Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-pjpqr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-28T13:50:47.856Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Dancing Greek Antiquity in Private and Public: Isadora Duncan's Early Patronage in Paris

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2012

Samuel N. Dorf
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In Done into Dance: Isadora Duncan in America, Ann Daly writes that Isadora Duncan defined her dance as high art, and describes how Duncan raised the dance from the bottom of the cultural landscape to the top of American society:

Dancing was considered cheap, so she associated herself with the great Greeks, who deemed the art noble, and she associated herself with upper-class audiences by carefully courting her patrons and selecting her performance venues. Dancing was considered mindless, so she invoked a pantheon of great minds, from Darwin to Whitman and Plato to Nietzsche, to prove otherwise. Dancing was considered feminine, and thus trivial, so she chose her liaisons and mentors—men whose cultural or economic power accrued, by association, to her. Dancing was considered profane, so she elevated her own practice by contrasting it to that of “African primitives.” The fundamental strategy of Duncan's project to gain cultural legitimacy for dancing was one of exclusion. (Daly 1995, 16)

Type
Articles
Information
Dance Research Journal , Volume 44 , Issue 1 , Summer 2012 , pp. 5 - 27
Copyright
Copyright © Congress on Research in Dance 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Albright, Ann Cooper. 2007. Traces of Light: Absence and Presence in the Works of Loïe Fuller. Middleton, CT: Wesleyan University Press.Google Scholar
Aphrodite. Manuscript staging manual. Bibliothèque-musée de l'Opéra. B 713. Quoted in McQuinn, Julie. 2003. “Unofficial Discourses of Gender and Sexuality at the Opéra-Comique during the Belle Epoque.” Ph.D. Dissertation. Northwestern University (165).Google Scholar
Apter, Emily. 1996. “Acting Out Orientalism: Sapphic Theatricality in Turn-Of-the-Century Paris.” In Performance and Cultural Politics, edited by Diamond, Elin, 15–34. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Barney, Natalie Clifford. [1929] 1992. Adventures of the Mind. Translated by Gatton, John Spalding. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Benstock, Shari. 1986. Women of the Left Bank: Paris, 1900–1940. Texas: University of Texas Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Benstock, Shari. 1990. “Paris Lesbianism and the Politics of Reaction, 1900–1940.” In Hidden from History: Reclaiming the Gay and Lesbian Past, edited by Duberman, Martin, Vicinus, Martha, and Chauncey, George Jr., 332–46. New York: Meridian.Google Scholar
Bentley, Toni. 2002. Sisters of Salome. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Colette, . 1936. Reprint 1970. Mes apprentissages, Trois Six Neuf, Discours de Réception à l'Académie Royale Belge. Œuvres Complètes. Genève: Éditions de Crémille.Google Scholar
Cossart, Michael de. 1978. The Food of Love: Princesse Edmond de Polignac (1865–1943) and Her Salon. London: Hamish Hamilton.Google Scholar
Daly, Ann. 1995. Done into Dance: Isadora Duncan in America. Middleton, CT: Wesleyan University Press.Google Scholar
Décoret-Ahiha, Anne. 2004. Les danses exotiques en France, 1880–1940. [Paris]: Centre national de la danse.Google Scholar
DeJean, Joan. 1989. Fictions of Sappho, 1546–1937. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Desmond, Jane C. 2001. “Introduction: Making the Invisible Visible: Staging Sexualities Through Dance.” In Dancing Desires: Choreographing Sexualities On and Off the Stage, edited by Desmond, Jane C., 3–32. Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Deudon, Eric Hollingsworth. 1982. Nietzsche en France: l'antichristianisme et la critique, 1891–1915. Preface by Michel Guérin. Washington, DC: University Press of America.Google Scholar
Dorf, Samuel N. 2009. “Seeing Sappho in Paris: Operatic and Choreographic Adaptations of Sapphic Lives and Myths.” Music and Art: International Journal for Music Iconography 38: 289–308.Google Scholar
Duncan, Isadora to Douglas Ainslie. December 8, 1900. Douglas Ainslie Papers, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin. Quoted in Daly, Ann. 1995. Done into Dance: Isadora Duncan in America. Middleton, CT: Wesleyan University Press (74).Google Scholar
Duncan, Isadora to Douglas Ainslie. 1903. Pub. 1928. “The Dance of the Future [1902 or 1903, 1909].” In The Art of the Dance, edited and introduced by Cheney, Sheldon, 54–63. New York: Theatre Arts, Inc.Google Scholar
Duncan, Isadora to Douglas Ainslie. 1927. My Life. Reprinted 1955. New York and London: Liveright.Google Scholar
Duncan, Isadora to Douglas Ainslie. 1928a. “The Dance of the Greeks.” In The Art of the Dance, edited and introduced by Cheney, Sheldon, 92–98. New York: Theatre Arts, Inc.Google Scholar
Duncan, Isadora to Douglas Ainslie. 1928b. “Terpsichore.” In The Art of the Dance, edited and introduced by Cheney, Sheldon, 90–91. New York: Theatre Arts, Inc.Google Scholar
Duncan, Isadora to Douglas Ainslie. 1994. Isadora Speaks: Writings & Speeches of Isadora Duncan, edited and introduced by Rosemont, Franklin with a preface by Ann Barzel. Chicago: Charles H. Kerr Publishing Company.Google Scholar
Duncan, Margherita. 1928. “Isadora.” In Isadora Duncan. The Art of the Dance, edited and introduced by Cheney, Sheldon, 16–23. New York: Theatre Arts, Inc.Google Scholar
Erber, Nancy. 2008. “In the Flesh: Scandalous Women's Performances in Fin-de-Siècle Paris.” Proceedings of the Western Society for French History 36: 181–93.Google Scholar
Forth, Christopher E. 1993. “Nietzsche, Decadence, and Regeneration in France, 1891–95.” Journal of the History of Ideas 54(1): 97–117.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Forth, Christopher E. 2001. Zarathustra in Paris: The Nietzsche Vogue in France, 1891–1918. Dekalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press.Google Scholar
Franko, Mark. 1995. Dancing Modernism/Performing Politics. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Garafola, Lynn. [1996] 2005. “Soloists Abroad: The Prewar Careers of Natalia Trouhanova and Ida Rubinstein [1996].” In Legacies of Twentieth-Century Dance, 148–170. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.Google Scholar
Gramont, Louis de. 1905 and 1914. Printed libretto to Aphrodite. English version by Leonard Marsh. New York: G. Schirmer; and Paris: Société des Éditions Musicales.Google Scholar
Gutsche-Miller, Sarah J. 2010. “Pantomime-Ballet on the Music-Hall Stage: The Popularisation of Classical Ballet in Fin-de-Siècle Paris.” Ph.D. dissertation. McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada.Google Scholar
Guttmann, Allen. 1992. The Olympics: A History of the Modern Games. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Kahan, Sylvia. 2004. Music's Modern Muse: A Life of Winnaretta Singer, The Princesse de Polignac. Eastman Studies in Musicology. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press.Google Scholar
Koritz, Amy. 2003. “Dancing the Orient for England: Maud Allen's The Vision of Salome.” In Meaning in Motion: New Cultural Studies of Dance, edited by Desmond, Jane C., 133–52. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Kurth, Peter. 2001. Isadora: A Sensational Life. Boston: Little, Brown and Company.Google Scholar
Laloy, Louis. 1912. La Grande revue (25 June 1912): 847. Quoted in Priest, Deborah. 1999. Louis Laloy (1874–1944) on Debussy, Ravel and Stravinsky. Aldershot, England: Ashgate (156).Google Scholar
LaMothe, Kimerer L. 2006. Nietzsche's Dancers: Isadora Duncan, Martha Graham, and the Revaluation of Christian Values. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Latacz, Joachim. 1985. “Realität und Imagination: eine neue Lyrik-Theorie und Sapphos Φαίυεταί μοι χειυος – Lied.” Museums Helveticum 42: 67–93.Google Scholar
Leontis, Artemis. 2008. “Eva Palmer's Distinctive Greek Journey.” In Women Writing Greece: Essays on Hellenism, Orientalism and Travel, edited by Kolocotroni, Vassiliki and Mitsi, Efterpi, 159–84. Amsterdam: Rodopi.Google Scholar
Lidov, Joel B. 1993. “The Second Stanza of Sappho 31: Another Look.” The American Journal of Philology 114(4): 503–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Louÿs, Pierre. [1894] 1957. Les Chansons de Bilitis, Lithographies originales de Jacques Daniel. Paris: le club français du livre.Google Scholar
Louÿs, Pierre. 1926. Reprint 1988. The Songs of Bilitis. English version by Alvah C. Bessie. Illustrations by Willy Pogany. New York: Dover Publications.Google Scholar
Macintosh, Fiona. 2010. “Dancing Maenads in Early Twentieth-Century Britain.” In The Ancient Dancer in the Modern World: Responses to Greek and Roman Dance, edited by Macintosh, Fiona, 188–208. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Manning, Susan A. 1993. Ecstasy and the Demon: Feminism and Nationalism in the Dances of Mary Wigman. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Manning, Susan A. 1999. “Isadora Duncan, Martha Graham und die lesbische Rezeption.” Tanzdrama 44/45: 18–25.Google Scholar
Marcus, Jane. 1983. “Liberty, Sorority, Misogyny.” In Representations of Women in Fiction. Edited by Heilbrun, Carolyn G. and Higgonet, Margaret R., 60–97. Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
McQuinn, Julie. 2003. “Unofficial Discourses of Gender and Sexuality at the Opéra-Comique during the Belle Epoque.” Ph.D. Dissertation. Northwestern University, Evanston, IL.Google Scholar
Nematollahy, Ali. 2009. “Nietzsche in France, 1890–1914.” Philosophical Forum 40(2): 169–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O'Higgins, Dolores. 1990. “Sappho's Splintered Tongue: Silence in Sappho 31 and Catullus 51.” The American Journal of Philology 111(2): 156–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O'Sheel, Shaemas. 1928. “Isadora Duncan, Artist.” In Isadora Duncan, The Art of the Dance, edited and introduced by Cheney, Sheldon, 31–6. New York: Theatre Arts, Inc.Google Scholar
Palmer-Sikelianos, Eva. 1993. Upward Panic: The Autobiography of Eva Palmer-Sikelianos, edited with an introduction by Anton, John P.. Chur, Switzerland: Harwood Academic Publishers.Google Scholar
Payne, Harry C. 1978. “Modernizing the Ancients: The Reconstruction of Ritual Drama 1870–1920.” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 122(3): 182–92.Google Scholar
Phillips, K. J. 1991. “Jane Harrison and Modernism.” Journal of Modern Literature 17(4): 465–76.Google Scholar
Preston, Carrie J. 2005. “The Motor in the Soul: Isadora Duncan and Modernist Performance.” Modernism/Modernity 12(2): 273–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Prins, Yopie. 1996. “Sappho's Afterlife in Translation.” In Re-Reading Sappho: Reception and Transmission, edited by Greene, Ellen, 36–67. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Prins, Yopie. 1999. Victorian Sappho. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Proust, Marcel. 1903. “Le Salon de la Princesse Edmond de Polignac: musique d'aujourd'hui; échos d'autrefois.” Figaro (6 September): 3.Google Scholar
Reynolds, Margaret, ed. 2000. The Sappho Companion. New York, NY: Palgrave.Google Scholar
Ricoeur, Paul. 2004. Memory, History, Forgetting. Translated by Blamey, Kathleen and Pellauer, David. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rodriguez, Suzanne. 2002. Wild Heart, a Life: Natalie Clifford Barney's Journey from Victorian America to Belle Époque Paris. New York: Ecco.Google Scholar
Roubier, Étienne. 1912. “Aux Capucines, Sapphô, Opérette en deux actes, de MM. André Barde et Michel Carré, Musique de M. Charles Cuvillier.” Le Théatre 319(April): 22–4.Google Scholar
Sappho, ,. 2002. If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho. Translated by Carson, Anne. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.Google Scholar
Sautman, Francesca Canadé. 1996. “Invisible Women: Lesbian Working-Class Culture in France, 1880–1930.” In Homosexuality in Modern France, edited by Merrick, Jeffrey and Ragan, Bryant T. Jr., 177–201. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schanke, Robert A. 2003. That Furious Lesbian: The Story of Mercedes de Acosta. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.Google Scholar
Simonson, Mary. 2007. “Music, Dance, and Female Creativity in Early Twentieth-Century American Performance.” Ph.D. Dissertation. University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA.Google Scholar
Talmont, Georges [and Mme. Mariquita]. 1908. “Comment Madame Mariquita monte un Ballet.” Comœdia Illustré 1e Année, No. 1 (15 December): 23.Google Scholar
Taxil, Léo [pseudo. Gabiel Jogand-Pagès]. 1891. La corruption fin-de-siècle. Paris: Henri Noirot.Google Scholar
Williamson, Margaret. 1995. Sappho's Immortal Daughters. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Winkler, John J. 1981. “Gardens of Nymphs: Public and Private in Sappho's Lyrics.” Women's Studies 8: 65–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar