In any case, the life and death of the famous dancer Isadora Duncan fully confirms this version.
"Brilliant shoe"
This outstanding woman was born in May 1878 in America. Her father, having gone bankrupt, ran away from home, leaving his wife and four children without a livelihood. So, we can say that relations with men did not work out for Isadora Duncan from a very young age.
Photo: www.globallookpress.com
At the age of 13, Isadora left school, taking up seriously only music and dance. And five years later she left for the big city of Chicago to achieve success and fame in the field of art. Here her first love was waiting for her - a red-haired Pole Ivan Mirosky, older than her by almost a quarter of a century and also married. However, the failure in her personal life was made up for by the first successes in dance - denying the classical school of ballet, expressing her momentary feelings in motion, young Duncan, dancing barefoot in transparent clothes, conquered the refined audience of secular salons. The novice dancer had money, she immediately went to Europe, hoping that some unknown world would open to her there.
In Greece, the dancer became interested in ancient art, since then the tunic has become a permanent attribute of her performances. But before Greece there was Budapest, where the heir to the Austrian throne himself noticed and appreciated the overseas star - Archduke Ferdinand. Here, on the Danube, Duncan met a new love, which also turned out to be short. Isadora's chosen one this time was a young Hungarian actor Oscar Take Care. Communication with him led Duncan to the sad conclusion that an ordinary family life with her beloved man was impossible for her.
She traveled to Germany, where she became interested in majestic music Wagner and tried to express it in her plastic improvisations. In Germany, she had a short and quite platonic romance with a local art critic. Heinrich Thode. A little later, when she went on tour to Russia for the first time, the already famous dancer managed to conquer another artist - the director, already famous by that time. Konstantin Stanislavsky. True, relations with him did not go beyond tender kisses.
For the first time, Duncan had a long and serious relationship with a man in Berlin, where she met the great English theater director. Gordon Krag, who also fell under the spell of both Duncan's personality and her art. The first weeks of life together were happy, but soon Craig began to hint that he would like to see Isadora not as a famous artist, but simply as a housewife. The dancer could not agree to this. And although they had a daughter, whom Craig gave the poetic Irish name Deedre, the union of the two artistic natures fell apart.
Meanwhile, the fame of Isadora Duncan was already thundering around the world. She was called the "divine sandal", and her dancing style became fashionable and leading in many cultural capitals of Europe, including St. Petersburg.
Dance of death
Inspired by motherhood, Isadora Duncan decided to take care of other children - she opened a dance school in Paris. The maintenance of this children's school was expensive, and then Duncan met one of the richest people in Europe. He was the son of the inventor and manufacturer of the famous sewing machines - Paris Eugene Singer. He willingly gave money for the school. Acquaintance grew into friendship, and then into love.
A dancer from a poor American outback has become a regular at social events and the owner of unheard-of luxury. a son was born Patrick. It seemed that happiness had come, all dreams had come true. But at one of the parties, Singer became terribly jealous of Isadora, quarreled with her and left for Egypt. The children stayed in Paris, while Duncan herself went on tour to Russia. Here she suddenly began to have nightmarish visions: among the white snowdrifts she sees two coffins, and at night she hears the “Funeral March” Chopin.
Photo: www.globallookpress.com
With gloomy forebodings, Isadora returned to Paris and, taking the children, took them to rest in the picturesque place of Versailles near the French capital. Soon Singer also appeared there, a reconciliation took place. Again there was a sense of idyll. And again fate destroyed everything in the most terrible way.
After walking around Paris with Singer and the children, Isadora decided to stay in the city to take up dancing in her atelier. Singer also had business in Paris, so the children, along with the driver, were sent by car to Versailles. On the way, the car stalled, the driver went out to inspect the engine, and in the meantime the car rolled into the Seine, and the children died. The death of six-year-old Didre and three-year-old Patrick shocked Duncan so much that she could not even cry, but fell into a deep depression. At the same time, she interceded for the driver, knowing that he also had children.
She wanted to commit suicide, and only the little pupils from the dance school stopped Duncan. To somehow distract, Isadora went to the Mediterranean Sea. But here, too, she was haunted by images of dead children. Once they seemed to her in the waves of the sea, and Isadora fainted. And when she came to herself, she saw a handsome young man in front of her. "May I help you?" - he asked. "Yes, give me a child."
Their relationship was short-lived, the Italian was engaged and did not cancel the wedding. And their son died a few hours after birth.
Photo: www.globallookpress.com
Last node
Great events took place in Europe - the First World War began and ended, empires fell, a revolution took place in Russia. In Soviet Russia and went at the invitation of the People's Commissar Lunacharsky in 1921 by Isadora Duncan. She stated: "I want the working class to be rewarded for all their suffering and deprivation by seeing their children beautiful." In Moscow, she opened another dance school for children.
When Isadora was only two years old, a fire broke out in their house, and the girl was thrown out of the window into the arms of a policeman. Since then, the scarlet flames have become for Duncan a kind of symbol of life and death. She often performed on stage with a huge scarlet scarf, creating with them the image of flashes of fire. Now in Soviet Russia, this scarf has also become a symbol of the revolution. She danced on the stage of the Bolshoi Theater under the "Internationale", and from the former royal box applauded her Lenin. A few years will pass, and the scarlet scarf will tie its last knot on Duncan's life.
In Moscow, a middle-aged dancer met a young and very popular Russian poet Sergei Yesenin. And although they did not know each other's language and communicated through an interpreter, passionate love broke out, which ended in an official marriage - the first in Duncan's life. But this love did not last long. The poet, as you know, drank heavily, they often quarreled, in the end, he sent her a telegram: "I love another, married, happy." When Yesenin died two years later (according to the official version, he committed suicide) and Duncan found out about this already in Europe, she said: “I sobbed and suffered so much because of him that he exhausted all my possibilities for suffering.” At the same time, Isadora Duncan acted very nobly - she gave all the rights to Yesenin's fees to the poet's mother and sisters, although, as a widow, they relied on her.
In those years, Duncan herself was in great need, she was almost 50 years old, with her former grace and former success, she could no longer dance. In addition, she opened dance schools for children wherever possible, which then usually quickly closed due to lack of funds. Only the Moscow dance school on Prechistenka lasted two decades, thanks to the support of the government. The school was run by a student and adopted daughter of Isadora - Irma Duncan.
Isadora Duncan Dance School. Photo: www.globallookpress.com
Little is known about the last days of the great dancer. Among her last men is a Russian émigré pianist Viktor Serov who was half her age. She was terribly jealous of him and even wanted to commit suicide one day. But a few days after that, fate decreed otherwise. Going for a walk in an open car, Isadora Duncan knitted her favorite scarlet scarf with long ends. The car pulled away, the scarf caught in the axle of the wheel, tightened and strangled Duncan. It happened on a clear autumn day on September 14, 1927.
The great dancer and woman of an unusual tragic fate was buried in the famous Parisian cemetery of Pere Lachaise.
Biography of Isadora Duncan. Career and dance. Husband Sergey Yesenin. Personal life, fate, children. Causes of death. Evil rock car. Quotes, photo, film.
Years of life
born May 27, 1877, died September 14, 1927
Epitaph
The heart went out like lightning,
The pain will not quench the year
Your image will forever be kept
Always in our memory.
Biography of Isadora Duncan
Biography of Isadora Duncan - a vivid story of a talented and strong woman. She never gave up, never gave up and despite everything she believed in love. Even her last words, before she got into that ill-fated car that wrapped her scarf around the wheel, were: "I'm going to love!"
Isadora was born in America and, as she liked to joke, began dancing in the womb. At the age of thirteen, she left school and took up dancing in earnest, feeling her destiny in this. At eighteen, she was already performing in clubs in Chicago. The audience greeted Isadora with delight, her dance seemed so outlandish, exotic. However, they had no idea that soon this girl would become famous all over the world, and Isadora Duncan dance will captivate millions of fans of her talent.
Dance of Isadora Duncan
She was considered brilliant dancer. Critics saw in Duncan a harbinger of the future, the ancestor of new styles, they said that she turned all the ideas about dance that existed at that time. The dance of Isadora Duncan gave joy, extraordinary aesthetic pleasure, it was full of freedom.- the one that was always in Isadora and from which she did not want to give up.
Taking ancient Greek traditions as a basis, she created a new system of free dance. Instead of a ballet costume, Duncan wore a tunic and preferred to dance barefoot rather than in restrictive pointe shoes or shoes. She was not yet thirty when she created own school in Athens, and a few years later - in Russia where she had many admirers.
Isadora and Sergei Yesenin
It was in Russia that Duncan met him - her only official husband, the poet Sergei Yesenin. Their relationship was bright, passionate, sometimes scandalous, but nevertheless, both had a beneficial effect on each other's work. The marriage did not last long - two years later, Yesenin returned to Moscow, and after another two years, he committed suicide.
But a failed marriage or unhappy romances were not the only tragedies in Duncan's life. Even before the meeting of Yesenin and Duncan, the dancer lost two children- the driver of the car containing the children and their babysitter got out of the car to start the engine, and the car rolled down the embankment into the Seine. A year later, Duncan had a son, but died a few hours later. After the death of the children, Duncan adopted two girls, Irma and Anna, who, like their adoptive mother, were dancing.
Cause of death
Isadora Duncan's death was instantaneous and tragic. Duncan's cause of death was suffocation with her own scarf wrapped around a car wheel.. The funeral of Isadora Duncan was held in Paris, the grave of Isadora Duncan (she was cremated) is in the columbarium of the Pere Lachaise cemetery.
life line
May 27, 1877 Date of birth of Isadora Duncan (correctly - Isadora Duncan, nee Dora Angela Duncan).
1903 Pilgrimage to Greece, Duncan initiating the construction of a temple for dance classes.
1904 Acquaintance and entry into a relationship with director Edward Gordon Craig.
1906 Birth of daughter Derdry by Edward Craig.
1910 The birth of a son, Patrick, from businessman Paris Singer, with whom Duncan had an affair.
1914-1915 Concerts in Moscow and St. Petersburg, acquaintance with Stanislavsky.
1921 Acquaintance with Sergei Yesenin.
1922 Marriage with Sergei Yesenin.
1924 Divorce with Sergei Yesenin.
September 14, 1927 Date of death of Isadora Duncan.
Memorable places
1. San Francisco, where Isadora Duncan was born.
2. Center for the Study of Dance named after Isadora and Raymond Duncan in Athens, founded by Duncan and her brother.
3. House Duncan in Paris.
4. Hotel Angleterre in St. Petersburg, where Duncan lived in early 1922.
5. Isadora Duncan's house in Moscow, where they lived with Yesenin and where the dancer's choreographic school-studio was located.
6. Hall of Fame of the National Museum of Dance in New York, where the name of Isadora Duncan is entered.
7. Père Lachaise Cemetery, where Isadora Duncan is buried.
Episodes of life
During a tour of Russia in 1913, Duncan had a strange premonition, as if she could not find a place for herself, and during performances she heard a funeral march. Once, while walking, she saw two children's coffins between snowdrifts, which frightened her very much. She returned to Paris, and soon her children died. Duncan could not recover for several months.
Yesenin decided to break up with Duncan not only because he lost interest in a woman in love with him, but also because he was tired that in Europe he is perceived solely as the husband of a great dancer. He began to drink, to insult Duncan. The pride of the Russian poet suffered greatly, and he returned to Russia, and soon sent Isadora a telegram in which he wrote that he loved another and was very happy, which caused her a deep spiritual wound. But more Yesenin's death was a tragedy for her. She even tried to commit suicide. “Poor Serezhenka, I cried so much for him that there are no more tears in my eyes,” said Duncan.
Despite the fact that Isadora Duncan has toured and taught extensively, she was not rich. With the money she earned, she opened dance schools, and at times she was simply poor. She could make good money on her memoirs after Yesenin's death, but she refused money, wishing that her fee was transferred to Yesenin's mother and sisters.
Shortly before Duncan's death, a girl came into her room and said that God ordered her to strangle the dancer. The girl was taken out, she turned out to be mentally ill, but after a while Duncan really died, strangled with a scarf.
On the left is Isadora with her own children, on the right - with Sergei Yesenin and adopted daughter Irma
Testaments and quotes
“If my art is symbolic, then this symbol is only one: the freedom of a woman and her emancipation from the rigid conventions that underlie puritanism.”
“In my life there were only two driving forces: Love and Art, and often Love destroyed Art, and sometimes the imperious call of Art led to the tragic end of Love, because there was a constant battle between them.”
TV story about the life of Isadora Duncan
condolences
“The image of Isadora Duncan will forever remain in my memory, as it were, bifurcated. One is the image of a dancer, a dazzling vision that cannot but amaze the imagination, the other is the image of a charming woman, smart, attentive, sensitive, from whom the comfort of a home is blowing. Isadora's sensitivity was amazing. She could accurately capture all the shades of the mood of the interlocutor, and not only fleeting, but everything or almost everything that was hidden in the soul ... "
Rurik Ivnev, Russian poet, prose writer
Isadora Duncan is an outstanding American dancer who created a new concept of dance, offering a unique style of dance. This is not only a great theorist, but also an unsurpassed practitioner of dance art. Isadora was born on May 26, 1878.
Biography of Isadora Duncan - a vivid story of a talented and strong woman. She never gave up, never gave up and despite everything she believed in love. Even her last words, before she got into that ill-fated car that wrapped her scarf around the wheel, were: "I'm going to love!"
Isadora was born in America and, as she liked to joke, began dancing in the womb. At the age of thirteen, she left school and took up dancing in earnest, feeling her destiny in this. At eighteen, she was already performing in clubs in Chicago. The audience greeted Isadora with delight, her dance seemed so outlandish, exotic. However, they had no idea that soon this girl would become famous all over the world, and Isadora Duncan dance will captivate millions of fans of her talent.
Dance of Isadora Duncan
She was considered brilliant dancer. Critics saw in Duncan a harbinger of the future, the ancestor of new styles, they said that she turned all the ideas about dance that existed at that time. The dance of Isadora Duncan gave joy, extraordinary aesthetic pleasure, it was full of freedom.- the one that was always in Isadora and from which she did not want to give up.
Taking ancient Greek traditions as a basis, she created a new system of free dance. Instead of a ballet costume, Duncan wore a tunic and preferred to dance barefoot rather than in restrictive pointe shoes or shoes. She was not yet thirty when she created own school in Athens, and a few years later - in Russia where she had many admirers.
Isadora and Sergei Yesenin
It was in Russia that Duncan met him - her only official husband, the poet Sergei Yesenin. Their relationship was bright, passionate, sometimes scandalous, but nevertheless, both had a beneficial effect on each other's work. The marriage did not last long - two years later, Yesenin returned to Moscow, and after another two years, he committed suicide.
But a failed marriage or unhappy romances were not the only tragedies in Duncan's life. Even before the meeting of Yesenin and Duncan, the dancer lost two children- the driver of the car containing the children and their babysitter got out of the car to start the engine, and the car rolled down the embankment into the Seine. A year later, Duncan had a son, but died a few hours later. After the death of the children, Duncan adopted two girls, Irma and Anna, who, like their adoptive mother, were dancing.
Cause of death
Isadora Duncan's death was instantaneous and tragic. Duncan's cause of death was suffocation with her own scarf wrapped around a car wheel.. The funeral of Isadora Duncan was held in Paris, the grave of Isadora Duncan (she was cremated) is located in the columbarium of the Pere Lachaise cemetery.
Isadora Duncan is an American dancer, the founder of free dance, the wife of a Russian poet.
Isadora Duncan was born on May 26, 1877 in San Francisco. Born Dora Angela was the youngest of four children of Joseph Charles Duncan (1819-1898), banker, mining engineer and noted art connoisseur, and Mary Isadora Gray (1849-1922). Soon after the birth of Isadora, the head of the family went bankrupt, and the family lived for some time in extreme poverty.
Duncan's parents divorced when she was less than a year old. The mother moved with the children to Auckland and got a job as a seamstress and piano teacher. There was little money in the family, and soon young Isadora dropped out of school in order to earn dancing lessons for local children with her brothers and sisters.
Dancing
Isadora from childhood perceived dancing differently than other children - the girl "followed her imagination and improvised, dancing as she pleases." Dreams of a big stage led Duncan to Chicago, where she unsuccessfully went to auditions in various theaters, and then to New York, where in 1896 the girl got a job in the theater of the famous critic and playwright John Augustine Daly.
In New York, the girl took lessons from the famous ballerina Marie Bonfanti for some time, but, quickly disillusioned with ballet and feeling underestimated in America, Isadora moved to London in 1898. In the British capital, Isadora began performing in rich houses - good earnings allowed the dancer to rent a studio for classes.
From London, the girl went to Paris, where her fateful meeting with Loie Fuller took place. Loi and Isadora had similar views on dance, seeing it as a natural movement of the body, and not a rigid system of practiced movements, as in ballet. In 1902, Fuller and Duncan went on a dance tour of European countries.
For many years of her life, Duncan traveled with performances in Europe and America, although she was not at all delighted with tours, contracts and other fuss - Duncan believed that this distracted her from her true mission: teaching young dancers and creating something beautiful. In 1904, Isadora opened her first dance school in Germany and then another in Paris, but it was soon closed due to the outbreak of the First World War.
Isadora's popularity in the early 20th century is undeniable. The newspapers wrote that Duncan's dance defined the power of progress, change, abstraction and liberation, and her photos, which show the "evolutionary development of dance", each movement of which is born from the previous one in an organic sequence, became famous all over the world.
In June 1912, the French fashion designer Paul Poiret hosted one of the most famous evenings of "La fête de Bacchus" (a recreation of the "bacchanalia" of Louis XIV at Versailles) in a posh mansion in the north of France. Isadora Duncan, dressed in a Greek evening dress tailored by Poiret, danced on the tables among 300 guests who had managed to drink 900 bottles of champagne in a few hours.
After another tour of the United States in 1915, Isadora was supposed to sail back to Europe - the choice fell on the luxurious Lusitania liner, but due to a quarrel with creditors who threatened not to let the girl out of the country until she paid $ 12,000, Duncan ended up I had to board another ship. The Lusitania, torpedoed by a German submarine, sank off the coast of Ireland, killing 1,198 people.
In 1921, Duncan's political sympathies brought the dancer to the Soviet Union. In Moscow, People's Commissar of Education of the RSFSR A.V. Lunacharsky invited the American to open a dance school, promising financial support. However, in the end, Isadora paid most of the costs of maintaining the school from her own money, while experiencing hunger and domestic inconveniences.
The Moscow school grew rapidly and gained popularity. The first performance of the students of the institution took place in 1921 on the stage of the Bolshoi Theater in honor of the anniversary of the October Revolution. Isadora, together with the students, performed a dance program, which, among others, included the Varshavyanka dance to the tune of a Polish revolutionary song. The program, during which the revolutionary banner was picked up from the hands of the fallen fighters by fighters full of strength, was a success with the audience.
However, not everyone was impressed. Some were puzzled that this "older woman" would risk going on stage too naked. Short (168 cm), with flabby full thighs and no longer so elastic bust, Duncan could not be as light and graceful as in her youth - the years took their toll.
The dancer lived in Soviet Russia for 3 years, but various troubles forced Isadora to leave the country, leaving the management of the school to one of her students, Irma.
Personal life
In her professional and personal life, Isadora violated all traditional foundations. She was bisexual, an atheist, and a real revolutionary: during her last tour of the United States, Isadora began waving a red scarf over her head, shouting: “It's red! And so am I!"
Duncan gave birth to two children out of wedlock - daughter Derree Beatrice (born 1906) with theater director Gordon Craig and son Patrick August (born 1910) with Paris Singer, one of the sons of Swiss magnate Isaac Singer. Isadora's children died in 1913: the car in which the kids were with their nanny crashed into the Seine at full speed.
After the death of the children, Duncan fell into a deep depression. Her brother and sister decided to take Isadora to Corfu for a few weeks, where the American became friends with the young Italian feminist Lina Poletti. The warm relationship of the girls caused a lot of gossip, but there is no evidence that the ladies were in a romantic relationship.
In his autobiography, My Life. My Love”, published in 1927, Duncan told how, out of a desperate desire to have another child, she begged a young Italian stranger - the sculptor Romano Romanelli - to enter into an intimate relationship with her. As a result, Duncan became pregnant by Romanelli and gave birth to a son on August 13, 1914, who died shortly after childbirth.
In 1917, Isadora adopted six of her wards, Anna, Maria Theresa, Irma, Liesel, Gretel and Erica, whom she taught while still at school in Germany. The team of young talented dancers was nicknamed "Isadorables" (a pun on the name of Isadora and "adorables" ("charming").
After graduating from the school, which was later taught by Isadora's sister Elizabeth (Duncan was constantly on the road), the girls began to perform with Duncan, and then separately, having a huge success with the public. A few years later, the team broke up - each girl went her own way. Erica was the only one of the six girls who did not connect her future life with dancing.
In 1921, in Moscow, Duncan met the poet Sergei Yesenin, who was 18 years her junior. In May 1922, Yesenin and Duncan became husband and wife. The dancer accepted Soviet citizenship. For more than a year, the poet accompanied Duncan on her tour of Europe and the United States, not embarrassed to spend her money on prestigious housing, expensive clothes and gifts for relatives. At the same time, Yesenin experienced a strong longing for Russia, which he indicated in his letters to friends.
After two years of communication without knowledge of languages (Isadora knew hardly more than 30 words in Russian, and Yesenin even less in English), friction began between the spouses. In May 1923, the poet left Duncan and returned to his homeland.
There are no direct dedications to Isadora in Yesenin's poems, but the image of Duncan can be clearly seen in the poem "The Black Man". The poem “Let you be drunk by others ..” is dedicated to the actress Augusta Miklashevskaya, although Duncan claimed that the poet dedicated these lines to her.
Later, Duncan started an affair with the American poetess Mercedes de Acosta - they learned about this relationship from the letters that the girls wrote to each other. In one of them, Duncan confessed:
“Mercedes, lead me with your little strong hands, and I will follow you - to the top of the mountain. To the edge of the world. Wherever you wish."
Death
In her last years, Duncan performed little, accumulated many debts, and was known for scandalous intimate stories and a love of drinking.
On the night of September 14, 1927, in Nice, Isadora left her friend Mary Desty (the mother of Preston Sturges, the director of the film "Sullivan's Wanderings") and got into the car "Amilcar" to the Franco-Italian mechanic Benoit Falcetto, with whom the American was probably had a romantic relationship.
Scarf and car wheel - the cause of death of Isadora Duncan When the car started off abruptly, the wind lifted the edges of the dancer's long, hand-painted silk scarf into the air and lowered it over the side of the car. The scarf immediately got tangled in the spokes of the wheel, the woman was pressed into the side of the car. Duncan died instantly. The body was cremated; the urn with the ashes was placed in the columbarium at the Pere Lachaise cemetery in Paris. The car that killed the American dancer was sold for a huge sum at that time - 200,000 francs.
Respectable people... Respectable people are simply those who have not been tempted strongly enough... Within us lies a violator of all laws, ready to jump out at the first opportunity...
Aceidora Duncan.
"My life".
...and some woman
Forty plus years
Called me a bad girl
And with my sweet.
Sergey Yesenin,
"Black man".
“The tragic death of Isadora Duncan after the equally tragic death of Sergei Yesenin, whose sophisticated cruelty cannot be forgotten, again reminded me of the dramatic atmosphere in which this monstrously paradoxical couple constantly lived,” wrote a Belgian poet and translator a month after Duncan’s death in a Paris newspaper Ellens, who for several years closely observed the relationship of this married couple.
"Shock is our way!" - such words could be the motto of Duncan and Yesenin's short life together.
By the time they met, she was 44 years old, and he was 26 ... For reasons of principle, she never entered into a “legal marriage”, and by that time he had already been married twice. She lost three children: in 1913 two died in a car accident, in 1914 she gave birth to a son who lived only a few hours. Yesenin has three children (there is a version that there are four). She did not know Russian, but she tried to communicate in Russian.
But he did not know a single foreign language and did not want to learn.
All his many friends and buddies hated her, called her "old woman". Her entourage contemptuously called him "savage", "herdsman", "alphonse". No one has ever known and never will know what they really were. Because there is no truth. There are assessments, opinions of friends and enemies, there are memoirs.
But, you see, it's also interesting.
Isadora's friend, Mary Desty, recalls: "The day before leaving for Russia turned out to be extremely restless for us, but still we found time to visit a fortune teller ..." The fortune teller said that Isadora was going on a long trip, that she would have a lot of trouble and misadventures. Isadora just laughed: “Of course, I'm going to a country where there is a civil war, but I'm not afraid of anything. The Russians are waiting for me, they need my art.” But when the fortune-teller said: “You will marry, and a year will not pass,” Isadora got angry: “Nonsense! I am 44 years old, I have not been married and will not be!”
It must be said that the enthusiasm of a mature woman regarding the upcoming trip to the new Russia is surprising. Before leaving, she gave many interviews to European and American newspapers. This is what she told French reporters: “I am seeking spiritual refuge. I can't work in Paris anymore. The Soviets are the only power that in our time shows concern for art and children. I am eager to make sure that there is a place in the world where commerce is not placed above the spiritual and physical development of children.”
She was told that tens of thousands of children were left homeless in Russia after the Civil War, that many of them witnessed the death and humiliation of their fathers and mothers: “What school of ancient dance do you dream of? This is a utopia!” Her answer was: “You don’t like Russians and don’t understand. Maybe they have nothing to eat, but they are rich in spiritual food.”
It was in this mood that the world famous dancer came to Russia in the summer of 1921. Yes, she had problems in the West, but no one ever condemned her for what she was doing. They blamed her only for what she says.
The Soviet government, oddly enough, was not very ready for the opening of the school. The fortuneteller's prediction came true. In the end, a mansion expropriated from the famous Russian ballerina was allocated for Duncan's work. School of ancient dance opened. True, Duncan dreamed of a thousand girls, and the government allocated money for only 25. And there was no firewood heating classes. Isadora gradually switched to a self-sustaining system. She was nervous, losing weight, but did not give up: she was full of plans and energy. Classes began and ended with the singing of the Internationale. She became the most fashionable woman in Moscow in 1921.
Photo: American dancer and choreographer Isadora Duncan with students, one of whom is her daughter, during a dance lesson.
Duncan, speaking to the government elite, was surprised: “And why did they start such a bloody revolution? They took palaces and diamonds from the nobles. Settled in the palaces themselves, diamonds are worn by their inelegant women. Everything turned out the same as it was. Only worse."
Isadora was much more interesting with people of art. She gladly plunged into the bohemian life, dancing somewhere every evening in a tunic with a scarf and barefoot. This is how Sergei Yesenin saw her for the first time. Anatoly Mariengof recalls: “A red, flowing tunic in soft folds, red hair with a reflection of copper, a large body, stepping lightly and softly. She looked around the room with her eyes, like saucers made of blue faience, and fixed them on Yesenin.
Her soft little mouth smiled. Isadora lay down on the sofa, and Yesenin at her feet. She dipped her hand into his curls and said:
- Solotaja head! “Then I kissed him on the lips.” In the morning they left together.
Yesenin settled in Isadora's studio. A few months later, she became his legal wife. The marriage was registered in Moscow, the Duncan-Yesenins immediately left for Germany.
Isadora probably wanted to show her young husband real life. I thought that Yesenin would be amazed and happy when he got from wild Russia to beautiful Europe. She dreamed of showing him museums and theaters, while he ran away with friends and went on a spree in haunting places or hid in small boarding houses. She was looking for him.
He told his friends: “I've stuck. Tired, - and then - she is a very kind woman, my Isadora, only wonderful. I don't understand her."
Scandals began in Russia. In her environment, almost everyone considered Yesenin crazy, but cunning crazy: he enjoys the love, kindness and money of a naive rich woman.
Photo: commons.wikimedia.org/public domain
It is painful to read Gorky's memoirs about the meeting with the Duncan-Yesenin couple in Berlin in 1922: “This famous woman, glorified by thousands of aesthetes of Europe, subtle connoisseurs of plasticity, next to a small, like a teenager, amazing Ryazan poet, was the perfect personification of everything that he had no need ... When she danced, he, sitting at the table, drank wine and, looking at her out of the corner of his eye, grimaced. Maybe it was at that moment that he formed the words of compassion into a line of verse: “They loved you, scourged you ...”
And one might have thought that he was looking at his girlfriend as a nightmare, which is already familiar, does not frighten, but still presses ...
Then Duncan, tired, knelt down, looking into the face of the poet with a languid, drunken smile. Yesenin put his hand on her shoulder, but turned away sharply.
For some reason, none of his contemporaries believed that Yesenin had any sincere feelings for Isadora, but everyone saw that she loved him. True, her love for Yesenin was assessed differently: some with contempt and mockery (Gorky, Mariengof), while others ...
“I also had the opportunity, with some embarrassment, to observe this union of a young Russian poet and a dancer who was already waning, which at first seemed to me, as I have already said, almost monstrous. I think that no woman in the world understood her role as an inspiration more motherly than Isadora.
She took Yesenin to Europe, she, giving him the opportunity to leave Russia, invited him to marry her. It was a truly selfless act, for it was fraught with sacrifice and pain for her.
She had no illusions, she knew that the time of disturbing happiness would be short-lived, that she would have to go through dramatic upheavals, that sooner or later the little savage whom she wanted to raise would become himself again and throw off himself, perhaps cruelly and rudely, the kind of loving guardianship with which she so desired to surround him.
Isadora passionately loved the young poet, and I realized that this love was despair from the very beginning, ”the aforementioned Belgian poet F. Ellens introduces Isadora to us after her death.
Undoubtedly, Isadora was haunted by her unsatisfied maternal instinct. Having lost her children, she sought to bring goodness, beauty and harmony to the world of childhood. You don't have to be a connoisseur of the works of Sigmund Freud to guess that Yesenin's solotaja golova reminded her of the curls of her deceased son Patrick. So she loved to sink her fingers into the waves of Sergei's blond hair. Therefore, she could forgive him a lot when Yesenin behaved like a teenage bully.
Perhaps the most touching memories of the meeting with this “paradoxical couple” were left by the Russian poetess, ex-wife of Alexei Tolstoy, mother of his children, Natalia Krandiyevskaya-Tolstaya: “She barely glided over me with lilac eyes and stopped them on Nikita, whom I led behind hand. For a long time, intently, as if with horror, she looked at my five-year-old son, and her eyes, gradually dilated by atropine, widened more and more, filling with tears.
Sidora! - Yesenin disturbed her. - Sidora, what are you?
Oh, she moaned, finally not taking her eyes off Nikita. - Oh, oh! .. - And knelt down in front of him, right on the sidewalk.
The frightened Nikita looked at her like a wolf cub. I understood everything. I tried to lift it. Yesenin helped me. The curious crowded around. Isadora got up and, pushing me away from Yesenin, covering her head with a scarf, went through the streets without turning around, not seeing anyone in front of her - a figure from the tragedies of Sophocles. Yesenin ran after her in his stupid top hat, confused.
Sidora, - he shouted, - wait! Sidora, what happened?
Nikita wept bitterly, buried in my knees. I knew the tragedy of Isadora Duncan. Her children, a boy and a girl, died in a Paris car accident many years ago. On a rainy day they were driving across the Seine with their governess. The driver braked on the bridge, the car skidded on the slippery ends and was thrown over the railing into the river. Nobody escaped.
The boy was Isadora's favorite... His portrait on the famous English soap advertisement is known all over the world. The blond naked baby smiles, covered in soapy foam. It was said that he looked like Nikita, but to what extent he looked like Nikita, only Isadora could know. And she found out, poor...”
The endless scandals in which Isadora ceased to yield to Yesenin in extravagance and temperament exhausted both.
They did not want to be accepted in expensive hotels, because they already knew that these handsome gentlemen would kill so many dishes and mirrors in two or three evenings, break so much furniture that the hotel would have to be closed for major repairs. Even if Madame pays for everything, you still don’t want to. And not all residents like to listen to deafening Russian obscenities, even in English. Especially at night.
The spouses were tired of each other, and each decided for himself that he would leave "his half" as soon as they returned to Moscow. In 1923, the Duncan-Yesenins returned to Russia and parted ways.
Isadora learned about the death of Sergei Yesenin in December 1925. This news plunged her into a state of shock. She wrote to a friend: “Poor Seryozhenka, I cried so much about him that there are no more tears in my eyes.” She sent a telegram to Yesenin's mother in Russia with words of sorrow and sympathy.
Isadora Duncan died tragically on September 14, 1927 in Nice. Her scarf got caught in the bottom wheel of the racing car and after a few revolutions was pulled around the neck of the unfortunate woman in a death loop.
Strange, but the cause of her death and the cause of Yesenin's death are defined in one word - "asphyxia" (suffocation).
Larisa Mikhailova