Customer Reviews

My Life

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Isadora Duncan was a trailblazer and this book details her life and how she became the unique woman and artist that she was. Her story is fascinating not only because she was one of the originators of modern dance but because her flaws and her ego are so obviously present in the text. This only serves to make her more fascinating and when she writes about the loss of her child or the efforts to keep the flame of love alive, every man and woman can identify with her.

An autobiography is a way of looking inside a person's mind. We have no real right to expect objectivity or "the long view" on any given subject.

Isadora Duncan's autobiography is a terrific example of the above. She was a hugely talented, flamboyant individual who chose to march to her own drummer from an early age. She is passionate in her descriptions of her inner life, her career and her lovers and changed the whole concept of "The Dance", breaking away from ballet (which she considered ugly and contrived) and inventing what we'd call "modern dance".

She was a fantastic dancer, but as a writer she is far too interested in her own inner world. The people around her float by as a succesion of badly defined cardboard cutouts, and one visited city sounds much like any other. After a while this DOES get rather boring. The lack of dates (such as "that was in 1925" or whatever) or a neatly defined chapter structure means that it's pretty hard to keep track of the passage of time. In the end, reading this book becomes a bit of a struggle: it's like being stuck in a someone's rather boring dreamworld.

Her sollipsism is (at times) a bit of a hoot and her inability to perceive the world for what it is provide the reader with occasional bits of unintentional black comedy.

An example: after deciding that ancient Greece was the mother of all art, Isadora sunk a great deal of her money in trying to rebuild a Greek temple. Her family spoke no Greek but lived for months amid the ruins, performing dances and wearing togas while getting cheated by the local villagers. She also formed a chorus of Greek urchins to perform ancient music and was later disappointed when during a tour, the urchins begin growing up and staying out late and coming home drunk.

A more human writer would have managed a bit of irony, a touch of sympathy for these common, simple people caught up in the mad American artist's vision, but Isadora never quite manages it. Sadly, it is precisely this sort of self-centered and humourless viewpoint that makes this book so stodgy.

On the positive side, however, one DOES get a really good idea of what Isadora Duncan was like and how she saw her art and one can't really ask for more from an autobiography.

As a keen fan of autobiographys this book automatically appealed to me. although I had not heard of Isadora's profound infleunce on the world of art or dance, the reviews on the book sold it for me. I thouroughly enjoyed her abstract and sometimes perplexing stories about her up- bringing. However as her travels with her family increased i found her to be quite selfish and single-minded in regards to her career. This i felt led her story, although a biography, to become quite a monotonous and tedious read. In her favour I would say that the book is written in an honest and frank manner.

I first read this book after seeing Ken Russell's film "The World's Biggest Dancer" in the 1960's The film is, unfortunately, lost. I fell in love with the myth of this fabulous woman and was impressed with Vanessa Redgrave's portrayal of her in Karel Reisz's "Isadora" also hopelessly lost I believe. This is not a great work of art: it has episodes of naively underwritten material tailored into whole paragraphs of wonderful philosophy of a futuristic world when art and beaty supercede greed and material gain. The ghost of Isadora haunts this book; a woman broken by personal tragedy writing these words in the last years of a life that, by any standards, was extraordinary. I keep it on my shelf along with Nijinsky's "Life" both books testimony to the inability of words to express the emotions of genius

Easily one of the best conversations I have had without speaking. Isadora speaks directly to her reader with a passionate and intense language. There were points when I was reading that my inner voice was yelling back in agreement, empathy or appreciation. I found this woman intelligent, hilarious and dramatic. I felt as though I had made a friend. Though she was not a trained writer, she has been able to share herself very openly in the written language. I think this is a must read for any woman (or man).

A dancer and visionary far ahead of her time, Isadora's story is told in such an intimate personal voice that you feel as if she's confiding in you. She lived her life so vividly that it takes on the color and bravado of a mythic odyssey. Isadora inspires me to fully inhabit my artist's soul and to allow the purity of my heart to infuse every breath, every step. Life is a dance to be danced, a charmed and poignant tale unfolding. Play the part in full heart, she seems to be telling us, play it well.

I would recommend this book to anyone interested in reading about Isadora's life in her own words. However, I found the story to be a little boring because it focused exclusively on her life with no other background information to read about. But, again there are interesting details included about the author's life.

I got to discover Isadora Duncan while reading a french novel that mentioned the dancer. I googled her and was swept away but the information I got from a Wikipedia page and immediately decided to purchase the book. It was a good suprise. Isadora was multilingual - difficult to say which major European language she couldn't speak. At a time when travel was long and limited, she can be described as a very traveled lady and my wasn't she cultured! Everyday, she danced herself to sleep even while traveling. However she was finacially irresponsible and I got the impression that she imposed her expenses on her lovers and wealthy fans and aristocrats. She endured a painful loss, twice, when her children died, the only dark period in her life as she was always full of joy and rhythm. I was hoping that the last pages of the book would contain her marriage, yes, marriage, an act she always swore never to be part of yet got married to Sergei Yesenin, a Russian poet. Why was that part omitted? Also,her in stay Nice in southern France where she accidentally died was never mentioned, just words she supposedly spoke out the day she died. Of course she didn't commit suicide so I wasn't expecting an "Adieu" letter from her but surely, I felt cheated after having read so many pages only to come to an abrupt and rushed ending. What a shame! I recommend reading other sources (web and books) about Isadora before reading this book if you really want to know who she really was.

La primera vez que lei este libro comprendi que la vida de Isadora habia encaminado mi propia vision de "Arte" a un nivel mas humano, porque con sus acciones, sus errores y sus virtudes, te ensena a apreciar la belleza en su nivel mas basico. No es dificil obsesionarse con la vida de esta artista, por distintas razones: con ella nace la danza moderna; su vida es una constante lucha contra los convencionalismos sociales que pretenden regir su arte y su comportamiento, logrando solamente calificarle como "rebelde". Personalmente, admirar a Isadora como ser humano resulta lo mas fascinante de todo. El arte de Isadora es la mas fiel muestra de su propia existencia.