Gluck — Iphigenie en Tauride, Danses des Scythes

Versions passed down to pupils of Lisa Duncan via Madeleine Lytton and to Julia Levein via Irma Duncan. Duncan used the image of an Amazon preparing for battle with imaginary shields and hatchets.

Also reconstructed by Hortense Kooluris.

Notes

Nadia Chilkovsky Nahumck

Reference: Nahumck, Nadia Chilkovsky. Isadora Duncan: The Dances. Washington DC: The National Museum of Women in the Arts, 1994.

A brief but enticing allusion in Homer's Iliad states that, in Phrygia, "Amazon women came, men's equals." The dance is a very simple miming of the combative activities of the pyrrhic dances of these legendary warrior women.

Related items in the Archives

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

The San Francisco Museum of Performance and Design > Programs > Isadorables — Dec 28, 1919

The Collection of Christy Cornell-Pape > Programs > Dances and Choruses from Iphigenie in Aulide — Isadora Duncan — Jul 06, 1908

The Collection of Christy Cornell-Pape > Programs > A Revival of the Greek Art of Two Thousand Years Ago — Isadora Duncan and Walter Damrosch — Nov 08, 1908

The Collection of Barbara Kane > Programs > Isadora Duncan Dancers at Carnegie Hall — Irma Duncan — Isadora Duncan Dancers — Dec 28, 1929

The Collection of Barbara Kane > Programs > Riverside Dance Festival — Julia Levien — Isadora Duncan Commemorative Dance Company — 1980

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