Cette thèse, sous la direction de Claude Jamain, interroge l’affirmation de Duncan selon laquelle elle n’invente pas sa danse qu’elle qualifie de naturelle. Afin de répondre à ce paradoxe, l’idée est de saisir l’élaboration de sa danse comme matière en termes kinesthésiques, moteurs et qualitatifs, en interactions avec les contextes historiques et culturels auxquels elle se confronte en Amérique, en Europe et à la charnière des XIXe et XXe siècles. Après une présentation des pratiques corporelles en Amérique, la thèse aborde la façon dont l’imaginaire de la nature en Amérique et les différentes visions de l’antique aux Etats-Unis d’Amérique et en Europe participent de l’élaboration de sa danse. La conclusion,loin d’apporter une réponse radicale, tendrait à considérer sa danse à la fois comme renaissance de l’antique et naissance d’une nouvelle danse. / This thesis, directed by Professor Claude Jamain, questions Duncan’s assertion that she does not invent her dance, which she describes as natural, even though, it is immediately praised for its novelty. In order to deal with this paradox, this research seeks to capture the way she developed her dance as a discipline with its kinesthetic, motor and qualitative aspects,against the historical and cultural contexts she encountered in America and Europe at theturn of the 19th and 20th centuries. After a presentation of bodily-practices in the United States, the thesis shows how the imaginary view of nature in America and the differing visions of antiquity in the United States and in Europe feed the development of her dance.Our conclusion, far from offering a radical answer, would rather consider her dance as are birth of the antique, as well as a new emerging dance.

Throughout history, dance is a powerful tool for expression of self or community. Art, especially dance, became a way to react to societal shifts and stalemates through means of storytelling. Through my choreography, I used history of modern dance such as the mother of modern dance, Isadora Duncan, an incredibly influential choreographer, Martha Graham, and her famous protege, Merce Cunningham. I used a combination of their methodology to choreograph my intrapersonal journey with dance and life.

In her autobiography, Isadora Duncan recalled an assertion made by Karl Federn: "Only by Nietzsche, he said, will you come to the full revelation of dancing expression as you seek it" (Duncan 1995, 104). Duncan also told her students to read Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy, as if it was their "Bible" (Duncan 1928, 108). These statements justify an examination of Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy as an imperative source for understanding the depth of her dance philosophy. This dissertation asks what it means to see Duncan's philosophy of dance and its practice in the context of this nineteenth-century German philosopher. It examines Nietzsche's words and ideas about the birth of tragedy and how they become body in the writings and dance of Isadora Duncan. This dissertation focuses on the philosophical idea of the "tragic idea" according to Nietzsche's and Duncan's interpretations and applications of philosophy bodied forth in dance. This tragic idea comes from an emerging idea in intellectual history initiated by followers of Kant. The idea of drawing from Greek tragedy a philosophy that could be used in philosophical thought to debate the meaning and function of art and even life was particular to German thinkers, philosophers and literati. While it drew from Greek tragic plays a philosophy, German thought on tragedy differed from the ancients in that it was applied as a philosophy for life. The ideas on Greek tragedy that Nietzsche situates his own within were developed within and against the Romantic aesthetic. The characteristics of Romantics provide context for understanding the use of tragedy as a source for thought and art. Although Nietzsche came to oppose aspects of Romanticism, his first book was in part a dialogue with German Romantic thought and aesthetics. Nietzsche's idea of tragic philosophy in his The Birth of Tragedy is examined in precedence to Duncan's use of his book. This dissertation provides an historical contextualization of the idea of a tragic philosophy to show that Duncan's choice to base her dance philosophy on Nietzsche's tragic philosophy follows this historical philosophical thread. As Nietzsche both dedicated The Birth of Tragedy to Wagner and based the book on Wagner's interpretation of Greek tragedy (Williamson 2004, 238), and Duncan wrote on and danced to Wagner, Wagner is relevant within the specific context of understanding Duncan's dance as a philosophical practice of The Birth of Tragedy. This dissertation, then, looks into Duncan's writings as a way to read Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy, and through these texts to interpret some aspects alive within the Romantic mood. In addition, this dissertation incorporates as part of both the literature and the analysis of Duncan's moving image, an embodied voice of personal experience from its writer, who has practiced this dance intimately. I weave my personal experience into the dissertation, using my experience in dancing within this dance form to reflect on the ideas presented here. The tragic idea as I see it within this movement drives the dancer's ideas about dance as an expressive art form. A tragic philosophy/wisdom motivates the imagination, the range of emotional expression and the physical body as it shapes and moves itself in, through and around space. A tragic sensibility represents a quality of investigation about the range of human experience that happens in and from out of the body. It comes from deep within the body's inner space and emotional and physical aliveness. It is an idea that the dancer is conscious of and actively engaged in as a process of dancing (for oneself) and making dance (as performative). / Dance