Soon art lovers in the city were talking about this new dancer from the United States. In nineteen hundred, she danced for a large audience at London’s Lyceum Theater. She studied Greek vases and sculpture with their images of ancient Greek women dancing. She visited the British Museum every day for several months. Using her last dollars, she bought a ticket on a cattle boat and sailed to Europe in eighteen ninety-nine. In a short time, she was out of work and poor once again. But soon it was hard to find jobs that paid her enough money just to survive. Sometimes Isadora Duncan was paid to dance in the homes of wealthy people or at parties they gave in their gardens. She did not dance alone on the stage and could not become the “star” of the show. But she had to dance as she was directed to do. She found work in several dance companies or groups of dancers. She thought dancing in these two large cities would help her career. When she was eighteen years old, Isadora urged her mother to move to Chicago and then to New York. She also visited local libraries to read the works of Shakespeare and to study about the ancient Greeks. She continued to teach dancing classes, mostly to young girls. Isadora spent most of her teen-aged years in the San Francisco area. She wanted people to see her body as she ran across the stage. When she danced, Isadora Duncan wore very thin clothing. She said this was like waves in the ocean, or trees swaying in the wind. Isadora liked to move her arms and legs in very smooth motions. She said ballet was “ugly and against nature.” She wanted her “modern” dance style to be free and natural. She said that ballet dancers had too many rules to follow about how they should stand and bend and move. She thought dancing should be an art, not just entertainment. The kind of dancing Isadora wanted to do was new and different from other dances at the time. And she wanted to live by her own rules, not by what other people thought was right or wrong. Isadora wanted to make dancing her life’s work. She said it restricted her from dancing and thinking about the arts.
Young Isadora believed this was all the education she needed. Mary Duncan taught her children about music, dancing, the theater and literature. She began teaching when she was only five years old.
Isadora taught dance lessons to local children to earn extra money. Isadora and her brothers and sister were raised by their mother, Mary. Her parents’ marriage ended in divorce when Isadora was three years old. JIM TEDDER: Angela Isadora Duncan was born in San Francisco, California in eighteen seventy-seven. Today Jim Tedder tells about modern dancer Isadora Duncan. MARIO RITTER: I’m Mario Ritter with PEOPLE IN AMERICA in VOA Special English. Or download MP3 (Right-click or option-click and save link)
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