excerpt from "The Dancer of the Future," by Isadora Duncan

(written in 1902 or 1903.  c. 1909.)

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.  The dancer will not belong to a nation but to all humanity.  She will dance not in the form of nymph, nor fairy, nor coquette, but in the form of woman in her greatest and purest expression.  She will realize the mission of woman's body and the holiness of all its parts.  She will dance the changing life of nature, showing how each part is transformed into the other.  From all parts of her body shall shine radiant intelligence, bringing to the world the message of the thoughts and aspirations of thousands of women.  She shall dance the freedom of woman.

Oh, what a field is here awaiting her!...She will help womankind to a new knowledge of the possible strength and beauty of their bodies, and the relation of their bodies to the earth, nature and to the children of the future.  She will dance the body emerging again from centuries of civilized forgetfulness, emerging not in the nudity of primitive man, but in a new nakedness, no longer at war with spirituality and intelligence, but joining with them in a glorious harmony.

This is the mission of the dancer of the future....her movements will become godlike, mirroring in themselves the waves, the winds, the movements of growing things, the flight of birds, the passing of clouds, and finally the thought of man in his relation to the universe.

Oh, she is coming, the dancer of the future: the free spirit, who will inhabit the body of new woman, more glorious than any woman that has yet been; more beautiful than the Egyptian, than the Greek, the early Italian, than all women of past centuries -- the highest intelligence in the freest body!

An Attitude Adjustment Admonishment, delivered in the language of Love

Change of attitude can come in the twinkling of an eye.  You can be down in the depth of despair one moment and in seventh heaven the next, so change and change quickly and dance and sing through this day hand in hand with Me.  Let us do what has to be done with joy and thanksgiving and deepest love.

Channeled guidance through Eileen Caddy of Findhorn

No Heave or Hanging Tongue

     What makes a modern dancer great?  In "Private Domain" (Knopf, 1987), the choreographer Paul Taylor tells us what he admired about Carolyn Adams, who was in his dance company for 17 years.

     When you're able to get dancers, even ones as fine as Carolyn, to do a third of what you see in your head, that's a very good average.  Whatever the role, her dancing was unmannered and wondrous.  To put it poetically, she was an elegant nectar laced with warm delicacy, easy and effortless.  To put it less poetically, she never heaved, let her tongue hand out, or even sweated.  Her neck was without noticeable tendons, as was the rest of her, and she was one of those dancers who jump from the small bones of the foot without any understandable preparation. ... Both on- and offstage she gave the impression of being about the size and weight of something you could lift with one finger and drop into an eggshell.  She was able to pack more steps into a second than most dancers could execute in a full minute, and she made this seem as if nothing much had happened.

[from a The New York Times clipping, undated, probably 1987]

The Touch, a poem by Anne Sexton

For months my hand had been sealed off
in a tin box.  Nothing was there but subway railings.
Perhaps it is bruised, I thought,
and that is why they have locked it up.
But when I looked in it lay there quietly.
You could tell time by this, I thought,
like a clock, by its five knuckles
and the thin underground veins.
It lay there like an unconscious woman
fed by tubes she know not of.

The hand had collapsed,
a small wood pigeon
that had gone into seclusion.
I turned it over and the palm was old,
its lines traced like fine needlepoint
and stitched up into the fingers.
It was fat and soft and blind in places.
Nothing but vulnerable.

And all this is metaphor.
An ordinary hand -- just lonely
for something to touch
that touches back.
The dog won't do it.
Her tail wags in the swamp for a frog.
I'm no better than a case of dog food.
She owns her own hunger.
My sisters won't do it.
They live in school except for buttons
and tears running down like lemonade.
My father won't do it.
He comes with the house and even at night
he lives in a machine made by my mother
and well oiled by his job, his job.

The trouble is
that I'd let my gestures freeze.
The trouble was not
in the kitchen or the tulips
but only in my head, my head.

Then all this became history.
Your hand found mine.
Life rushed to my fingers like a blood clot.
Oh, my carpenter,
the fingers are rebuilt.
They dance in yours.
They dance in the attic and in Vienna.
My hand is alive all over America.
Not even death will stop it,
death shedding her blood.
Nothing will stop it, for this is the kingdom
and the kingdom come.