That’s not the story we’re trying to tell. “It’s not our goal to have me match perfectly with Isadora Duncan. I’m more interested in what she achieved as an artist.” “There is so much to explore besides the details of her life, which I think are sometimes paid too much attention. He’s more interested in her art and legacy. Varnava emphasized that his examination of Duncan, set to the score of Sergei Prokofiev’s “Cinderella,” isn’t strictly autobiographical. She was still famous, though past her prime and suffering from financial hardships, when she met her untimely demise in 1927. In 1902 she joined forces with Loie Fuller, another modern-dance pioneer, touring Europe and establishing her reputation as a groundbreaking artist.ĭuncan also spent time in Russia and its later incarnation, the Soviet Union, where she set up a school and briefly married respected poet Sergei Yesenin. Gaining fame and fortune, she started a studio and began performing in concert halls. Upon moving to London at 21 in 1898, she found work dancing for wealthy patrons and refined her approach after studying Greek culture and art at the British Museum. “I followed my fantasy and improvised, teaching any pretty thing that came into my head,” she later recalled.ĭuncan left San Francisco in her late teens and ended up in New York, but her talents weren’t appreciated there.Įurope was more receptive. “For us, she represents the beginning of modernism, when dance freed itself from the restrictions of classical ballet.”ĭuncan dropped out of school at 10 to help the family by teaching dance, which was her passion from an early age. “She is known both for her revolutionary dancing and for her romantic relationship with a great Russian poet whom everybody knows,” said Natalia Osipova, the beloved Russian ballet star who will play Duncan in the full-length work. “She has strong associations with Russia at a very important time in the development of Russian dance.” 12 at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa. “She is very revered in Russia, as she is everywhere dance is appreciated,” said choreographer Vladimir Varnava, who is working on a ballet about Duncan that will receive its world premiere Friday, Aug. So it seems imperative to ask why a couple of Russians would want to create a ballet that celebrates Duncan’s life. Like so many 19th century residents of the wild and untamed Western U.S., she was a rebel and a pioneer. Modern-dance pioneer Isadora Duncan was a quintessentially American creation – a San Francisco-born free spirit whose extravagant life and lurid death almost eclipsed her accomplishments as the first artist to free choreography from its balletic straitjacket more than a century ago.
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