Searching for the (fi lmed) truth of the dancing body

1. Isadora's fear and Annabelle's smile
Isadora Duncan apparently feared being filmed dancing. We may assume that hers was not that ancestral fear some primitive people are supposed to feel when faced with the anthropologist or explorer's lens, that their souls might be stolen. Nonetheless, we must accept that an equally irrational component of this fear —albeit one grounded on apparently logical arguments— was that her art might be ill-reflected in the pictures and her work consequently misunderstood. It is probably for this reason that despite Duncan’s great popularity and the fact that the filmmakers of the time were busy shooting all kinds of events and celebrities, no fi lmed record remains of her dancing (or at least none in which she can be identified beyond any doubt).