❝ The dancer of the future will be the one whose body and soul have grown together so harmoniously that the natural language of that soul becomes the movement of the body. The dancer will not belong to a nation, but to all of humanity. She will not dance like a nymph, like a fairy, or like a coquette, but as a woman in her highest and purest expression.

She will account for the mission of the woman’s body and the sanctity of all its parts. She will dance the changing life of nature, showing how each part transforms into another. From every part of her body, intelligence will radiate, bringing to the world the message of the thoughts and aspirations of thousands of women. She will dance the freedom of women.

Oh, what a vast field is waiting for her! Don’t you feel that she is near, that the dancer of the future is coming?
She will help the female gender reach a new understanding of the strength and beauty that lies within their bodies, connected to the earth’s nature and the children of the future. She will dance once again the body emerging from the centuries of forgetfulness in civilization, emerging not in the nakedness of primitive man, but in a new nakedness, no longer at war with spirituality and intelligence, but joining them in a glorious harmony.

This is the mission of the dancer of the future. Oh, don’t you feel that she is already near, aren’t you impatient for her arrival, as I am? Let us prepare to receive her. I will build a temple to wait for her. ❞

Isadora Duncan (1877 – 1927).
Excerpts from her autobiographical book ‘My Life’, published in 1927.
Summary by Alejandra Gutty.