excerpt from
Done into Dance: Isadora Duncan in America
Of
all the visual artifacts available, there is one set that tells us most
about Duncan the dancer. It is an unlikely source, of a very young Duncan,
still wearing tights and ballet slippers, starting out her career in New
York in 1898. There are the strained, even awkward poses (according to
convention, she sometimes used the back wall for support during the considerable
exposure time), but she seems to have hit her stride by the last six frames.
This series of cabinet cards, taken by longtime theatrical portrait photographer
Jacob Schloss, reveals her flexible back, double-jointed arms, and expressive
hands.
They are quiet images, in which an averted face or inflected neck, a lifted chest or loosely curled hand communicates subtle emotion. The dancer does not play to the viewer, but neither is she withdrawn. Something keeps the images from appearing isolated: the subtle distinction between her outward visual gaze and her more restrained bodily focus, which clings to the surfaces of her flesh.
I imagine that she can feel the brush of air along her gently curving neck or the creamy underside of her arms. Those Récamier-length arms seem boneless. They do not take flight on their own; they claim their connection to body—and to "soul." Their line is broken at the wrist, setting off the extraordinary expressiveness of her hands, whose power lay not in mimicry but in suggestiveness. There is poignance in how the hand is cupped, or stretched, or half-closed, and in how the fingers curl or spread.
Duncan rarely misses the opportunity to expose her long, pliable neck, which gives her always an aura of vulnerability. She never stands squarely on both feet, but neither does she sink into contrapposto. Void of apparent tension, the dancer is oriented toward her body; she is not interested in conquering space. The only thing she projects is calmness.
Duncan’s images are unique among Schloss’s portraits, in which the actors and dancers are given over completely to the stiff convention of the period. Interestingly enough, Duncan shares one of her most awkward poses with another Schloss subject, Annie St. Tel. Despite the awkwardness of Duncan’s configuration, bending backward from the wall to smile at the camera, her back is by far the more flexible and extended; her head is more relaxed, and her extended arm is noticeably double-jointed. The personas of dancers such as Mabel Clark and Eunice Hill are mature, as their figures are corseted into hourglass shapes and their faces are sharply chiseled with makeup and framed by formal hairdos. They usually pose before an embroidered curtain and atop a carpeted mound of a pedestal. The only spatial variation is a bend at the waist diagonally forward; the most common pose adds to this a pointed foot forward. Some dancers manipulate their skirts coyly; others stand on one leg with the other leg grazing an ear. The more spectacularly acrobatic dancers manage to touch the backs of their heads with a foot, or to smile from atop a split on the floor.
Duncan, in contrast, looks pleasantly soft and youthful in bare face and gauzy dress. Her mise-en-scène is simple, with plain curtains, and she remains on the ground, which is strewn with flowers. Her hair and her draping skirt are soft, her body supple. She appears searching, evasive, anticipatory, all at once. The suggestion is that something is stirring inside, beyond the decorative arrangement of a leg or a costume.