WHERE THE DANCER MEETS HER DIVINE: DANCE AS RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE IN THE LIVES OF LOIE FULLER AND ISADORA DUNCAN _______________________________________ A Thesis presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School at the University of Missouri-Columbia _______________________________________________________ In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts _____________________________________________________ by KATHERINE MILLIGAN Dr. Richard J. Callahan, Jr., Thesis Supervisor JULY 2010 1 © Copyright by Katherine Milligan 2010 All Rights Reserved 2 The undersigned, appointed by the dean of the Graduate School, have examined the thesis entitled WHERE THE DANCER MEETS HER DIVINE: DANCE AS RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE IN THE LIVES OF LOIE FULLER AND ISADORA DUNCAN presented by Katherine Milligan, a candidate for the degree of master of arts, and hereby certify that, in their opinion, it is worthy of acceptance. Professor Richard Callahan, Jr. Professor Rabia Gregory Professor Dennis Kelley Professor Kristin Schwain 3 Dedicated to all my friends and family members, particularly Nina Lee Braden, Mary Frances Milligan, Sarai Harrell, Justin Berry, Courtney VanLacy, and Devon White, who encouraged me along the way. It has been truly wonderful to share this journey with you. Your support has meant a great deal, and I am very grateful to have you in my life. For all dancers in search of their divines. 4 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank the members of my committee for their invaluable support and direction throughout the thesis process. Professor Callahan, thank you for believing in this work when I was still struggling to find the connecting threads, language, and structure to engage with. Your encouragement, advice, and expertise always prompted me to keep going and to believe that what I had to say was, in fact, worth saying. Professor Gregory, thank you for listening to my doubts and my (at times) incoherent ramblings and for helping me find solutions to both. Your clear and practical questions and suggestions allowed me to move back into a state of fluid writing and thinking. Professor Kelley, your advice to ―put a period on it, and turn it in‖ proved invaluable when I began to doubt that the thesis process would ever be finished. Thank you for your very interesting connection of this work to jazz music – I hope to revisit that in the future. Professor Schwain, I wholly appreciate your enthusiasm for this project, for ‗jumping in‘ at the last minute, and for the several excellent suggestions for future additional chapters. You have shown me new possibilities to explore within this work. I must also thank Professor Karthas – your support and guidance over the past year have been invaluable while navigating this complex process of writing about dance. I also would like to thank my fellow graduate students for your support and your willingness to ‗dance‘ with me throughout this thesis. I would also like to thank Nina Lee Braden for your Walt Whitman expertise and for suggesting that perhaps it was simply time to let Loie and Isadora go (for now). ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ................................................................................................ ii PRELUDE.………………………………………………………………………………...1 Of Dance and the Extraordinary INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………...………3 Following the Dancing Path: Locating Fuller and Duncan The Dancing Path Unwinds New Subjects, New Paths A Final Note Chapter 1. MOVING IN MODERNITY ..................................................................................16 Disenchantment, Enchantment, and the Modern Mover Prelude to Version A Improvising in Modernity (Version A): The Playground of Disenchantment Interlude: To Enchant, Re-Enchant, and Disenchant Prelude to Version B Improvising in Modernity (Version B): New Possibilities, New Enchantments Solo Improvisations: The Enchanted Individual 2. IMPROVISATIONAL ENCOUNTERS .................................................................49 Locating Religion within the Lives of Fuller and Duncan A Prelude of Contact The Dialogue of Contact: Interactive Embedding Improvisational Encounters, Part I: Loie Fuller Improvisational Encounters, Part II: Isadora Duncan Losing Contact iii 3. DANCE AS RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE ………………………………………92 Desire, the Divine, and the Dancing Body Intentional Improvisation Experience Beyond Imitation Creating New Worlds: Ritualization and Dance Dance and Desire: Locating the Divine CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................ 110 Prolonging the Final Bow, Yearning for the Encore Awareness, Attention, Letting Go … An Improvisational Exercise Of Endings and Entireties BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................................................................135 iv Prelude: Of Dance & the Extraordinary We stood huddled outside the Carousel Theatre. Eight years old, dressed in black tights, leotards, and wings made from purple tulle, standing barefoot; we knew that soon, we would have our moment. We had trained for this moment—for our turn to dance, to perform. Yes, we would be watched, seen, gazed at by the audience, but we very clearly knew that we should not return that gaze. The mysterious head of the studio, with her leathery skin, wide-brimmed hat, and hair always pulled back in a tight bun, chopsticks tucked in tight to hold it, would soon be making her rounds. Before each dancer performed, she leaned down, kissed our foreheads and whispered to us, ―Remember your magic.‖ Dancers, we were taught, carried an innate ―magic‖ that separated us from ―ordinary‖ people. However, this magic could easily be lost, stolen, or given away. During rehearsals, the studio owner would circle around us, waving her arms, yelling, finding one dancer to intensely stare down. Her goal: to distract us, to make us look at her—for, in that instance, she could ―steal‖ our magic. Once, during a dress rehearsal, the studio owner sat in the audience, arms crossed, her discerning eyes trying to pick out the weakest dancers … the ones most susceptible to becoming distracted. A dancer flinched (I do not remember who), and the studio owner yelled out her name, voice cutting over the music. ―I just stole your magic!‖ she exclaimed. (We kept dancing … we did not want to be next.) ―Are you going to do this during the performance? Be distracted and give away your magic?‖ None of us wanted that. None of us were sure of the logistics of how to get our magic back once it was stolen. We only knew that we must keep dancing, refusing to be distracted, for in that 1 dancing moment, we were somehow more than everyone else in the world … I guess you could say that we were magical. 2 Introduction: Following the Dancing Path: Locating Fuller and Duncan The Dancing Path Unwinds From a very early age, I became aware of the connection between dance (specifically modern) and the extraordinary. I might not have been able to define what that ―extraordinary‖ was, but I always knew that dancing somehow occupied a different space than the mundane world. In other words, dancing felt different (deeper, richer, more intense) than any of my everyday experiences. As a child trying to keep hold of her ―magic‖ and now an adult finding joy and meaning through movement, dance has never seemed ordinary to me, and the fact that I regularly engage in that which is extra-ordinary influences me on a daily basis. I am certainly not alone in this sentiment. Modern dancer Sara Pearson, a former member of the Louis Murray Dance Company, states, ―When I danced I had a direct link to the universe inside of me as well as a way of connecting to the universe outside of me. I could think more clearly, feel more deeply, communicate more directly.‖1 Similarly, dancer and scholar Marilyn Bordwell DeLaure describes dancing as an experience of ―hyper-awareness.‖ ―When I dance,‖ she muses, ―I feel the space differently—it is the space of possibility, space to be devoured, to be sliced, eaten, embraced, flown through.‖2 Dance, then, seems to be a space of possibility, of transformation, of existing as ―more than‖—simply phrased, dancing makes the dancer extraordinary. Yet, is this extraordinary experience also a religious experience? This is the question that I began to ask as I transitioned from dancer to religious studies graduate 3 student. I began to consider it as a result of an email exchange with one of my high school dance teachers. Shortly after I decided to change my major from dance to religious studies as an undergraduate, I turned to this teacher for advice, expressing my frustration that I did not know how to dance without it being ―my life.‖ To be honest, the decreased role of dance in my life led to a small identity crisis. Who was I if not a dancer? How could I describe myself as a dancer if it was not what I based my existence on? Perhaps, most devastatingly, I pondered the loss of my ―extraordinary‖ status. In my experience, dancers regularly refer to those who do not dance as ―normal‖ or ―ordinary‖ people, and I did not want to be just an ―ordinary‖ person. After all, as I learned as a child, dancers had magic, which made them special and unique. Without this ―magic,‖ without this extraordinary status, I felt that any other position I might have in the world would be somehow ―less than.‖ In response to my concerns, my former teacher, who, at that point, had two small children, taught dance twice a week, and ran a personal assistant business,