Curiosity: from Isadora Duncan to Georgia O’Keeffe

I can’t believe it. It’s been 30 years this month since my first book was published: Done Into Dance: Isadora Duncan in America.

I chose to write about Isadora Duncan for the same reason I am writing about Georgia O’Keeffe: curiosity.

About Duncan, I wondered: If all she did was waft around the stage to romantic music, why was she so popular?

About O’Keeffe, I wondered: Her paintings are so simple but so deeply moving — how did she do it?

As an aspiring artist, O’Keeffe was an admirer of the celebrated dancer, who was doing with movement what she would attempt to accomplish with paint.

In the Duncan book, I use a series of photographs to imagine her dancing:

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 The dancer does not play to the viewer, but neither is she withdrawn.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 surface 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.

The line of her arms 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.

Now, back to the O’Keeffe manuscript! I am taking a deep dive into her first masterpiece, “Blue Lines X” (1916). Do you know this one? Hit “reply” and let me know!