Obama the coward? Part II will appear tomorrow. Meanwhile…
Promises, shmomises.
I had said I would publish Part II of “Obama the coward?” today, but I got busier than I thought I’d be and it’s really too late to polish it up for today.
So, something to look forward to tomorrow.
In the meantime, let’s chill out for a moment and enjoy this repeat of an old post of mine about Isadora Duncan.
When I was a kid I was fascinated by Isadora Duncan. What was her dancing really like? How could simple movements entrance an audience so, all around the world?
There are no movies of her (despite a YouTube few seconds of video that claims to be). Only stills, which I studied to try to divine the secret.
They were impressive in a monumental way, like a massive Greek statue, or a work by Michaelangelo. Surely something powerful was going on here, neither dainty nor ethereal:
Her choreography was deceptively simple, based on natural movements like skipping and running. She usually wore a sort of toga or drape (she famously bared one breast at the end of a dance—in Boston, yet). That seeming simplicity lured imitators into thinking they could do it too—but usually when they tried they ended up looking trite and silly. Perhaps they lacked her absolute conviction of her own genius, although that hasn’t stopped them from the attempt.
The most successful, in my opinion, has been one of my favorite ballet dancers, Lynn Seymour. A ballet dancer would seem to be the last type of dancer to be able to convey the weightedness of Duncan, but as you can see from the following video, Seymour was no ordinary ballet dancer, and no featherweight (although she’s not actually fat, except for a ballet dancer, and she’s clearly very fit). Here she is performing “Five Brahms Waltzes in the Manner of Isadora Duncan” choreographed by Sir Frederick Ashton, who saw the real Duncan when he was young, and who relied on memories of that experience to create this dance:
I think that may be the closest thing we’ll ever get to watching Isadora Duncan herself. I’m not so sure it’s really close, though I think it may be (Ashton apparently approved).
Now take a look at how not to do it. This is the very same choreography (the first two parts, anyway) performed by Tamara Rojo, a Canadian/Spanish/British dancer in her thirties who might indeed be wonderful at ballet (I’ve never seen her) but who seems to me to convey little to nothing matching the descriptions or photos I’ve ever read or seen of Isadora. Oh, maybe the drape of her costume:
In the 1968 film “Isadora,” Vanessa Redgrave gave it a go. Her politics came pretty close to matching Isadora’s leftist ones, and for a non-dancer (with long thin gangly arms and an ectomorphic body very unlike Duncan’s) she didn’t do too badly with the dance sequences. It is reported that she trained for six months to be able to pull it off:
I’ll take Lynn Seymour any old day.
Thank you for a more light hearted and interesting (even to someone who knows next to nothing about dance) topic. Redgrave training for only 6 months impresses me.
We can all disagree about all things political, when it comes to the beauty that surrounds us there is no need for disagreement.
What a lovely body Seymour has, to my eye. There is a lot of melodrama there, as there seems to have been in that era, but it is built on natural movements. I shall certainly be stealing some of those gestures for life drawing poses.
I love the romance of lost performances. Nijinsky comes to mind. There are quite a few clips of the older Pavlova on You Tube, nothing seems to have survived of him. I wonder how enlightening a film clip would be.
Another example I think of is Jimi Hendrix. Far too much survives him, yet I feel none of it captures something essential to his performances that cannot be recorded in any media, or even articulated by witnesses. “The theatre shook and glowed,” one of the few articulate witnesses told me.
Redgrave was pretty awful. It’s obvious she only trained for six months, and my guess is for not very long of the days she did train. DWTS contestants do much better.
I didn’t like the Seymour clip, but if it’s kind of accurate, I can understand why Duncan made such an impact.
I must say I disagree with the critic about Tamara Rojo. She conveys quite well the dance of Isadora Duncan. Of course, she conveys the movement and the character of an Spanish woman: stiffer, more aggressive, less elegant, something that foreign people often mislead with “passionate” (passion should be a different thing, though). You can watch Lynn Seymour and then watch Tamara Rojo and get a glimpse of the difference in the character between the two cultures.
Just watch any video of Nicolas Maduro, the president of Venezuela, and then check Tamara Rojo’s again: the sharp, abrupt movements, the lack of refinement, the feeling of an underlying violence, there’s a common core there if you’re able to see it.
And you should pay attention, since it’s the future of american society.
Yann. I’m not sure you could go there from where you started–with dance. But I suppose you could say the American culture is one of leaning against a wall, arms folded, waiting for something to happen.
My wife taught Spanish and I helped chaperone three trips of corn-fed, white-bread midwestern high school kids to Spain and one to Mexico. My job was to count kids and watch people who were pretending they weren’t watching us. I was not impressed. Then there was this bunch of Italians who thought they were real studs, trying to harass the women in the hotel but who faded into the wallpaper when the aging, portly pissed-off chaperone showed up.
@Richard. Well, the good thing about Spain is that Italy and Greece are always there to make us look better in comparison. Very considerate of them, nice touch, really. It’s like Belgium for French. If you are not in good mood, you can always make a joke about them and feel better.
Anyway, Spanish (and Hispanics, not the same, though close) are quite difficult to understand. The issues are not in clear sight like it happens with Italians. Or blacks, by the way.
Americans, you’re getting used to deal with the black community, and their issues are quite straightforward. You know how it works: you have a bad day, you shoot somebody, then you claim you’re oppressed. Not very productive, but the idea is easy to catch. And then you have Trump showing fake statistics about Hispanics, like he was expecting to find something that it’s not there. Aren’t they like blacks? he seems to wonder. And, well, no. But that doesn’t mean that there’s no issues. Check Mexico, or Venezuela. It’s just that issues there are not that simple. But they’re there, yeah, what if they are there!
Whew! I needed a break from all the Muslim stuff. Thank you!
Isadora is very sensual, and I like that she’s not totally anorexic looking like so many dancers.
I love your posts about dance, because it is so far afield from any of my interests. So I enjoy watching the videos you post to get a feel for what a lover of dance looks for.
I thought the first video of Lynn Seymour’s version was very real and sensual. Sexier than I anticipated based on her costume and the pictures of the original Duncan.
I think the closer one gets to natural movements, the more sensual it becomes. Too rehearsed, too precise, too perfect, and it loses some of that quality where we can connect it to our own lives.
Thank you for the post!
I have always wondered what the original Duncan looked like in motion. I enjoyed all three, but for different reasons. To me, in the first, the dancer was part of the music; in the second, the dancer was showing off the choreography; in the third, I want to say that Vanessa was throwing herself about the stage, but I have to admit that I loathe her politics and my internal dialogue’s Snarky Meter was ticking.
Moreover, to my amused chagrin, I remembered some other things as I watched. Mad Magazine once had comic strip panel where the announcer to a TV program told the audience–two children–that you can arise above the low-brow horde if you can listen to the William Tell Overture without thinking of the Lone Ranger. Then, during the music, while they are clearly trying to concentrate, their unshaved father, dressed in boxer shorts and a T-shirt, goes by, saying loudly, “Hi-Yo Silver!” (Naturally, I contend that they avoided the point that even a tuxedoed father would have thought it.)
Okay, I’m clearly a doomed low-brow, because when I play my LP of Rossini’s Overtures, at the stormy part of the William Tell I think of the Lone Ranger. So I admit that while watching the videos of the dancers I also thought of “Grecian Urns” (in Hermione Gingold’s voice) from the Music Man, Rita Hayworth’s Terpsichore “classical” re-write of the musical in Down to Earth, and Vanessa R.’s version of the It’s May song in Camelot–all of which I thoroughly enjoyed, even Vanessa’s Genevieve.
Neo–I loved your post! It not only gave me some insight on Isadora, it reminded me of some truly happy times. I’m going to see if I can find the videos of the three musicals online! Thank you for the gifts of joy and laughter!
Just above, I meant Vanessa’s Guinevere, not Genevieve. DUH.
Minta Marie Morze:
Glad it brought back happy memories.