Isadora Duncan - Dancer Quotes

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I have closely studied the figured documents of all ages and of all the great masters, but I have never seen in them any representations of human beings walking on the extremity of the toes or raising the leg higher than the head. These ugly and false positions in no way express that state of unconscious Dionysiac delirium which is necessary to the dancer. Moreover movèments, just like harmonies in music, are not invented; they are discovered.

Isadora Duncan
The movement of the waves, of winds, of the earth is ever in the same lasting harmony. We do not stand on the beach and inquire of the ocean what was its movement of the past and what will be its movement of the future. We realize that the movement peculiar to its nature is eternal to its nature. The dancer of the future will be one whose body and soul have grown so harmoniously together that the natural language of that soul will have become the movement of the body.

Isadora Duncan
The real American type can never be a ballet dancer. The legs are too long, the body too supple and the spirit too free for this school of affected grace and toe walking.

Isadora Duncan
To express what is the most moral, healthful and beautiful in art this is the mission of the dancer, and to this I dedicate my life.

Isadora Duncan
Oh, she is coming, the dancer of the future... more glorious than any woman who has yet been: more beautiful than the Egyptian, than the early Italian, than all women of past centuries—the highest intelligence in the freest body!

Isadora Duncan