Biography of Dancers Isadora Duncan Part 2

About the American dancer Isadora Duncan, her biography and history.

Isadora Duncan (1878-1927).

Isadora was baffled by her total nonacceptance in America. She was instantly successful and widely applauded in Europe. She opened a school of dance in 1904 at Grunewald, near Berlin. It was around this time that she met and fell in love with Gordon Craig, a famous English stage designer who was also known for his revolutionary theater ideas. Isadora did not believe in marriage. She lived with Craig for a while and gave birth to their child in a little village in Holland, where she had gone to await the arrival of the baby. Deirdre was born in September of 1906. Ecstatically happy, Isadora returned to Grunewald to continue her teaching. Craig was with her occasionally, but the demands of their careers eventually separated them completely.

Isadora wanted to open another school in Paris, but she had no money and half-jokingly prayed for a millionaire to appear in her life. After a performance in Paris, Isadora received a calling card from a gentleman admirer in her dressing room. The card had come from Paris Singer, the 22nd child of Isaac Singer and an heir to his family's sewing-machine fortune. Wealthy, handsome, cultured, and charming, Singer swept Isadora off her feet. Isadora and Singer became lovers, and a child, Patrick, was born to them in May of 1910 in a beautiful villa in France.

The following 3 years were luxurious and happy ones for Isadora. Her financial worries were a thing of the past, her school in Germany was a success, and Singer wanted to finance any other school that she wanted to open. She adored her children more than anything in the world. At the age of 35, she had everything she had ever hoped for and much to look forward to.

On April 19, 1913, Deirdre and Patrick kissed their mother good-bye before going to Versailles in Singer's limousine. Minutes later, they were dead. The limousine had plunged into the Seine River when the chauffeur got out to crank the car after it had stalled. He had failed to put on the brake. Isadora wrote:

Only twice comes that cry of the mother which one hears as without one's self--at birth and at death. . . . Why the same? Since one is the cry of supreme joy and the other of sorrow. . . . Is it not that in all the Universe there is but one great continuing Sorrow, Joy, Ecstasy, Agony--the Mother Cry of Creation.

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