If Duncan turned to emotion as movement’s source, her contemporary Ruth St. Denis looked to what she called the spirit. Born Ruth Dennis in 1879 in New Jersey, she changed her name in the early years of her career when she danced in musical revues. A producer called her “Saint Dennis” as a way of teasing her about her high minded and serious approach to dance. She liked the sound of St. Denis, and it was true that for her, dance was a spiritual pursuit. “As I see it,” she said, “the deepest lack of Western cultures is any true workable system for teaching a process of integration between soul and body.”
Like Fuller and Duncan before her, St. Denis’s earliest stage appearances were in popular musical theater. While on tour in 1904, she happened to see a cigarette advertisement with an image of the Egyptian goddess Isis.
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Isadora Duncan’s story was in some ways similar to Fuller’s. She too became world famous and was then known simply by her first name. She also was admired by Rodin, although his admiration included unwanted amorous advances. There was, however, nothing accidental about Duncan’s dancing or her career. Encouraged to dance by her artistic mother, Duncan was a lonely child, growing up in a family that was socially shunned because of her father’s financial troubles and her parents’ subsequent divorce.
Duncan turned inward, saying later that she began dancing in her mother’s womb. She certainly had complete confidence in her own intuitive movements from her earliest days. As a teenager, she and her siblings would teach neighborhood children to dance. Said Duncan of her earliest instruction, “We called it a new system of dancing but in reality there was no system. I followed my fantasy and improvised.
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At a very deep level, all dance is an illusion. After all, none of the rest of us can dance on our toes or leap across a stage and land in a perfect position. Like athletes, skilled dancers are physically able to demonstrate to an audience the range of possibilities contained within our own human form.
When Loie Fuller twirled her long scarves and costumes while colored lights rippled over her, she wasn’t just introducing new movement ideas using emerging technology she was creating an illusion. Yet, Loie was not interested in demonstrating her athletic skills; she wanted to create something beautiful out of movement, fabric, and technology, which in her case meant a small electric dynamo projecting colored lights onto her costumes.
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Dance has existed from time immemorial. It has been an integral part of celebrations and rituals, a means of communication with gods and among humans, and a basic source of enjoyment and beauty.
Dance is a fundamental element of human behavior and has evolved over the years from primitive movement of the earliest civilizations to traditional ethnic or folk styles, to the classical ballet and modern dance genres popular today. The term dance is broad and, therefore, not limited to the genres noted above.
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