Texts / Fernand Divoire
On the performance of Irma Duncan
We found again the same youthfulness, freshness - a grace, less subtle perhaps, less fine, but almost as harmonious and more live yet, more ardent, more lyrical. Isadora’s roses had been well-grafted onto the wild shoot.
But the greatest revelation of the performance was the group of sung dances that the little Moscow devils brought us. To dance while singing, yes, that was really the dream of Isadora – and happy to see it so magnificently realized! It mattered little that
the words were not understood.
Ah! How we applauded, for instance, the circle of Russian girl-scouts in their merry whirlings - and how we loved that old man who, standing, frenetically cried out “Viva Isadora!” In these glorious sung dances, Isadora had only just begun the realization of her grand plan to revitalize theatrical spectacle.
On the performance given in Paris at the Salle Pleyel on 2 July 1929 by Irma Duncan and her Russian students.