I HAVE DISCOVERED THE DANCE

“I have discovered the dance. I have discovered the art which has been lost
for two thousand years. … I bring you the idea that is going to revolutionize
our entire epoch."
"I am asked
to speak upon the `Dance of the Future'—yet how is it possible? In fifty years I may have something to
say. Besides, I have always found it
indiscreet for me to speak of my dance.
The people who are in sympathy with me understand what I am trying to do
better than myself, the people who are not in sympathy, understand better than
I why they are not."
"I had three
great Masters, the three great precursors of the Dance in our
century—Beethoven, Nietzsche and Wagner.
Beethoven created the dance in mighty rhythm. Wagner in sculptural form. Nietzsche in spirit. Nietzsche was the first dancing
philosopher."

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE: "The world itself is the will to power—and
nothing else! And you yourself are the
will to power—and nothing else!"
"Raise your
hearts, my brethren, high, higher, and forget not your legs! Moreover it is better still if ye stand on
your heads. ... And be that day reckoned lost on which we did not dance
once."
"For others do
I wait ... for higher ones, stronger ones, more triumphant ones, merrier ones,
for such as are built squarely in body and soul: laughing lions must come."

In the Theatre
of Dionysus,
"I was
possessed by the dream of Promethean creation that, at my call, there might
spring from the Earth, descend from the Heavens, such dancing figures as the
world had never seen."
THE NEW REPUBLIC (1928):
"‘A book separate,’ this Life of Isadora Duncan, a book, as Whitman
said of Leaves of Grass, ‘not to be linked with the rest nor felt by the
intellect.’"

WALT WHITMAN: "I celebrate myself, and sing myself /
And what I assume you shall assume / For every atom belonging to me as good
belongs to you."
"I see
America dancing, beautiful, strong, with one foot poised on the highest point
of the Rockies, her two hands stretched out from the Atlantic to the Pacific,
her fine head tossed to the sky, her forehead shining with a crown of a million
stars."
