de Lisle — La Marseillaise

Reconstructed by Valerie Durham.

Notes

Isadora Duncan

Reference: Duncan, Isadora. My Life. The Restored Edition. Introduction by Joan Acocella, Prefatory Essay by Doree Duncan. New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2013. ISBN 978-0-87140-318-6 (pbk.)

Coming from bleeding heroic France, I was indignant at the apparent indifference of America to the war, and one night, after a performance at the Metropolitan Opera House, I folded my red shawl around me and improvised the "Marseillaise." It was a call to the boys of America to rise and protect the highest civilisation of our epoch—that culture which has come to the world through France. The next morning the newspapers were enthusiastic. One of them said:

"Miss Isadora Duncan earned a remarkable ovation at the close of her programme with an impassioned rendition of the 'Marseillaise,' when the audience stood and cheered her for several minutes... Her exalted poses were imitative of the classic figures on the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. Her shoulders were bare, and also one side, to the waist-line, in one post, as she thrilled the spectators with the representation of the beautiful figures (of Rude) on the famous arch. The audience burst into cheers and bravas as the living representation of noble art."

Isadora Duncan

Reference: Duncan, Isadora. My Life. The Restored Edition. Introduction by Joan Acocella, Prefatory Essay by Doree Duncan. New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2013. ISBN 978-0-87140-318-6 (pbk.)

On the day of the announcement of the Russian Revolution all lovers of freedom were filled with hopeful joy, and that night I danced the "Marseillaise" in the real original revolutionary spirit in which it was composed, and followed it with my interpretation of the "Marche Slave," in which appears the Hymn to the Tsar, and I pictured the downtrodden serf under the lash of the whip.

This antithesis or dissonance of gesture against music roused some storm in the audience.

It is strange that in all my Art career it has been these movements of despair and revolt that have most attracted me. In my red tunic I have constantly danced the Revolution and the call to arms of the oppressed.

Agnes de Mille

Reference: Duncan, Dorée; Carol Pratl and Cynthia Splatt (eds.) Life Into Art. Isadora Duncan and Her World. Foreword by Agnes de Mille. Text by Cynthia Splatt. W. W. Norton & Company, 1993. ISBN 0-393-03507-7

The concert I saw was during World War I. At the end of the performance, the entire audience rose and stood while the orchestra played the Marseillaise, the Allies' anthem, all six verses, and Isadora in long Greek robes and a blood red cloak danced. At the final call: "Aux armes, Citoyens, Formez vos bataillons," she threw her blood red robe over her shoulder, marched to the footlights, and confronting the audience raised her arms in heroic summons.

The whole house cried out, many people wept. She gave voice to immortal anguish, to mortal endeavour. Isadora could match any monument. She could match life. And yet at the time she was an overweight woman who at frolicsome moments seemed almost inept. Anyone else doing similar things would have been downright ridiculous. Isadora was never ridiculous. Isadora raised her arms and the stars rocked.

Related items in the Archives

The San Francisco Museum of Performance and Design > Programs > Isadora Duncan — Nov 25, 1917

The Collection of Janaea Rose Lyn (McAlee) > Programs > Isadora Duncan — Nov 21, 1916

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