meyerhold). Isadora Duncan
easily
and successfully broke many traditions
of the dance form, while proclaiming
a
new role of dance in a human
life. She also broke artistic stereotypes
like
Russian symbolist poets and philosophers did, claiming that dance would
be a
new religion of the twentieth century. Duncan charmed the Russian
cultural elite
with her devotion to the high art. They were ready to accept
her manifesto in
which Duncan declared her intention to overcome the
Cartesian duality between
body and mind through dance.16 “Indeed, the
20 Journal of Russian American Studies 2.1 (May 2018)
Maurice
Girschman, the Berlin correspondent of the newspaper.22 She explained
to the
Russian public that her main tasks were to revive the beauty of the ancient
dance, to illustrate the thoughts of composers such as Beethoven in dance,
and to
make art publics believe that dance was an elevated art form.23 Most
of the Elena Yushkova, Isadora Duncan’s Dance in Russia 21
with
perfectly formed feet; they 22 Journal of Russian
American Studies 2.1 (May 2018)
jumps to him looked ‘wild,’41 her ‘poses were
risky.’42 Nevertheless, all critics
agree that Duncan’s ‘nudity’ has nothing
to do with pornography or entertainment.
Alexander Rafalovich writes about
her being a “chaste virgin,’43 and most other
critics thought the same way.
“This is not a nudité that arouses sinful thoughts, but
rather a kind of
incorporeal nudity”44 and “there is nothing here to shock the moral
sense,”45 add Shebuev and Svetlov. While Belyayev claims, that “except her
legs
and proportional body, there is nothing attractive in Miss Duncan as a
woman,”46
Rafalovich Elena Yushkova, Isadora Duncan’s Dance in Russia
23
meaning that she is a real discoverer of the Greek art. Nikolai Shebuev,
on the
contrary, 24 Journal of Russian American Studies 2.1 (May
2018)
ground of historical truth,”62 denying his colleagues’ doubts in the
authenticity
of her dances. But Andre Levinson noted ironically that “the
public received her
dances as antique artifacts, despite their obvious
unauthenticity and the fact that
Isadora preferred to discuss them as dances
of the future, not the past.”63 However,
Russian Symbolists continued to
look for diElena Yushkova, Isadora Duncan’s Dance in Russia 25
passion
and sorrow.”68 She described images of an awakening nature, a 26 Journal
of Russian American Studies 2.1 (May 2018)
One publication in Vesy looks
quite strange. Most likely Bryusov himself had
prepared it, since he did
most of the work during the Elena Yushkova, Isadora Duncan’s Dance in
Russia 27
from it should grow the reform of one of the most exhausted
and abandoned forms
of life: dance.”81
Retelling the
speech of Duncan, which he listened to
at the dinner after
her second
performance in St. Petersburg, Benois pays
a special attention to
her aesthetic ideas focusing on her
thoughts about beauty: “The only thing that
matters is beauty, the pursuit
of beauty in order to make all life beautiful. In the
presence of beauty,
even su ering has no terror, even death does not frighten,
beauty
illumines everything, and it is mankind’s best comforter.”82 He describes
her thoughts on the beauty of nature in which the most beautiful creature is
a
human being. “Everything is good when
it repeats, harmonizes, yts together,
gives a lively
life, when it’s not uniform, not disjointed or accidental. Beauty is in
motion, in repetition, in rhythm,”83 comments Benois on Duncan’s ideas about
a
necessity to restore a beautiful human image familiar to ancient artists.
Voloshin also believes that dance can surpass words. “Nothing can shake the
soul so much as the dance… Dance is the highest of the arts because it
reaches
the most primary of rhythm, the one enclosed in the pulsation of a
human heart,”84
claims the poet. Philosopher
Vasily Rozanov will soon predict that
‘Isadora
Duncan’s personality, her school will play a large role in the
battle of ideas of the
new civilization’85 recognizing her contribution to
the history of ideas. However,
many reviews of Duncan performances
represented negative records. There were
critics who refused to see any
depths in her dance, which evidently challenged
them.
Poor theater of a
‘silly American miss’
In an open letter by
the famous conductor and musical critic
Alexander
Ziloti to the violinist Leopold Auer, who conducted the orchestra
during Isadora’s
second tour in Russia in January 1905, Ziloti chastised
Auer for participating in
Isadora’s program, asserting that it was
unacceptable for a musician of his level to
accompany such a ‘primitive’
dance.’ “Despite all my e orts, I could not ynd any
connection between
the music and the movements of Ms. Duncan. She yrst raised
her hands
upwards; suddenly she went down as if searching for a paper lost on the
28 Journal of Russian American Studies 2.1 (May 2018)
dull, very
monotonous and very daring,”88 wrote Plescheev in December 1904,
representing the opinion of general public. “She does not charm, doesn’t
move
[the audience], she only shows
original poses that are reminiscent of
dancers
depicted on antique vases. She embodies ancient dances and from this
perspective
deserves our attention. But then again to see this is pleasant
only in small doses,”89
assumes he, supposing that the admiration by Isadora
was provoked only with a
help of the European press.
Belyayev
thinks that Duncan should add her
dance to the collection of
Russian sans-culottes’
art, meaning by that the literary works by Maxim Gorky and
paintings by the
Peredvizhniki (Wanderers). “Sans-culotte” Gorky represented a
new generation
of have-nots, who in the Russian language were called “bare-foot”
people—they traveled around the country without shoes (bosyaki). The
painters
of Peredvizhniki group, which was created in 1874 and existed at
the beginning
of the 20th century, expressed their compassion to the poorest
people of Russia
who were living in desperate conditions even 40 years later
after the abolition
of the serfdom. In Repin’s famous painting Haulers on
the Volga-river, we can
see shoeless people in the rags pulling the barge.
Figuratively, the reformers took
oElena Yushkova, Isadora Duncan’s Dance in
Russia 29
interested in what is being played.94 However, Shebuev in his
description of the
dance to Chopin’s Mazurka in B-major, op.7, no 1, shows
that the dance ytted
in with the music
completely. “She [Duncan] emerged and swam
like Undine,
swaying in time with the beat, waving her hands with the
beat, smiling, diving with
the beat… her dancing merged into a single chord
with Chopin’s Mazurka.” Then
he adds that “her body is as though bewitched
by the music. It is as though you
yourself were bathing in the music.”95
Voloshin writes about music as an embodied
partner of Duncan. “You do not
hear the music. The music is instilled and falls
silent in her body like in
a magic crystal. The music becomes radiant and 30 Journal of Russian
American Studies 2.1 (May 2018)
dreamed about the synthesis of arts and
turned to antiquity to Elena Yushkova, Isadora Duncan’s Dance in Russia
31
hands and arms, an absence of acrobatics and of steel toes. Shebuev
stressed that
“Duncan has no ballet technique; she does not aim at fouettes
and cabrioles. But
there is so much sculpture in her, so much color and
simplicity.”106 Benois retells
the conversation with Duncan, in which she
says: “There is no human dignity
in the ballet. The dancers are mere puppets
in motion, not people,”107 having in
mind that “the ballet … represents an
overcoming of di32 Journal of Russian American Studies 2.1 (May
2018)
of the nineteenth-century ballet’s apollonian danse d’école,”117 sums
up critic and
later—a historian of ballet Andre Levinson, using Nietzsche’s
terminology, dear
to Isadora, which also can
be found in Vil’kina’s reviews. Thus, most writers
see in Duncan’s dance an overcoming of the numerous ballet clichés and new
freedom of bodily expression.
By 1908, the rhetoric on Duncan dance
changes and a new term Elena Yushkova, Isadora Duncan’s Dance in Russia
33
the viewer’s impressions of the dance is necessary.121 Molostvov
summarizes that
Duncan’s plyas and her inspirational gesture is much more
important than the
perfect technique of the contemporary ballet. In
Volynsky’s opinion, the dancer’s
work becomes an appeal to a new art, to the
spiritual art of Apollo, contrary to
Dionysus.122
The philosopher Vasily
Rozanov in 1909 wrote: “In her plyaska the entire
human being is re34
Journal of Russian American Studies 2.1 (May 2018)
that kind of discussion,
which switched later to the new plastique of Diaghilev’s
ballets, also based
on ancient rituals and very modern at the same time.129
InElena Yushkova,
Isadora Duncan’s Dance in Russia 35
of Russian ballet
abroad. He stood for the purity of
ballet and did not accept
Duncan’s
innovations in dance in general, but
probably was inspired by the
discussions on the
relationship between a free dance and classical ballet. Composer
and critic,
Cherepnin, published his works On the ways of ballet realism (1915-
16) and
Ballet symbols (1917), while searching for common methods of analysis
between ballet and musical forms. He insisted that ballet had to be
understood not
through the prism of principles of dramatic theater, but only
through its plastic
and choreographic means.131 A detailed consideration of
all these books is beyond
this article’s limits. However, as we can see, the
appearance of literature on dance
history coincides with
and follows the extensive tours of
Isadora Duncan in
Russia.
“Genuine beauty:” coverage of
Duncan’s tours in the following
prerevolutionary years
After 1905, tours
of Duncan took place in 1907-08, 1909 and 1913, and re-
views of that time
became less impressionistic and more analytical. In 1907, the
Russian
translation of Duncan’s essay Dance of the future was published132 and
after
that, critics could use her own theoretical statements in their descriptions of
her dance. In the preface to the book, writer Nikolay Suslov stressed that
Duncan
had spiritualized the dance, “transformed it into a story of
emotional depth.”133
Duncan’s other achievements included the concept of the
solo dance, bringing
dancing to the human level and making it personal to
the dancer, as well as a form
of rehabilitation of the human body itself.
134
In 1913, Duncan’s Russian tour caused another 36 Journal of
Russian American Studies 2.1 (May 2018)
right: the practitioners of the
Russian ballet were enraptured by her performances
and found new ideas for
their work. Among them were young choreographers of
the Mariinsky and
Bolshoi theaters Michel Fokine and Alexander Gorsky, and
ballerinas Anna
Pavlova and Vera Karalli.137
Critics again accented the spiritual content and
the embodiment of “genuine”
beauty, despite some imperfections of the body
and the limited lexicon of the
dancer. ‘I don’t know any other plastic actor
of our time who could express in
the movements of the body the motion of
his/her soul with greater power and
naturalness than Duncan,’138 wrote
theater director Komissarzhevsky, reElena Yushkova, Isadora Duncan’s Dance in
Russia 37
itself riddle with contradictiosn and was in extreme 38
Journal of Russian American Studies 2.1 (May 2018)
concert in November 1921,
showing how the dancer, using only the means of
pantomime, transformed
herself into a bow-backed workman—a symbol of the
oppressed Russia, who
succeeded to tear his fetters and become free.146 Some
of the authors were
disappointed by Duncan’s body (not that young now), by
some of
her sentimental pieces, and later—by her marriage to Esenin. However,
newspapers and magazines started to write ecstatically about Duncan’s
students—
young and beautiful, harmonically developed. They wished all
Russian children
could have studied at the Duncan’s school.
The year
1923 became an important milestone in the formation of the cultural
policy
of the Soviet Union. The Twelfth Party Congress of the Bolshevik Party
resolved that the theater had to be used for systematic mass propaganda of
the
communist ideas.147 On the other hand, in Moscow the Choreological
Laboratory
of the State Academy of Artistic Sciences under the leadership of
art historians
Alexei Sidorov and Alexei Larionov, conducted fundamental
research on human
motion with small groups of
plastique dancers. In the process they
developed
new forms of ‘free’ dance, and which the Government tried to
liquidate.148 At that
time, there were more and more skeptical articles on
Duncan in magazines and
newspapers. “Duncan still shows us the harmonious
human being’s emotions…
But there is no
appropriate environment to create new
Hellenes,”149—writes
theater critic and writer
Victor Ardov. Nevertheless, in August 1923,
after
Duncan’s return from the United States, the press reports on the deep
connection
of Isadora’s thoughts with the Soviet ideology—mostly because of
her involuntary
propaganda on behalf of the Bolsheviks that she conducted in
the United States
(she was deprived of her American citizenship after that).
“Duncan returned to
Russia... Her ideas about
the free and harmonious education of a
spirit and a
body in beauty, in her opinion, could take root
only in Russia,”150 wrote Ogonyok
magazine. The educational program of
Duncan was recognized as useful for the
regime again. “To take a poor
proletarian child and to make a healthy and joyful
creature out of him—this
is a big accomplishment,”151 wrote ballet critic Viktor
Iving in the
newspaper Pravda after the performance of the school in Moscow in
November
1923.
The year of 1924 could hardly
be successful for the school because after
Lenin’s death in January 1924. Cultural policy dramatically changed for the
worse,
fostering the Communist Party control over all kinds of arts. On
August 26, the
146 Stepanida Rudneva. Vospominaniya
schatlivogo cheloveka. Stefanida Dmitriev-
na Rudneva i
studiya muzykal’nogo dvizheniya Geptakhor v dokumentah Tsentral’nogo
moskovskogo arhiva-muzeya lichnyh kollektsyi. Ed. A. Kats. (Ì.: Izdatel’stvo
Glavarhiva
Moskvy, 2007), 664.
147 V. Zhidkov. Teatr i vremya: ot
Oktyabrya do perestroiki. (M.: STD, 1991), 105.
148 N. Misler. Vnachale bylo
telo. Ritmoplasticheskie eksperimenty nachala XX veka.
(M.: Iskusstvo—XXI
vek, 2011), 109.
149 Viktor Ardov. O tantse so storony (On dance from aside),
in Aisedora, 288.
150 D.K. Vozvrzaschenie Aisedory Duncan.
Ogonyok. 26.08.1923, State Bakhrushin
Theater Museum
(Moscow), Makarov, Elena Yushkova, Isadora Duncan’s Dance in Russia
39
Decree of the Moscow Council ordered the closure of more than ten famous
studios
of plastique dance, and demanded the inclusion of a communist
functionary into
Duncan’s school sta , who could supervise its
activities.152 Nevertheless, thanks
to the Commissar of Sports Nikolay
Podvoysky, in the summer of 1924, the school
got a right to work. He helped
organize a training for six hundred153 proletarian
children at the huge Red
Stadium in Moscow. Irma Duncan taught children to
dance revolutionary
dances, that she had been choreographed earlier.154
In 1924, Duncan’s
departure to the West was inevitable. There was no state
support; Russian
tours of the dancer were ynancially disastrous. In September,
two farewell
performances of the school took place at the Chamber and Bolshoy
theaters,
where Isadora was visibly distressed in her introduction, stressing that
the
students did not have food and funds to pay for utilities.155 The press after
the performances was ecstatic again.
Izvestiya wrote that “the whole program
manifests a revolutionary spirit”, and
represents “the realism of feelings.”156
Rabochy
zritel insisted that “the Duncan pedagogical system should be used more
widely, and for ALL proletarian children.”157 Of course, that was
unrealistic. After
the departure of Irma Duncan to the USA in 1928, the
school became almost
illegal: it did not yt in
with the new emphasis on Socialist Realism and
mass
sports, and survived only because some former students had a long tour
of Siberia
at the beginning of the 1930s, and staged anti-fascism pieces
during the wartime
in 1940s. In 1949, the school was closed and was not
referred to again until the
end of the 1970s.
In 1927, after the tragic
death of Isadora Duncan, Russian criticism summed
up her main achievements.
Alexander Gidoni in the journal Contemporary theater,
¹ 4,
1927, wrote, “Isadora Duncan has been
dispersed in the contemporary
art of
dance. Still, this dispersal is very
fruitful for the artistic culture of our
days.”158 Aleksey Gvozdev, who considered Duncan’s art as bourgeois,
asserted
in Krasnaya Gazeta (Red Newspaper) that ‘Duncanism’ outlived
itself, “without
having created a monumental form capable of expressing the
heroic mood of the
epoch. But it did open the yrst breach and cleared the
way for new achievements,
which must be reached by a new generation of dance
reformers under the more
profound in40 Journal of Russian American
Studies 2.1 (May 2018)
Conclusions
Summarizing discussions
of Isadora Duncan in Russian criticism,
we can
note that the perception of her dance changes according to
situations in Russian
and Soviet art. Duncan
had always been welcomed by the
Russian press, but
the nature of this enthusiasm varied. The
Symbolists saw an elevated spiritual
meaning in her
work; the early Soviet newspapers and
magazines employed
propagandistic rhetoric to justify the invitation
of the world-famous artiste at a
moment when the country was suElena
Yushkova, Isadora Duncan’s Dance in Russia 41
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Elena Yushkova. Isadora Duncan’s Dance in Russia. First Impressions and
Discussions.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/324709608_Isadora_Duncan's_Dance_in_Russia_First_Impressions_and_Discussions_1904-1909
https://journals.ku.edu/jras/article/download/7555/6890/
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