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Epicurus.com - Isadora
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List Price: $31.00
Our Price: $29.91
Your Save: $ 1.09 ( 4% )
Availability: N/A
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Paperback
Format: Bargain Price
Number Of Pages: 736
Publication Date: 2003-02-06
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Editorial Reviews:
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Welcomed on the cover of The New York Times Book Review -and now in paperback-ISADORA brings to life "the most influential and the most notorious woman of the first quarter of the 20th century" (The New York Times Book Review); "one of the true visionaries of modern dance-and, by extension, of modernism in all its guises" (Washington Post); a performer who invented her own language of movement to express her needs for art and freedom; a woman whose life, set against the backdrop of Europe and the U.S. in the early 1900s, was crowded with love affairs, passions, and tragedies. AUTHORBIO Peter Kurth is the author of Tsar: The Lost World of Nicholas and Alexandra, Anastasia: The Riddle of Anna Anderson, and American Cassandra: The Life of Dorothy Thompson. He lives in Vermont.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating: 
Summary: Passable biography, strange woman
Comment: I was sparked to read more about Isadora Duncan based on the mini-bio in John Dos Passos' U.S.A.: The 42nd Parallel / 1919 / The Big Money (Library of America).
Bizarre woman. Passable popular biography, but really strange woman.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Should have won a Pulitzer Price
Comment: I have read many biographies, from Saint-Exupérie to Rockefeller, and thanks to the feedback system of Amazon and the editioral reviews, it is quite possible to filter out the good ones from the mediocre.
Needless to say this biography stands out from many others and I think it is one of my favourites I have read so far. I said in the title that it should have won the Pulitzer price, although I do not know whether biographies are eligible for this. But it shows why Peter Kurth, the author, needed 10 years to complete it.
What can my review add on the information available?
First of all, read the editiorials, they give good information on what this book, and what Isadora is about. Usually only the positive reviews are kept, but in this case, for a reason. This biography is indeed written as all biographies should be written; well researched, not confusing, as detailed as possible without getting boring, and intertwined with the times that in this case Isadora lived, and finally neutral in style yet intriguing.
Peter Kurth does all these things. Even the title does her life justice, for after reading this book, one can only conclude her life, as well as her death, truly was sensational. Especially for a woman in those days to achieve and do what she did is amazing. Even now, a Madonna would not make the grade in comparison to Isadora.
Isadora virtually created the 'natural' modern dance as opposed to the Russian ballet, which she considered merely as stiff and hysterical hopping that proved flying indeed was impossible for human beings. As some said, it was as if she gave something back to the people, something natural that was lost and found again.
She was probably as influential as Martha Graham was later in the century, but totally opposite style. Some said you should have seen her dance to die happily. We will never know, since apart from all the crowds she drew which no longer are with us, she was never caught on film. Maybe better that way, since it only adds more to the cachet of legend she has and had.
It is just wonderful to read a story on how some humans do it; rise from nothing to stardom, 'just' with hard work, perseverance, good ideas, and genius. Her life was a constant struggle to renew her art and to sell her idea to the world that often was not ready for it. Of course like all of us she needed love, and she knew how to get it. But just like Callas' tragedy, or Dalida's dictum `my life was a success, but what was it, really?', it also casts yet another light on that mystery called fame, and the Faustian bargain that somehow always comes with it. When Isadora met her mother years later, she asked herself; `We had set off to look for fame and fortune. Both had been found, so why the result was so tragic?'
The reason for this was that her life was not only full of the glamour of travel, intrigue, and meeting everyone from Steichen to Fairbanks to Valentino to Chaplin, but also because it was full of tragedy.
She never really found the right lover, or husband in her life. She never could keep a secure fortune, and like so many artists, she could not really cope with aging.
But perhaps her life is also a glorious proof of how wonderful life is, no matter the tragedy, and how she somehow was always driven to go on with her art and her glamorous lifestyle, despite even having lost all of her three children. In short; what a life, and apart from the tragedy, what fun she must have had! Her equally legendary death only adds to the thrill of this all!
Customer Rating:
Summary: SOS
Comment: Yes...save our souls. I realize that Morse Code is sadly no longer in use but for a perspective of women denied, degraded, diminished, deadened by cultures throughout history both metaphorically and literally insofar as their vast contribution to art, this book is simply divine! It is not only a page-turner, it is a classic and stellar contribution to understanding a complex soul, who sought dignity and got the back-of-the-hand from many in the world of her time. Her courage alone is worth reading about. I cannot judge her. I didn't know her! But this is a fine work and brings the reader into a realm of both this woman's glory and grief such that it really focuses the lense on how hard human beings can be with one another. Even with an "Isadora."
Customer Rating:
Summary: This book brings her back to life
Comment: Isadora Duncan was a larger than life figure of the first part of the century. Both her work and her lifestyle guaranteed her the attention of the world. Mr. Kurth's biography brings the innovative dancer back to life clarifying many details at the same time. Ms. Duncan tended to either gloss over or sensationalize various aspects of her history and this book separates fact from fantasy. The photographs are very good, as is the narrative.
Customer Rating:
Summary: She Was Large...She Contained Multitudes
Comment: Here is an excellent biography of someone whose life combined artistic achievement with personal dysfunction. Arguably the creator of what we now refer to as "modern dance," Isadora Duncan certainly filled her "sensational" personal life with a series of adventures and misadventures while struggling to sustain a career during which so many of her knowledgeable contemporaries praised her artistic talents and achievements. Consider these comments:"I got an impression of enormous grace, and enormous power in her dancing -- she was very serious, and held the audience and held them completely." (Frederick Ashton) "She moved with those wonderful steps of hers with simplicity and detachment that could only come through the intuition of genius itself." (Tamara Karsavina) "She incarnated music in her dance." (Serge Kousevitsky) "The soul becomes drunk with this endless succession of beautiful lines and groupings [of movement]." (Ernest Newman) "The greatest woman I have ever known....Sometimes I think she is the greatest woman the world has ever known." (Rodin) Impressive accolades indeed which, for me, increase the poignancy (at times the tragedy) of her poor judgment and irresponsible behavior when not performing before an always adoring audience. Even for those who know little (if anything) about dance, Kurth has written an absorbing, at times compelling biography of a woman who (in the words of a contemporary, Janet Flanner) embodied "the grandeur of permanent ideals...[but was] too expansive for personal salvation." By the time I approached the final chapter of Kurth's biography, I had observed a number of similarities between Isadora's life and the lives of Edna St. Vincent Millay and Sylvia Plath. For example, their original and substantial talent, their excessive self-indulgences, their passion for experiencing (both physically and emotionally) as much as possible each day, and their vulnerabilities which so many others exploited shamelessly. With Whitman in mind, Robert Gottlieb observes: "For Isadora there were no rules, there was only the Song of Herself; she lacked the discipline, the emotional and moral resources, to keep liberty from lapsing into license." Such is often the fate of a genius which, by most accounts, Isadora Duncan was. "Sensational" indeed.
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