Dancing Greek Antiquity in Private and Public

Isadora Duncan's Early Patronage in Paris

Bibliographic Data

ID11223748
AuthorsSamuel N Dorf (corresponding author)
Year2012
Volume44
Issue1
Pages5-27
Publication date2012-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueDance Research Journal (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0149-7677 • E-ISSN: 1940-509X
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0149767711000350
OpenAlexW2115806811
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited22

In Done into Dance: Isadora Duncan in America , Ann Daly writes that Isadora Duncan defined her dance as high art, and describes how Duncan raised the dance from the bottom of the cultural landscape to the top of American society: Dancing was considered cheap, so she associated herself with the great Greeks, who deemed the art noble, and she associated herself with upper-class audiences by carefully courting her patrons and selecting her performance venues. Dancing was considered mindless, so she invoked a pantheon of great minds, from Darwin to Whitman and Plato to Nietzsche, to prove otherwise. Dancing was considered feminine, and thus trivial, so she chose her liaisons and mentors—men whose cultural or economic power accrued, by association, to her. Dancing was considered profane, so she elevated her own practice by contrasting it to that of “African primitives.” The fundamental strategy of Duncan's project to gain cultural legitimacy for dancing was one of exclusion. (Daly 1995, 16)

Aesthetics · Art · Art history · Dance · Greeks · Legitimacy · Political science · Politics · Power (physics) · Sociology · Visual arts · Classics · Diversity and Impact of Dance · History · Law

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