Raymond Duncan

Raymond Duncan with his wife Penelope and son Menalkas in 1912

Raymond Duncan (born November 1, 1874 in San Francisco , † August 14, 1966 in Cavalaire-sur-Mer ) was an American dancer , visual artist , poet , philosopher and brother of the dancers Isadora Duncan and Elizabeth Duncan .

Life

Duncan was the third of four children of Joseph Charles Duncan, a banker, and Mary Isadora Gray, the youngest daughter of California Senator Thomas Gray. His siblings were Elizabeth, Augustin and Isadora. In 1891, at the age of 17, he developed a theory of motion which he called "Kinematics Raymond Duncan", "a remarkable synthesis of the movements of work and everyday life".

In 1898 he left the United States with his mother and sisters and lived for some time in London , Berlin , and in 1902 Athens and Paris . In 1900 he met the German poet Gustav Gräser in Paris and was deeply impressed by his ideas about natural and simple life. The mutual influence of the two led on the one hand to the versatile Duncan, poet and founder of the commune, who carried Gräser's way of life into the circle of his friends Gertrude Stein , Henri Matisse and Picasso , and Gräser introduced the theory of motion, the "Kinematics Raymond Duncan" to Rudolf Steiner , who in Connection with Marie von Sivers who developed eurythmy .

Duncan was Philhellene , a friend of Angelos Sikelianos and married his sister Penelope Sikelianos in 1903 (* 1882, † April 22, 1917 in Davos with tuberculosis ). The family lived a shepherd's life in the self-built palace of Agamemnon without a roof, which Duncan furnished with self-made furniture in the historicizing style of the Greek classical period , using his artistic skills such as pottery, weaving and rooms. The hospitality of the place was reserved for those dressed in historical clothing. Their son Menalkas Duncan (* 1905 in Κοπανάς (now Vyronas ); † 1969 in Provincetown ) was named after a shepherd from the bucolic poetry Theocritus , illustrated books by his father, published six poems in 1917 under the title Adramandoni , and became a shoemaker.

The Penelope Sikelianos, Raymond Duncan, Menalkas family and their servants wore classical Greek clothing in Greece and abroad. From April to July 1907 they were denied access to various hotels in Berlin. In 1909 Duncan founded the life reform colony Fotodotera in Vyronas near Athens.

In 1909 Raymond and Penelope returned to the United States for a number of performances of classical Greek pieces including Electra by Sophocles , and toured Philadelphia, Chicago, Kansas City, San Francisco, Portland, and other cities. The couple also gave lectures and courses on folk music, weaving, dancing, and Greek music. They then spent a few months with the Klamath Indians in the Pacific Northwest. When they visited New York in early 1910, their son Menalkas Duncan was taken into the care of a children's home by the New York police in classic clothing on the street and Raymond Duncan had to answer for allegations of mistreatment of his child

1911 Akadémia, Conference

In 1911 he founded the Akadémia with his sister Isadora Duncan at 21 Rue Bonaparte . He organized conferences with themed venues and promoted them with leaflets, the address of which was the Imprimé à l'Akademia Raymond Duncan for legal press responsibility :

• Les moyens de grève: (The means of the strike) May 5, 1912 Georges Yvetot , Labor Office .
• Le vrai but du théâtre (The real aim of the theater), Châtelet
• Walt Whitman et la poésie naturelle ( Walt Whitman and the natural poetry)

One of the participants in these conferences was Salomon Reinach . He rents his room to Jean Tedesco for one of the first film club meetings in history, even before the Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier projections

L'Akademia was a free school, an open house. "Raymond Duncan was fascinated by ancient Greece since childhood: the aesthetics and the way of life for which he worked. The academia was permeated by this influence. The press of the time described the clothes of Raymond Duncan and his students: tunics in the Greek style, Made by himself. These unisex tunics helped eliminate gender and social class differences, an outfit that Raymond Duncan would have adopted after his driver was denied beach access because his clothing betrayed his social status The life of the academia was shaped by: dance, music, weaving, gymnastics, handicrafts, spinning, orphic song, Greek language and philosophy.These courses were attended by external students who paid according to their means and members of the community who did some They lived within its walls for days, months or years, and in return, housed and fed on a vegetarian diet, they took part in it Community economy by making sandals, spinning wool and weaving tunics. These handicrafts could be sold at reasonable prices in the Akademia shop on Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré.

Northern Epirus

In 1912, at the beginning of the Balkan Wars , Penelope and Raymond went to Northern Epirus in Albania, rebuilt hospitals and the ancient city of Όγχησμος Saranda in Epirus. The entire population of this city became self-sufficient through handicraft production. Raymond Duncan thought it necessary to establish a republic in Albania because of the civil war. He organized his own army, printed his own money and held his city against all of Europe during the Balkan Wars.

Artists' colony in Neuilly-sur-Seine

In 1904 Eva Palmer-Sikelianos and Duncan's brother-in-law Angelos Sikelianos moved to 56 rue de Longchamp and became neighbors of Natalie Clifford Barney at 25 rue de Bois de Bologne in Neuilly-sur-Seine . During the second half of 1928, Kay Boyle lived and worked in this shared apartment with her newborn daughter, Sharon . She reported on this stay in her novel "My Next Bride". Caresse Crosby and Harry Crosby had traveled to the United States and Harry had insisted on leaving their limousine and chauffeur to the artists' colony for the duration of their absence. Ms. Boyle made her way to work comfortably between the suburbs and the two handicrafts outlets. Boyle believed that marketing success was based on Raymond Duncan preaching simplicity and purity in Paris in sandals and white toga.

In 1922 Duncan built a theater at 34 rue du Colisée and became theater director.

Duncan wrote poetry, plays, newspapers, and editorials in which he set out his philosophy of "actionism".

In 1930 he addressed a greeting to Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi on the Salt March .

He printed his books in his own printing house with a font designed by himself, including "La Parole est dans le désert" (1920), "Poemes de parole torrentielle" (1927) and "L'Amour à" Paris (1932) and Etincelles de mon enclume (1957).

In 1947, at the age of 73, he proposed building the city of "New Paris York" at 45N and 36W (in the middle of the Atlantic) as a symbol of collaboration and intercultural communication.

In 1949 he organized a world intellectual congress in Paris.

L'Akademia

From 1929 to 1977 L'Akademia existed at 31 rue de Seine in Paris. It was based on the notion of the Platonic Academy and should be "a place where all innovations in theater, literature, music and the visual arts are possible". Duncan and his entourage offered free dance, arts, and crafts classes. He then opened a second, similar school in London. In which Alan Stivell played the Celtic harp several times as a child in the 1950s.

The Akadémia de Paris continued its activities after the death of Raymond Duncan thanks to the work of Aïa Bertrand, a Latvian dancer with their daughter Ligoa Duncan. The building housed the Galeries Raymond Duncan an art gallery, shop, printing shop with an amphitheater in the courtyard. A plaque decorates the facade of the building.

Rue de Seine 31 6th Arrondissement (Paris) Building where George Sand lived in 1831.

Duncan presented his philosophy in an interview at the Academy for a documentary by Orson Welles in 1955:

"

• OW: ... and here you weapon scarfs to textiles woven and all kind of things. I am pretty impressed here!
• RD: We attempt to do everything that is normal for a man do.

The principle is this: Make every thing you need, by your self and attempt that you do not need what you can not make. Thats the end of view, we will never arrive that. But I think we can start in doing so. I say we are starting with the feet: I have made my sandals. I am starting with the cloths: I spin and weave my cloths. I start in to engrave a model type to print my books. I start in with each thing that I need, as far as possible I attempt to do it.

• OW: I see and you try not to need the things you can't make?
• RD: One does not to try too hard, we always like toys, we see in the shop-windows, we want buy.
• OW: You dont do?
• RD: I am nothing superior to other people, except I have a superior idea!
• OW: Do you?
• RD: That is that the people are not what they think they are, they are what they do and one of the finest parts of the technique of working is to enjoy what you are doing and do it as a game.
• OW: So it brings you fun?
• RD: Yes, not to make money, not to produce, but to make yourselves in working.

• OW: To make yourselves in working.
• RD: Yes !, Thats the end of view. Whereas in today, peoples destroy themselves in working,

Thats the option of all institution. ...

• RD: To take chisel and hammer to cut stone

...

• RD: This is my printing shop!
• OW: This is your printing shop.
• RD: Here were we speak, about printing types,
• OW: Mr. Raymond Duncan not only designed the very beautyful types, but made them himself.
• RD: Yes I made my patterns many years ago, with an attempt to reform printing types. Because a printer should be an artist! And all printers today are imitators. They use types imitating spirit.

I am the only one that uses types that are smilly engraved simetric signs.

• OW: And the many of these you made yourselfes?
• RD: I made them all.
• OW: By hands?
• RD: By my hand.
• OW: You you publish your own books and print your own paper?
• RD: Papers in order to be completely independent, because independence is the great thing in the world.
• OW: Well I say here yea!

8:40 am: RD: If you want to know about my books, I am printing books, but the books are not by myselves because I buy the paper. I have a press, but I printed my newspaper in Paris at first. But I have not made the paper.

• OW: How do you regard this practice, you did not make yourselfe? Do you regard this as a compromise to your principle?
• RD: No I would say it was stolen.
• OW: Stoles?
• RD: Yes stolen, because even when you pay money for thing that politely of steeling.

... "

-

He believed that the purpose of work was the development of the working people, not production or income. Duncan's ultimate goal was a "complete technique of life" that would lead to human development through the synthesis of work, art and physical movement.

Web links

Commons : Raymond Duncan  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

• Biography of Michel Duncan Merle, grandson of Raymond Duncan, [17]
• Rachel Hope Cleves, April 9, 2014, The apostle of voluntary restrictions raymond duncan, [18]
• Raymond Duncan Collection at Syracuse University, [19]
• edited by Pascal ORY, Dictionnaire des étrangers qui ont fait la France, [20]
• http://worldcat.org/identities/lccn-no92012956/
• Ed. Pascal ORY, Dictionnaire des étrangers qui ont fait la France, [21]
• Adela Spindler Roatcap, Raymond Duncan: Printer, Expatriate, Eccentric Artist

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Dieter Wunderlich, WageMutige Frauen: 16 portraits from three centuries, [1]
2. ↑ During the following years he gradually evolved the system of movement now famous as the "Kinematics Raymond Duncan", a remarkable synthesis of the movements of labor and of daily life. see. Jacqueline Robinson, Modern Dance in France (1920-1970): An Adventure, 2013, p. 50
3. ↑ Gustav Gräser , [2]
4. ↑ Theodora Vasils, Hold Fast the Mountain Pass: A Work of Historical Fiction about the Life and World of Nikos Kazantzakis, p.103
5. ^ Raymond Duncan, Ancient Greek dance revival Life into Art 43R small, Reciting Walt Whitman, Photo by Michael Stein, San Francisco, 1902, [3]
6. ↑ "WOULD LIVE LIKE ANCIENT GREEKS; Raymond Duncan and His Wife Hellenic Create a sensation in Berlin." New York Times , July 14, 1907, page C1. [4]
7. ↑ Bernd Wedemeyer-Kolwe, "The New Man": Physical Culture in the Empire and in the Weimar Republic, S, 2004, p.71
8. ↑ "BARE LEGGED BOY SHOCKS A POLICEMAN." New York Times Jan. 9, 1910, page 3. [5]
9. ↑ Exangelos, pamphlet bimensuel imprime par Raymond Duncan, Paris 19 April 1921, 21 Rue Bonaparte, [6]
10. ↑ Les moyens de grève; conférence, par Raymond Duncan à la Bourse du travail, Paris, le 5 may 1912, sous la présidence du camarade, Georges Yvetot, sténographie d'Aristide Pratelle. Paris, Imprimé à l'Raymond [7]
11. ^ Nicole Brenez, Cinémas d'avant-garde: 2006, [8] p. 66
12. ↑ AUTOUR DE RAYMOND DUNCAN1 Troisième enfant de Joseph et Dora Duncan (les autres étant Elisabeth, Augustin ... Infatigable initiateur, il ouvre à Paris, en 1911, l'Akademia Raymond Duncan, une école libre où sont enseignés tout les Arts et Artisanats , ainsi que la philosophie et la musique grecque. Pour chaque dimanche, il y institue les dialogues, magazine of the academy exhibition: Performing Life in the Villa Vassilieff, 2018 [9]
13. ^ Jacqueline Robinson, Modern Dance in France (1920-1970): An Adventure, p. 51
14. ^ Geoffrey Wolff: Black Sun, 1976, p. 251
15. ↑ 1930 Raymond Duncan Protests Indian Tax on Salt [10]
16. ^ "Duncan's Utopian City Only a Drop in Ocean." Washington Times-Herald , Feb 14, 1948.
17. ↑ Der Spiegel , April 30, 1949, World Spiritual Congress, [11]
18. ↑ Aïa Bertrand (1891 - 1977): Villa Vassilieff, Paris, France, Academia: Performing Life, [12] [13] [14]
19. ↑ Ligoa Duncan (1917–2015), [15]
20. ↑ Orson Welles / Around The World 1955 / Paris, This is a show from a series made by and featuring Orson Welles in 1955. This show focuses on the Paris neighborhood of St. Germain Des Pres. It includes an interview with Artist and Philosopher Raymond Duncan, brother of Isadora Duncan. , [16]