Some deaths have become true legends for their unexpected endings, for those words never spoken; unforgettable figures that transformed the world in some way during their time. Such was the tragic death, but above all, the tragic life of dancer and choreographer Isadora Duncan.
Who Was Isadora Duncan?
Of American origin, Duncan dedicated her life to renewing the world of dance. Her style was very particular, she innovated a technique characterized by free, fluid, and passionate movements, leaving behind the traditional rigidity of classical ballet, becoming one of the great icons of the twentieth century.
An artistic pioneer, she taught herself until she reached perfection, being the body the instrument to project the soul and the spirit. She fought against all kinds of obstacles and finally triumphed. Her teachings and personality are now an important part of the development of dance.
A passion for dance was present in Duncan’s life from an early age; she left school to pursue what he loved to do most: dance. “I was born by the sea. My first idea of movement and dance surely came from the rhythm of the waves,” Duncan wrote in his autobiography My Life.
Isadora Duncan: The Tragedy of Love
Both in her career and in her life, Isadora Duncan was “unpredictable, free, and unconventional.” The life of this artist was marked by love affairs with men and women, and because of this a legend was born that accompanied her for the rest of her tragic life: “The legend of an evil spell that seemed to emanate from her person and fall on all beings to whom she gave her love, an evil spell that would later end terribly with her own life.”
Her first long-term relationship was with the English set designer Edward Gordon Craig, with whom she had a daughter named Deirdre. Her second son, Patrick, was the result of her relationship with millionaire Paris Singer. However, the greatest misfortune in Duncan’s life came with the death of both.
She herself narrated that perhaps she had a premonition of that tragedy: “When leaving them in the car, my Deirdre placed her lips against the window glass; I leaned over and kissed the glass in the same place where she had her mouth. Then the coldness of the glass made a strange impression on me and sent a shudder through me.” Moments later, the car in which they were traveling overflowed into the Seine River in Paris. The two children drowned.
Duncan was devastated, and her life began to go downhill: “If this misfortune had happened earlier, I would have been able to overcome it; if later, it would not have been so terrible, but at that moment, in the full maturity of my life, it annihilated me.” Eight months after that tragedy, she had another son who died in her arms 20 minutes after his birth.
The Curative Properties of Dancing
Depression, alcohol, and sexual excesses drove the incomparable dancer away from the stage. She thought of taking her own life on several occasions, but those heartbreaking moments would not take her away forever from what was her one true love: dance.
With the return to the stage, romance would return. In the Soviet Union, she met Sergei Esenin, poet and official bard of the Revolution of 1917, with whom she married even though he was 17 years younger than her. Hand in hand with her husband, Duncan undertook long journeys around the world so that she could continue to show her natural dancing and her adoration for human beauty. The romance came to an end due to Esenin’s violent character, depression, and mental disorders; he abandoned Duncan and returned to the former Soviet Union, where the poet would later take his own life.
The peculiar life of the talented dancer came to a tragic end on September 14, 1927, in Nice, France in a senseless accident.
Duncan was traveling in her speeding automobile when her scarf got caught in the wheel of her Bugatti, and she was unable to free herself from that murderous embrace and instantly strangled to death. A more fitting end to her tragic existence could not be imagined. Her remains rest in the Pére Lachaise cemetery in Paris.
This story was originally published in Spanish in Cultura Colectiva