Thinking about midwifery

Abstract

But how do you teach something so personal? Are you trying to foster a new Isadora? ‘You can’t teach anyone to be the way Isadora was. Nobody could do that. But there’s a technique and there’s the dances that have been passed down.’ This determined talk of technique gives the lie to the popular belief that Isadora Duncan made it up as she went along. This was never the case; she spent weeks rehearsing in draughty studios with her indefatigable mother at the upright. So why do people imagine it was unrehearsed? Because it looked so easy when she did it — I imagine — and because she was so spontaneous people thought it was improvised. But Isadora had a sense of humour: people had already started saying: ‘There’s no technique in it’, so with her sense of humour she probably encouraged people to think that. (Levene, 1993, p. 10)