11/17/2023 0 Comments Accident isadora duncan![]() And as you grow older it’s fine to appreciate that and not remain this childlike – I think there’s a danger of that.”ĭurante’s own career was derailed when she raised her voice, back in 1999, over a concern about the partner she’d been assigned, which led to the management cancelling her appearances and her leaving the Royal Ballet. You have to allow them to grow, not just as a dancer but as people: the person is the dancer, and the dancer is the person. “I tell the students all the time, ‘I want you to have a voice.’ If you’re trying to teach somebody to have responsibilities on stage with their role, they also have to take responsibility for themselves. Last year, Durante was appointed director of dance at English National Ballet School. Photograph: Graeme Robertson/The Guardian “And it’s a shame – dancers should learn to love themselves more, because it opens your mind.”ĭurante at the Barbican Conservatory. As a dancer you do tend to doubt yourself, especially a classical dancer.”īallet training doesn’t teach you to love your own skin? “Absolutely not,” she says. She’s taught me to celebrate myself more. “She’s taught me to love my skin, my body, who I am,” she says. “You’re not just learning the steps, it’s much more like a spiritual journey that she takes you on.” Immersing herself in Duncan’s story has been a revelation for Durante. “I wish I’d experienced this process back when I was dancing ,” she says. Yet when we meet again a few months later in her dressing room at the Barbican, some of Duncan’s essence has seeped in. “It’s not in my body yet!”Īt her peak, Durante was one of the best in the world, and to any casual observer her dancing still looks exquisite, but in the studio she gives a commentary of criticisms and apologies, tough self-judgment being an ingrained part of any ballet dancer’s makeup. “I’m trying but my feet are still in pointe shoes,” she says, metaphorically. Durante was always a passionate dancer, but within the refined context of ballet. And she wasn’t afraid of the darkness of life.” Duncan’s own life held tragedy – the deaths of her children, two by drowning and a third soon after birth, then Duncan’s own death in a freak accident aged 50 when her scarf got caught in the wheels of an open-top car.īut Duncan’s influence lives on, and in the studio her expressive abandon, grounded to the earth in bare feet, is proving tricky for Durante’s petite, classically trained physique. “She had no inhibitions about showing or saying what she felt through her dance. “She was very radical and very shocking,” says Durante. Photograph: Raymond Duncan/courtesy Jerome Robbins Dance Division/NYPL for the Performing Arts ‘The greatest woman the world has known’ … Isadora Duncan in the Theatre of Dionysus in Athens.
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