Dance
Done Into Pictures: A New Graphic Biography Celebrates Isadora Duncans Feminism
Spring is finally here, and with it, loose clothing, sandals, and frolicking in the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. A nice time to channel the memory of Isadora Duncan, barefoot “Mother of Modern Dance,” champion of free love and unbound expression, and yes, dress reformer. Sabrina Jones’s Isadora Duncan: A Graphic Biography, released by Hill and Wang last fall, celebrates her life and legacy in visual form.

Illustration is an ideal medium for relating Duncan’s life and art. Lacking video recordings or action photographs, her dances have been haphazardly preserved, with only a hazy resemblance to her original performances. Eyewitness sketches give the most accurate representation of how she moved and the feelings she evoked, and Jones uses these, particularly renditions by Abraham Walkowitz and José Clara, as a guide. The head thrown back in ecstasy, or her whole body whooshed sideways as if caught on the wind—here a picture speaks a thousand words.
The actual story of her life, retold by over forty biographers (according to the forward by Lori Belilove), is sensational. Born to a poor freethinking family in Oakland, California in 1877, young Isadora was sent to charm the butcher so they could eat. She remained breadwinner of the family for most of her life, whether begging for money from New York’s social elite or earning tremendous sums from her celebrated performances. Resourceful but never practical, she feasted when times were good (acquiring a taste for fine champagne), attempted to build a temple on an arid hill in Greece, single-handedly financed a school of dance, and supported lovers and friends as well as her family. She found marriage oppressive to women, and her affairs titillated and scandalized the public. The tragic death of her children cast a shadow over the latter part of her life, and her own bizarre death brings her tale to an eerie close.
Jones, a Brooklyn resident whose career as an illustrator began with radical feminist comics in the 1980s, recounts Duncan’s life with an emphasis on her gusto. Always in her Greek tunic, Jones’s plucky Isadora trots across the world merrily, crossing paths with a host of eccentric personalities. It’s a long and complicated story to cover in merely 125 pages, and Jones sacrifices a lot of passion to keep things moving. The heights of love and lust are glossed over as quickly as the depths of loss and despair, as Jones focuses instead on the political implications of Duncan’s behavior and accomplishments. Jones reminds us: “Some of her liberties we take for granted, like comfortable dress and serial monogamy, but others, in art, education, and motherhood, are still every bit as hard to pull off.”
RECOMMENDED ARTICLES

Sean Scully: A Wound in a Dance with Love
By Raphy SarkissianSEPT 2022 | ArtSeen
A leading champion of contemporary artmaking, Sean Scully has come to project his image of an artist as a formalist conundrum, as intimated by the above metaphor that exudes a sense of pathos.
from the she said dialogues: flesh memory
By Akilah OliverFEB 2021 | Poetry
Akilah Oliver (1961–2011) was born in St. Louis and grew up in Los Angeles. She was the author of two books of poetry: A Toast in the House of Friends (2009) and the she said dialogues: flesh memory (1999), which received a PEN Beyond Margins award. Her chapbooks include A Collection of Objects (2010), a(A)ugust (2007), The Putterer’s Notebook (2006) and An Arriving Guard of Angels, Thusly Coming to Greet (2004). Oliver was an influential teacher and a notable performer. She collaborated with a range of artists and musicians and co-founded the experimental, feminist performance collective Sacred Naked Nature Girls in 1994. She was also a member of the Belladonna* feminist avant-garde collaborative and a graduate student in Philosophy, Art and Social Thought at the European Graduate School. Oliver lived for many years in Boulder, Colorado and taught at the Naropa Institute’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. In addition, she taught at Pratt Institute and at The New School in New York City, where she lived at the time of her death.
Tariku Shiferaw: It’s a love thang, it’s a joy thang
By Charles MooreMAY 2021 | ArtSeen
Tariku Shiferaws Its a love thang, its a joy thang embodies Black joybut not in the sense that people might think. In his latest exhibition, the artist pays homage to quotidian pleasures: those often referenced in the jazz era, a time when the greats sang about their daily lives.
Continuation and the Break: Notes on Black Lives and Tap Dance
By Orlando HernándezFEB 2021 | Dance
In a layered essay, Orlando Hernández weaves together the history and practice of tap dance with insights into pandemic, US anti-blackness, native theology, and Western time. An intimate look at the syncopated art form offers countering modes of arranging our experience.