"To seek in nature the fairest forms and to find the movement which expresses the soul of these forms — this is the art of the dancer. It is from nature alone that the dancer must draw his inspirations, in the same manner as the sculptor, with whom he has so many affinities. Rodin has said: "To produce good sculpture it is not necessary to copy the works of antiquity; it is necessary first of all to regard the works of nature, and to see in those of the classics only the method by which they have interpreted nature." Rodin is right; and in my art I have by no means copied, as has been supposed, the figures of Greek vases, friezes and paintings. From them I have learned to regard nature, and when certain of my movements recall the gestures that are seen in works of art, it is only because, like them, they are drawn from the grand natural source. My inspiration has been drawn from trees, from waves, from clouds, from the sympathies that exist between passion and the storm, between gentleness and the soft breeze, and the like, and I always endeavour to put into my movements a little of that divine continuity which gives to the whole of nature its beauty and its life."
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VegetariansAtheists from the United StatesAutobiographers from the United StatesDancers from the United StatesCommunists from the United States
Original Language: English
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As quoted in Modern Dancing and Dancers (1912) by John Ernest Crawford Flitch, p. 105.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Isadora_Duncan
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Isadora Duncan
Angela Isadora Duncan (May 27, 1877 – September 14, 1927) was a dancer, considered by many to be the creator of modern dance. Duncan had many lovers and bore two children, Deirdre (born September 24, 1906), by theatre designer Gordon Craig, and Patrick (born 1 May 1910), by Paris Singer; both children drowned in a car accident on the Seine River on 19 April 1913, and Duncan herself died years later in another when her long scarf caught in the tires of an automobile in which she was riding, break
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