Texts / Yulia Vashentseva

Yulia Vashentseva

Isadora teaching

    Isadora was concerned with the spiritual side of dancing, and her demonstrations were incomparably beautiful and hard to imitate. Isadora always wanted us to have a technique stronger than hers or even Irma’s, and it was Irma who saw to this. She developed our elevation by making us jump over a string, lifted higher and higher by two girls. We could do nearly full splits in the air. We also danced on high pointe. . . .

     But the really important thing was the absolute fusion of dance with music. Isadora had the ability to convey the minutest light and shade of the music in her dancing and gradually she developed this skill in us. We really danced music, not merely to music. Isadora’s lessons expanded our horizons and lifted us to a higher plane.

Yulia Vashentseva was a pupil at Isadora’s Moscow school.