The Ogden standard-examiner. [volume], June 25, 1922, The Standard - Examiner Sunday Feature Section, Page 2, Image 30

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...J .
ILatestAnaziiLoveAFFciirgbadorc Duncan 1 .
ow Celebrated Barefoot Dancer Was Won by the Young
gri. Russian Poet, Who Found Her Growing Fat- J 1
p, raess Adorable Enough to Sing About PH 1 1 I
mS'' - Instead of Something To Be Laughed I
Isadora Duncan as she looked before
growing avoirdupois had begun
to lessen the airy gracefulness
of her face and figure
PARIS, June 15.
HA vVER the dancing waves of the At-
I I lantic Ocean Isadora Duncan,
the dancer, will travel to Amor
ica next fall, according to an announce
ment here. With her will be a husband
and twenty-three children. The husband
is her own, but the children ate related
to her only as dancing pupils.
Many Interesting tales are beginning
to be told about the boulevards of Miss
B Duncan's career as head of the Russian
Soviet National School of Dancing. But
a more favorite topic is her romance
with Serge Alcxandrovitch Yessenin,
jH the twenty-seven-year-old Russian poet,
H whom she describes as her first and last
B husband. Th;s romance has many ele-
H ments that seem to make it uie most
B amazing of all this celebrated dancer's
B love affairs.
B It was the American poet Longfellow
B who first sang the barefoot boy in the
B United States. It was Isadora Duncan
B who first danced the barefoot jrirl there.
B Isadora Duncan has been long absent
Bj in Russia from her native land, but her
B pupils have gone dancing on.
B Perhaps warmed by the admiration of
h her pupils, Isadora Duncan will unfold
H some of the details of this remarkable
H romance of hers which attained such
H warmth amid the Russian snows. Only
H fragmentary rumors about it have sifted
H through, but these, as pieced together
H around the tables of the sidewalk cafes,
H wnere liqueurs n SJPP1 ' smiles are
H exchanged, make a most interesting
atory.
Isadora Duncan departed, much her
alded, for Russia to become the head
of the Department of Dancing of the
Soviet Government, which was deter
mined that the arts should not be neg
lected. On arrival, Miss Duncan met
with several disappointments, which was
nothing unusual for the Soviet Govern
ment. "The Soviet Government promised me
a thousand pupils," she said, "but I re
ceived only forty, and found it necessary
to contribute toward their food out of my
own money."
Not only was the class very small, but
It is said that the teacher did not give
full satisfaction. A teacher is supposed
to illustrato her subject and this, in the
opinion of Borne Russians, Isadora was
not fully equipped to do.
As is well known she had been grow
ing steadily stouter for some years be
fore leaving for Russia. In fact, her los
ing fight against fatness Is said to have
been one of the reasons why she left
France. The dancer may have expected
to be able to reduce on Russian's scanty
rations, or she may have thought that
the Russians like 'em plump.
But the Russians don't. Witness their
slim and sylph-like Pavlowa.
It was a case where beggars might not
choose, for the native dancers had been
scattered. They had fled to safer and
healthier climes. Many of the ballet
had been appropriated as mistresses by
Soviet officials. As Isadora was about the
best thing in the way of dancers to be
had under the Bolshevist rule, she con
tinued to hold the chair of dancing in
the Soviet school.
The story is that Isadora remained
fat, even grew fatter in spite of the
poor fare. But romance came to her
nevertheless, romance In the shape of
the young symbolist poet, Serge Yes
senin ,with his bushy yellow hair and his
raiment of blue suit and white canvas
shoes.
Of Serge it has been said by compa
triots and fellow authors that he is one
of the, most gifted Russian poets writing
to-day. He is a young man of peasant
origin and the peasant motif prevails
throughout his poetry. He is a member
of the Imagiat group of poets and hence
writes mostly of landscapes. His im
agery he draws from such homely ob
jects as plows, horses und clods of earth
-also from revolutions.
"My friends consider him the greatest
poet in the world," Miss Duncan de
clared. But what is said to have been one of
the most attractive things about Serge
to Isadora was the way her growing
avoirdupois inspired his poetic genuis.
While others saw in her fatness only a
thing fur ridicule or pity Serge, accord
ing to gossip here, found it something
adorable something well worth cele
brating in some of the most impassiom d
verses he has written.
It was the fervor with which he sang
her fatness, so Paris hears, that finally
won Isadora to the young poet. And
their love thus far seems to be an ideal
arrangement on both sides. The stouter
she grows the greater inspiration Serge
Yessenin finds for his poetic imagina
tion and the better reconciled the dancer
becomes to any loss of popular favor
which may result from her losing fight
against fatness.
How could any woman help being
pleaspd with such gems of literature aa
Isadora Duncan's artistic bulk is said to
have inspired? Here is one, for example,
which they say in the cafes here helped
win the poet his dancing bride:
The enow
The beautiful, white snow
Covers the Russian landscape
Like a blanket.
It covers the field,
Like a sheet.
It covers the cottage,
Like a pillow.
Within, the boiling samovar
dances over the flame
Like a dancer.
It has round, generous curves,
Has the samovar,
Like my love.
And it puffs when it dances,
Like one over-excrted.
The imagery of this frag
ment has been a great deal
Miss Duncan and I
some of the younc? j
women whom she 5
has taught to en- " y
joy dancing as the
ancient Greeks did
in their bare feet j
and pupil, p,
can, now Mrs. j '. .fj ''
Bourgeois of f'
New York . Ijf
Photograph by . ' '-- WtOB
Johnston --.. . - : ,'yjjg Ojjjp
-'M m
I aintl
Below A recent t '
photograph of Miss s . '
Duncan showing R -rm
some of the effects Bow
of her losing fight iaj h
against fatness
admired nere, especially me :m wp
simile of the samovar, which, Jw item
as e ery y , iAvv v ' v bos
Russian for tea kettle. .
symbolism for No
who quote. No .''.J ';. tnj
wonder Isa- MSmSBS Vi
ciorri I luiv-an
murried b r Eeve
young T"( t- it
lover. ( U d(
Tl"- tune
M'"' b:' t;" ' ' ' - sian c.ti.en, ,nd
w a 101 , . and this makes
place in a po- ; ; -V , , , ' the securing
rc t:itinn in KtuQXf3K , ... hive
M-s cow, ml'
Duiv an ex- ;'
pri':-sing thr
desire that she
retain her jbf
American citi- !Hir
zenship which 5
wrould afford ,
passport con- .
veniences. The
couple took a
visited Eliza
beth Duncan who is running a school on
the palace grounds at Potsdam.
The inspiration for the following
fragment is evident, say those who quote
it as a prime example of the Imagiat
school. It has been entitled, "The
Danseuse and the Wolves."
Over the hard, smooth crust
Of the witoWB of Siberia's winter
The moon casts a gem-like lustre.
The staik, silvered trees stand forth
Toy-like,
Almost Tolstoi-like
On padded feet the wolf pack glides
Ringing about the peasant's hovel
with
A circle of gerdy, green eges in
the night,
Suddenly a shape slips forth from
those
- .
Trrmr-huddlcd in the cot.
It is a woman, a fair woman.
The wolves close in, but she danrcs.
Barefoot upon the snow, she trips
before them.
The v oman looks luscious
The limbs she waves make the wolf
mouths water.
But they only watch, fascint!
She capers, unharmed, from their
midst.
Art! . . .
It was by such flights of poetic fancy
as these that Yessenin is said to have
won the dancer and become an important
part of the expedition she is leading to
ward New York.
But the plan of Isadora Duncan to
make an American tour in the fall with
twenty-three of her Russian pupils be
tween the ages of four and eleven, may
not be successful. By the American
laws her marriage has made her a Rus-
pWV '''-- ot tne nece8
sary passport a dif- c
licult proposition. wgl
Isadora's aspira-
tions for a passport are not
aided by the story that she
danced, barefooted and bare
legged, underneath the window of
Lenine, who was an interested and ap-
preciative spectator of the performance.
So Isadora after all may not visit
that country, where criticisms of her
have ranged all the way from a fc
remark by a society woman that she
looked "like an exquisite figure on an
old vase that we are allowed to admire Utt,
with perfect propriety" to the church Plica
resolution that her dancing "whatever
the. motive is the grossest violation of
the proprieties of life and we trust it
may never be repeated in our fair
city." , . ;
If Isadora Duncan does succeed in
reaching America she may be the guest
in New York of a charming relative and j
pupil of hers-a foster daughter,
Therese Duncan (Mrs. Bourgeois ) Ad-
mi rail say that the dancing of this lady ( fe
is as fine as was Isadora's at the height I
of her fame.