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Isadora Duncan and the creative source of dance therapy

Article  in  American Journal of Dance Therapy · September 1992

DOI: 10.1007/BF00843836

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 Isadora Duncan and
the Creative Source
of Dance Therapy

Miriam Roskin Berger

Dedicated to the memory of Florence Frankel Roskin

Plunge your soul in divine unconscious, diving deep within it

until it gives to your soul its secret.

Isadora Duncan

M y purpose in this p a p e r is to p a y h o m a g e to Isadora D u n c a n ' s w o r k

a n d philosophy as source and prophecy for dance t h e r a p y , and so to
i l l u m i n a t e , t h r o u g h e l e m e n t s of h e r work, a few of t h e p r i m a r y artistic,
a e s t h e t i c a n d c r e a t i v e processes which are t h e impeccable roots of dance
as t h e r a p y and which she so b r i l l i a n t l y revealed.
I a m not a D u n c a n scholar, nor a m I a t e a c h e r of D u n c a n t e c h n i q u e . I
c a m e to this p a r t i c u l a r e x p l o r a t i o n from m y own recognition of a forgot-
t e n debt to I s a d o r a w h e n I re-experienced t h e w o r k two y e a r s ago for the
first t i m e since I h a d b e e n a child.
M y first e x p e r i e n c e w i t h f o r m a l dance t r a i n i n g as a child of five was
w i t h tap d a n c i n g . . , a n d as it t u r n e d out, I did not exhibit a g r e a t affinity
for tap dancing, as I was c o n t i n u a l l y k e p t a f t e r class to practice m y t i m e
step! (Years later, w h e n I a u d i t i o n e d for a jazz dance group, I did not pass

The author gratefully acknowledges Jeanne Bresciani for her support. Photographs are
from the Dance Collection, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Astor, Lenox
& Tilden Foundations.

American Journal of Dance Therapy © 1992 American Dance

Vol. 14, No. 2, Fall/Winter 1992 95 Therapy Association
96 Berger

Isadora Duncan in Belgium in 1905, photograph by E. Gordon Craig.

 Isadora Duncan 97

the audition and was told I was not a 'foot dancer.!'). A few years later,
when I was about eight years old, my mother took me to study with Julia
Levien, who had worked extensively with direct Duncan disciples, and
who was, and is, one of the most respected of Duncan teachers. My mother
had been a great admirer of Duncan, and had seen her perform in both
Europe and America.
I must say t h a t I do not have a complete conscious memory of all the
Duncan work I experienced with Julia Levien. I remember wearing a
short yellow jersey tunic which I sewed myself; I remember r u n n i n g and
leaping over scarves; and I remember work at the barre where I had to
kick backwards and up and touch the back of my head. And I also have a
memory of a vague sense, even though I cannot remember anyone saying
a n y t h i n g specific, t h a t Duncan dance was something out of the ancient
p a s t . . , a n d this was not even twenty years after her death.
In any case, I took class for about two years and then later went on to
study with m a n y other modern dance teachers and to become a member
of J e a n Erdman's Theatre of Dance. In college I wrote my senior thesis on
dance therapy and found, when I recently looked it over, t h a t I did not
even mention Isadora Duncan!
About a year and a half ago, a week-long workshop on Duncan tech-
nique was offered at New York University, where I teach, t a u g h t by
another member of the dance faculty, Jeanne Bresciani, one of the cur-
rent leading Duncan re-creators and teachers. On impulse, I decided to
take the workshop. On the second day, Jeanne brought in Julia Levien as
guest teacher. In the morning, Julia needed a partner to demonstrate a
sequence she was teaching us, and she randomly pulled me out of the line
and started to show me what to do. Before she could do this, however, my
arms automatically floated into position and I began the phrase. '~Oh,..."
she said, ~'... look, see how n a t u r a l the Duncan work is!" And indeed it
i s . . . although it was a truly unconscious body memory which I had. I
went through the rest of day's work with tears streaming down my face,
and later identified myself to Julia as a childhood student of hers. When I
told her t h a t I had grown up to be a dance therapist, she said. "That's
wonderful, but if we had dance for all children when they were young, we
wouldn't need dance therapy."
This deeply emotional experience gave me direct, concrete validation of
the power of the unconscious memories we hold in our bodies and it also
convinces me t h a t my early experience with the Duncan work must have
had a great deal to do with my later interest in dance therapy.
My recognition of this forgotten debt was the motivation for this explo-
ration; m a n y dance therapists seem to have this sense of connection to
Duncan and so, even if I m a y not be telling you a n y t h i n g new, I hope t h a t
this focus will strengthen our sense of her legacy and of our own commit-
ment, and perhaps open up some future paths. Her legacy is not only from
98 Berger

h e r philosophy of the dance and of the body, but also from specific aspects
of h e r technique, central themes of h er choreography, and her ideas on
the education of children. These sources give us a rich perspective on the
manifestation in dance as t h e r a p y of the creative elements of technique,
of choreography and forming, of improvisation, of performance, and also
of the importance of the sensibility of the artist in our work as therapists.
The sensibility of the artist which reveals and focuses on several key
elements: the aesthetic impulse as a reflection of the essence of nature,
the crucial importance of perceiving pat t erns and their relationships, of
creating forms expressive of h u m a n feeling, of always striving for a
balance between freedom and discipline and, especially in dance, the
crystallization of the experience and perception of symbol and reality
simultaneously.
F r a n k l i n Rosement (1981), in the introduction to a book of Isadora's
statements, has beautifully synthesized the flow of her creative journey:

Dancer, adventurer, revolutionist, ardent defender of the poetic spirit,

Isadora Duncan has been one of the most enduring influences on
twentieth century culture. Ironically, the very magnitude of her
achievements as an artist, as well as the sheer excitement and trag-
edy of her life, have tended to dim our awareness of the originality,
depth and boldness of her thought. But Isadora always was a thinker
as well as a doer, gifted with a lively poetic imagination, critical
lucidity, a radical defiance of the status quo, and the ability to express
her ideas with verve and humor.
Born in San Francisco in 1877, Isadora spent her childhood in the Bay
Area in the years that a wide-ranging aggregate of poets, artists and
original thinkers were turning the former gold-rush settlement into
one of the most vital creative centers in the world. In this raucous
free-wheeling ethos, Isadora provoked the ~awakening'! as she put it,
of ~an art that has slept for two thousand y e a r s " . . . Isadora traced the
art of dance back to its roots as a sacred art-universally symbolic of
the act of creation.., she proclaimed herself %n enemy of ballet"-an
enemy, indeed, of all the insipid dance of her t i m e . . , she restored to
the human body its vital actuality as an expressive instrument. Her
celebrated "simplicity" was oceanic in its depth. (p. ix)

Isadora revealed and r e t u r n e d to a p r i m a r y apprehension of body move-

m e n t and ul t i m at el y created, as we know, what came to be known as
modern dance. We know t h a t she mesmerized huge audiences t hroughout
the world, and t h a t she inspired the most i m port ant poets and artists of
her time. She can t r u l y be called, in Hegel's sense, a world-historical
figure; perhaps the only dancer who can be so noted. And, t here is no
other world-historical figure, m an or woman, from a n y of the other
a r t s . . , painting, sculpture, poetry, drama, music, from any country, who
is clearly such a direct source of the creative arts therapies. Dance
therapists indeed have an amazing legacy.
 Isadora Duncan 99

Isadora reading Faust on a E uropean railway t r a i n in 1905,

sketch by E. Gordon Craig.

Search and Discovery

It has often been said t h a t Isadora was an inspired am at eur, t h a t she had
no technique, t h a t most, if not all, of her dances and classes, were
improvisations, spontaneous expressions (Blair, 1986). T h a t m a y have
been tr u e of her very early performances in America, but when she went
to Paris in 1900, she began to analyze m ovem ent and to re-evaluate all
t h a t she had been t a u g h t about dance. She accomplished this t h r o u g h
omnivorous reading on the dance and t hrough long periods alone, moving
in front of her studio mirror. In the midst of her new exhilirating life in
Paris, she says:

In addition to the two greatest sources o f . . . joy, the Louvre and the
National Library, I now discovered a third, the charming library of
the Opera. The librarian took an affectionate interest in my re-
searches and placed at my disposal every work ever written on danc-
ing, and also all the books on Greek music and Theatre art. I applied
myself to the task of reading everything that had ever been written on
the Art of Dancing, from the earliest Egyptians to the present day,
1 O0 Berger

and I made special notes of all I read in a copybook; but when I

finished this colossal experiment, I realised that the only dance mas-
ters I could have were Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Walt Whitman, and
Nietzche. (Duncan, 1927, p. 80)

This, we m us t remember, was when she was twenty-three years old!

Lincoln Kirstein (1935) has written:

What other great woman dancer had ever been so well-informed?

Which of them ever doubted their teacher so profoundly, on such
excellent basis? Few people have ever thought or felt so profoundly as
Duncan on the sources and uses of lyric movement. It is all the more
remarkable that she should have been so methodically curious, young
as she was, free from any academic standard and lacking in practical
background. (pp. 26-27)

So we indeed see t h a t Isadora balanced both an intellectual and an

emotional nature; t h a t she approached m ovem ent and developed her own
method not only with feeling, but with rationality and clarity. The more
convinced she became of the inadequacy of past systems, the more deter-
mined she was to find her own path.

I spent long days and nights in the studio seeking that dance which
might be the divine expression of the human spirit through the
medium of the body's movement. For hours I would stand quite still,
my two hands folded between my breasts, covering the solar plexus.
My mother often became alarmed to see me remain for such long
intervals quite motionless as if in a trance-but I was seeking, and
finally discovered, the central spring of all movement, the crater of
motor power, the unity from which all diversities of movement are
born, the mirror of vision for the creation of the dance-it was from
this discovery that was born the theory on which I founded my school.
(Duncan, 1927, p. 75)

Th r o u g h her intellectual explorations, Isadora had traced dance to its

beginning as a sacred art, and she sensed t h a t movement, in fact, radi-
ated from the soul. And so, ~ . . . t h r o u g h watching, apparent l y quite
objectively, her emotional and motor impulses and relating t h e m to each
other, she discovered to her complete satisfaction t h a t the solar plexus
was the bodily habitation of the soul and the center in which i nner
impulse was t r a n s l a t e d into movement" (Martin, 1947, p. 5). And t hus she
made the discovery t h a t emotion is related to visceral action and visceral
action to outward movement.
F r o m this simple revolutionary discovery sprang two other seminal
concepts in which her technique and philosophy were rooted. The first
has to do with the elements of weight and time, is extraordinarily pro-
found in its simple discovery, and had a far-reaching effect on all dance
forms (Terry, 1963). Duncan saw t h a t
 Isadora Duncan 101

All movement on earth is governed by the law

of gravitation, by attraction and repulsion,
resistance and yielding; it is that which makes
up the rhythm of the dance. (p. 141)

In this realization t h a t dance r h y t h m s are created by the pull of gravity

and the body's response to t h a t magnetism, Isadora gave back to us our
connection to the very aliveness of the earth, a relationship which has
recently been re-discovered in other areas of our culture.
The second concept which arose was t h a t a basic movement generated
an eternal flow of sequential action.

Primary or fundamental movements.., must have

within them the seeds from which will evolve
all other movements, each in turn to give birth
to others in an unending sequence of still
higher expression, thoughts and ideas. (p. 142)

So Isadora developed movement experiences for her students based on

processes common to all h u m a n b e i n g s . . , walking, running, skipping,
galloping, leaping, fall and r e c o v e r y . . , as well as evocations of patterns
in nature; of the earth, air, water, fire. She also created exercises at the
barre for developing strength and suppleness, but these were in no way
mechanical; they were n a t u r a l l y phrased, and fluid in the transitions
through the body (Blair, 1986, p. 47).
Isadora's technique aimed at this fluidity of the body. Although her
dancers, in class and on the stage, performed movement processes com-
mon to everybody, these movements are not by any means easy to per-
form. Trained dancers, even Duncan trained dancers, may find Isadora's
~simple' movements difficult to execute unless they allow themselves to
respond to gravity and unless they learn to feel the impetus from the
center flowing through and freeing the body. Duncan believed t h a t move-
m e n t was never an end in itself but always the outward result of an
inward awareness (Blair, 1986).
But her concepts are not a denial of technique in any way. She wrote,
'~Natural dancing should only mean t h a t the dancer never goes against
nature, not t h a t a n y t h i n g is left to change" (Duncan, 1928, p. 52). Her
training was aimed at ~ . . . the achievement of a state in which technique
becomes unconscious and the dancer's body is free to express his spirit"
(Blair, p. 49).
This is obviously a core concept we must remember in our training and
development as dance therapists and in our education of students; t h a t
technique and body awareness and control must be so total t h a t it be-
comes unconscious so t h a t the body is free, not only to express, but to
receive movement, to respond to movement, and to reflect the movement,
and so the feeling, of others.
102 Berger

Another aspect of Duncan technique which we see reflected in dance

therapy method is the circle and focus on interaction. Much of the tech-
nique work in Duncan classes was done in a circle, and there was enor-
mous emphasis on both dyadic and group interaction resulting in sensi-
tive, synchronous movement. Her technique, we can see, was a journey
towards a balance between freedom and discipline, towards a merging of
feeling with form.
We also can see, in Duncan's discoveries and principles, dance therapy
processes incarnate both in form and content: focus on individual aware-
ness and exploration, recognition of the wisdom and information hidden
and overt in the body, the importance of r h y t h m as our link to the earth
and to other people, and trust in the authenticity and power of movement
expression once the felt level has been experienced.

Isadora with three pupils in Paris in 1908.

 Isadora Duncan 103

Creation and Performance

This deep understanding of the human body and movement and this
exquisite balance between freedom and discipline provided the source
for Isadora's choreographic creativity and powerful performances. Al-
though some works were almost pure abstractions of emotion, most
illuminated emotion through intense renderings of forceful archetypes.
She drew her roles from the Greek pantheon, from Christian iconogra-
phy, from Egypt, and from other cultural lexicons, both spiritual and
prosaic.
It would appear less than coincidental that many dance therapists
have been drawn to the psychology of Jung and his core concept of
h u m a n archetypes who continually appear in mythology and literature,
and in the fantasies, dreams and delusions of individuals. I have found
no mention in the literature of any connection between Duncan and
Jung; he was born just two years before her, in 1875, so there certainly
was synchrony in their appearance in the world! But Isadora, too,
understood the meaning of the myth and the power of the archetype in
our individual and collective lives. Her dances were filled with them;
the Madonna, the earth mother, the old woman, the angel, the warrior,
the slave, the goddess of love, the furies, the rebel. And, although her
work was a celebration of women, of the life and myths and emotions
and pain of women in the reality of the world, many of her archetypes
were, in essence, universal and androgynous. Her recurring theme of
the maiden alone and a chorus of m a i d e n s - a very significant theme for
I s a d o r a - w a s an example. She understood the force of the maiden arche-
type as it emerges at any a g e - t h e hidden theme for all of us of renewal
and rebirth. (Bresciani, 1991)
The movements which she found, from her deep center, for these
archetypes were, and are, powerful evocations of their primal bodily
meanings. A few illustrations: The verticality always apparent in Dun-
can's maidens, a direct reflection of the stirrings of identity and selfhood
we associate with the vertical plane; the images of the woman warrior,
Artemis, Diana, the Amazon, involving, force, speed, grounding, bound
flow, and the movement highly focused on advancing and retreating in
the sagittal, especially forward and out; Aphrodite, with the primary
verticality of the maiden, but with the opening into the horizontal
through an emphasis on spiraling movements; the angel figures float-
ing, hovering, encircling, scooping, with moments of unabashed still-
ness, and vibratory movements of the hands* (Bresciani, 1991).

*As seen in a Duncan work now performed by J. Bresciani, The Angel and the Spirit
Rising, circa 1907, current version by Marie Theresa.
104 Berger

In learning a Duncan dance, in taking on an archetypical role, and in

becoming one with t h a t role, the simultaneous experience of the arche-
typical m y t h with the archetypical movement qualities can be an incredi-
bly powerful experiential process; cathartic, insightful, and transform-
ing. This powerful process may also be created within an improvisational
structure, with the mythical image forming the arena within which the
movement experience is found, or the movement parameters being the
arena within which the unconscious archetype and its meaning may be
evoked. This legacy of the crystallization of core h u m a n forms which
appear in all cultures, and are the source of much art, underscores the
deepening of the symbolic when experienced through the reality of the
moving body.
We see, in these processes, as a legacy from Isadora, one of the most
crucial dance as therapy transformative methods: the experience of new
movement patterns and forms as a means to experience new feelings, or
to discover unconscious memories, or to learn new behaviors. And, of
course, our other crucial dance therapy process is also a legacy from
Isadora, as discussed earlier, t h a t true movement must start from within;
t h a t one must listen to one's inner sense in order to find and experience
one's own authentic movement; movement which has meaning, or which
may be subsequently given meaning, or which differentiates meaning as
it emerges in other contexts.
The simultaneous experience of symbol and reality also occurs in the
relationship between performer and audience. This relationship is an-
other of our vital artistic roots which arose from dance as a sacred art,
from ancient ritual involving participants, witnesses, and priests. We
often forget this legacy from our roots in performance; the impact of
moving in front of other individuals, of forming and creating for ourselves
and them. Also, the dance therapist as shaman or witness; the audience
as critical to witness a ritual event. In dance therapy especially, this
matrix of connections echoing religion and theatre is a core structure of
our work and is only as productive as it is alive when needed. This
aliveness permeated Isadora's performances; there was a reciprocal en-
ergy between her and her audiences which was m u t u a l l y transformative.
Yet another legacy from the source of performance which Isadora in-
deed exemplified is the striving of every performer everywhere towards
the balance between spontaneity and control, and which has been dis-
cussed in relation to the development of her technique. As a performer,
she was able to create enormous emotional experiences precisely because
of her discipline and control. In a sense, this balance is a balance we, as
therapists, strive to help our clients or patients attain. It may be seen as
an ultimate goal, with various contextual differences, appropriate to any
individual we treat.
 Isadora Duncan 105

Society and Education

We are all aware of Isadora's views on the education of children and on
social issues. '~Her adherence to revolutionary causes may have been
largely romantic and even u t o p i a n . . , but in the best sense of those
terms." (Rosemont, p. xiv). Over a long period of time she continued to
demonstrate a serious dedication to the struggles she had t a k e n to her
heart: the women's movement, opposition to the destructive elements of
organized religion, a creation of a new educational system, and the
eradication of wage slavery.
In essence, revolution was the source of all her action and thought. ~I
am not a dancer," she insisted, ~What I am interested in doing is finding
and expressing a new form of life." She never, in fact, called herself a
feminist, but she exemplified women's emancipation, and was also con-
nected to women whose program for liberation included socialist revolu-
tion (Ibid.).
She was drawn to Russia because of her feeling t h a t the Russians
understood the importance of all art in h u m a n life. Her work in Russia
after the Bolshevik revolution was an expression both of her passion for
freedom and of her passion for and belief in the importance of the right
sort of education, including movement education, for all children.
It is interesting to especially note some aspects of her work in the Soviet
Union. One is t h a t the majority of the young students in her school in
Moscow were in reality homeless, orphaned by the Revolution. She, in
reality, provided a home and a life for them, and we can see in our own
society now the great need for such provision. And, indeed, there are
quite a few dance therapists who are actively working with homeless
children in special programs; very often right in shelters.
The second critical aspect of Isadora's experience in Russia is her
ultimate disenchantment, not with the ideals of the Socialist revolution,
but with what occurred with the actualization of those ideals, and the
rigidity of the resulting bureaucracy. Not the Russian people, but the
bureaucrats in the continually more repressive system withdrew their
initial support of Isadora and her educational mission. I would venture to
guess t h a t this legacy of disillusionment with even a well-meaning bu-
reaucracy is a situation which m a n y dance therapists right here in the
United States have experienced and inherited!*

*Duncan was amazingly prophetic. Around 1922 she said: ~I have given my h a n d to
Russia, and I tell you to do the same. I tell you to love Russia, for Russia h a s everything t h a t
America lacks, just as America has everything t h a t Russia lacks. The day when Russia and
America u n d e r s t a n d each other will m a r k the dawn of a new epoch for h u m a n i t y " (Rose-
mont, p. 87).
106 Berger

Isadora's views on the true mission of education originated in her

t h o u g h t even before her deepest explorations of movement, and clearly
illustrate the e x t r a o r d i n a r y brilliance of her intellect and her social
insight. In 1898, when she was only t w e n t y years old, she stated in a
newspaper interview:

Although the majority of studies given to children a r e . . , for the

cultivation of memory and technique they all have some influence on
character. This influence will cling to the child in later years, long
after the memory and technique of the studies are lost. Thus the
character t r a i n i n g . . , was by far the most important. Then would it
not be a greater economy of the child's brain power to lead it in the
training that has been studied for the purpose of character formation
itself?. When a child is finished, is self-controlled, is apt in mind and
body, it will master studies with far less effort than when its character
is not yet formed. (Terry, p. 92)

Isadora felt t h a t the child could know himself t hrough his body and its
movement, and t h a t when he danced t hrough a series of sequence of
movements he was necessarily expressing connected thought patterns.
With g r e at er complexity of movement, the child goes even f u r t h e r and is
enabled to integrate mind and body in the understanding as well as the
expression of both form and emotion. The h e a r t of her principle was t h a t
character is but ~ . . . the expression of the state of the body" (Terry, p. 95).
And the body, t hr ough movement, would see and hear and feel-knowing
itself and also learning and knowing itself in relation to others, to the
environment, and, most vitally, to processes and forms in nature.
Duncan's understanding of the necessity of dance in the education of
children as the base for all learning is knowledge which we as dance
therapists m us t not forget. E ven as we expand our effectiveness as clini-
cians in orthodox t r e a t m e n t structures, we must never ignore our respon-
sibility to children, and to the community; to the acknowledgment of the
importance of dance and the other arts for the entire population. Isadora
instinctively understood the force of early experience. H er schools, she
said, were schools, not of dance, but schools of life.

Let us first teach little children to breathe, to vibrate, to f e e l . . , let us

first produce a beautiful human being, a dancing c h i l d . . .

Isadora as Archetype
So we see t h a t Isadora in her philosophy and her work in the world
perhaps set a path for us for the f ut ure just as she formed the source for
our work in dance t h e r a p y in her exploration and philosophy of dance and
mo v e ment and the spirit.
 Isadora Duncan 107

La Danse, Isadora and Nijinsky, haut-relief by Antoine Bourdelle,

Theatre Des Champs-Elysees, Paris.
108 Berger

In movement, Isadora gave us an understanding of the inner core from

which meaningful movement comes, and the transformative power of the
experience of this natural flow. She gave us, in pristine form, our core
processes of movement as experience and movement as expression, and
she gave us, through direct movement forms, our understanding of the
myths we live and the archetypes we embody. In tracing dance to its
sacred roots, she revealed for us its original functions in h u m a n existence
through its powerful enabling processes of insight, learning, creativity,
forming, catharsis, interaction and symbolization. These are the core
processes of all psychotherapy, and in dance they may be uniquely and
literally embodied.
Isadora revealed the aesthetic impulse as an impulse of humans to
reflect, to be in accord with nature; to reflect the metaphysical essence of
nature as well as its literal forms and processes. Cezanne has said ~Art is
a harmony parallel to nature." And a great French sculptor, Antoine
Bourdelle, who was greatly moved by Isadora and who did many sketches
and sculptures of her, used to say ~%'art fait ressortir les grandes lignes
de la nature." (Art brings out the great lines of nature) (Campbell, 1986,
p. 142). Isadora gave us a harmony parallel to nature and brought out its
great lines on many levels.
She also exemplified Jung's concept of the visionary artist. He saw
artists operant in two distinct orbits: the psychological artist who works
in the realm of conscious cognition, ordinary awareness and cultural
reality, and the visionary, who is compelled by forces from the archetypi-
cal depths of the unconscious and who has no choice but to express these
impulses. Isadora may be seen as the archetypical visionary artist.
Iasdora was the embodiment of all the archetypical ideas she actualized
in her dances; she not only exemplified them in her art, but she actively
lived them out in her life. Her life in art, her life in the world, and in her
personal life, which we are all familiar with and which I will not touch
on, where she lived out every myth, from Pandora to Cassandra.
She was not perfect; the dark and negative parts of her being were parts
she was brave enough to connect with, and parts which were allowed to
partially merge in her later life. She always saw the juxtaposition of good
and evil, of the ugly and the beautiful, of sickness and of health, and
fervently believed that the ideas of purity and beauty and spirituality
would prevail (Dillon, 1990). Her tragedies and the darker side of her
inner being have certainly added to the complexity and power of her
persona and her legacy. Perhaps one of the important lessons we may
learn from her is the imperative of fully experiencing the total range
between polarities of feeling, polarities of action, polarities of thought, in
order to achieve and ascend to an always impossible balance.
Her life, in summary of its deepest meaning, did this. She reached into
the universal unconscious and propelled her discoveries and herself into
 Isadora Duncan 109

the reality of life on this earth. She indeed embodied our conference
theme of Shadow and Light.
We, as dance therapists, live this balancing of opposite elements all the
time in our work and in our thinking. We are a strange sort of evolved
h u m a n being and professional-the artist, the dancer, the p e r f o r m e r . . .
as clinician, as scientist, as theoretician, as educator, as administrator.
We are living out, in a sense, Isadora's unique combination of intellect
and emotion, and we are living out at least a partial realization of her
philosophy of movement as well as her example in relation to the commu-
nal responsibility of the artist.
It appears t h a t Isadora lived a new m y t h and t h a t she has created a new
archetype for the 20th century which forms at least a part of our core
unconscious structure. Through re-immersion in Isadora's genius, we
may continue to bring her archetypical ideas and ideals ever more
strongly into our consciousness, our values, and our lived actions. As to
the future, we have the legacy of her aesthetic, intellectual and spiritual
courage to guide us, and a primary source through which to understand
art as a healing force.
Isadora Duncan began what may be seen as a new mythic quest. We, as
dance therapists, may not be visionary artists, but some of her vision we
have already fulfilled, and our journey continues, and much is still to do.

Isadora on a rock with pupils.

 1 10 Berger

Place your hands as I do on your heart, listen to your soul, and all
o f you will know how to dance as well as I or my pupils do. There
is the true revolution. Let the people place their hands in this way
on their hearts, and in listening to their souls they will know how
to conduct themselves.
Isadora Duncan

References

Blair, F. (1986). Isadora, Portrait of the Artist as a Woman, New York, W. Morrow.
Bresciani, J. (1991). Personal Communication.
Campbell, J. (1986). Creativity. In K. Barnaby and P. D'Acierno (Editors), C. G. Jung and
the Humanities (1990), New Jersey, Princeton University Press.
Dillon, M. (1990). After Egypt, Isadora Duncan and Mary Cassatt, New York, Dutton.
Duncan, I. (1927). My Life, New York, Horace Liverwright.
Duncan, I. (1928). The Art of the Dance, New York, Theatre Arts.
Kirstein, L. (1935). Dance, New York, Putnam.
MacDougall, A. R. (1960). Isadora, A Revolutionary in Art and Love, New York, Thomas
Nelson.
Martin, J. (1947). Isadora Duncan and Basic Dance. In P. Magriel, (Ed.), Isadora Duncan,
New York, Henry Holt.
Rosemont, F. Ed. (1981). Isadora Speaks, San Francisco, City Lights Books.
Terry, W. (1963). Isadora Duncan." Her Life, Her Art, Her Legacy. New York, Dodd Mead.

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