Traditional — Varshavianka
- Music:
Traditional — Varshavianka
- Original choreography by: Isadora Duncan (1924)
- Categories: heroic dances
Reconstructed by Julia Levien.
Notes
Nadia Chilkovsky Nahumck
Reference: Nahumck, Nadia Chilkovsky. Isadora Duncan: The Dances. Washington DC: The National Museum of Women in the Arts, 1994.
The music is said to have originated during an 1831 uprising of Polish prisoners in Tsarist Russia. The words used by Duncan were popular in Russia during its revolutionary days. The dance portrays a shock-troop brigade, whose members rescue the flag (imaginary in the original dance) from fallen standard bearers and bring the battle to a victorious conclusion.
Isadora Duncan is reported to have arrived on the scene of the 1905 St. Petersburg massacre—"Bloody Sunday"—just days after it occurred. She dedicated the dance to the massacre victims. In the original version, the dancers also sang.
Irma Duncan
Reference: Schneider, Ilya Ilyich. Isadora Duncan: The Russian Years. Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc, 1969; London: Macdonald, 1968.
These dances, which, with the two funeral dances for the memory of Lenin, the girls of the Isadora Duncan School in Moscow have since danced all over Russia, across Siberia, and in the larger towns of China, are amazing in their effects on the audience. Quite apart from their revolutionary significance, they are all imbued with a real plastic beauty. Several of them, The Blacksmith, Dubinushka and The Warshavianka, are choreographic chefs d’oeuvres. They rank with the great dancer’s compositions to the waltzes of Schubert and Brahms, and the various choral dances which she arranged for her presentations of Gluck’s Orpheus and his Iphigenia.
Videos
| Title | Date | Dancers | Full Dance? | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Varshavyanka | 2017 | Yes | ||
| isadoraNOW excerpts | 2009-08-23 | No | ||
| Isadora and the American Jewish Intelligentsia | 2000 | Cathleen Deutscher, Catherine Gallant, Beth Jucovy, Debra Orenstein, Adrienne Ramm, Gabrielle Gregory, Michael Murkofsky | Yes | |
| Russian Worker Songs | Lori Belilove, Jeanne Bresciani, Judith Ann Landon, Julia Levien, Adrienne Ramm | Yes | Repeat of earlier clip | |
| Russian Worker Songs | Lori Belilove, Jeanne Bresciani, Judith Ann Landon, Julia Levien, Adrienne Ramm | Yes |
Related items in the Archives
The Collection of Mignon Garland > Programs > Isadora Duncan Dancers in New York — 1929
The Collection of Mignon Garland > Programs > Worker's Dance League Recital — Jan 07, 1934
The Isadora Duncan Archive Collection > Programs > Isadora Duncan in the 21st Century — Jan 20, 2017