(单词翻译:单击)
听力文本
I'm Mario Ritter with PEOPLE IN AMERICA in VOA Special English. Today Jim Tedder tells about modern dancer Isadora Duncan. Angela Isadora Duncan was born in San Francisco, California in eighteen seventy-seven. She was the youngest of four children. Her parents' marriage ended in divorce when Isadora was three years old. Isadora and her brothers and sister were raised by their mother, Mary. The family was very poor. Isadora taught dance lessons to local children to earn extra money. She began teaching when she was only five years old.
Mary Duncan taught her children about music, dancing, the theater and literature. Young Isadora believed this was all the education she needed. She did not attend school for very long. She said it restricted her from dancing and thinking about the arts. Isadora wanted to make dancing her life's work. And she wanted to live by her own rules, not by what other people thought was right or wrong. The kind of dancing Isadora wanted to do was new and different from other dances at the time. She thought dancing should be an art, not just entertainment.
Isadora Duncan did not like ballet. She said that ballet dancers had too many rules to follow about how they should stand and bend and move. She said ballet was "ugly and against nature." She wanted her "modern" dance style to be free and natural. Isadora liked to move her arms and legs in very smooth motions. She said this was like waves in the ocean, or trees swaying in the wind.
Isadora spent most of her teen-aged years in the San Francisco area. She continued to teach dancing classes, mostly to young girls. She also visited local libraries to read the works of Shakespeare and to study about the ancient Greeks. When she was eighteen years old, Isadora urged her mother to move to Chicago and then to New York. She thought dancing in these two large cities would help her career. She found work in several dance companies or groups of dancers. But she had to dance as she was directed to do. She did not dance alone on the stage and could not become the "star" of the show.
Sometimes Isadora Duncan was paid to dance in the homes of wealthy people or at parties they gave in their gardens. But soon it was hard to find jobs that paid her enough money just to survive. In a short time, she was out of work and poor once again. Using her last dollars, she bought a ticket on a cattle boat and sailed to Europe in eighteen ninety-nine. Isadora Duncan arrived in London. She visited the British Museum every day for several months. She studied Greek vases and sculpture with their images of ancient Greek women dancing. In nineteen hundred, she danced for a large audience at London's Lyceum Theater. The people liked what they saw. Soon art lovers in the city were talking about this new dancer from the United States.
People began to think of her as a great talent. Isadora Duncan began using the music of Chopin, Strauss, Tchaikovsky, and Wagner in her performances. Her fame, and wealth, began to grow. When she danced, Isadora Duncan wore very thin clothing. Sometimes she dressed in long white tunics, the kind of clothing worn by ancient Greek women. She wanted people to see her body as she skipped, jumped and ran barefoot across the stage. Some people criticized her for doing this. They thought it was not moral to dress this way. At the time, most women wore dresses that covered as much of the body as possible, especially the arms and legs.
Isadora Duncan moved on to Paris, Berlin, Vienna and the other great cities of Europe. She danced and opened dancing schools. Newspapers wrote about her. Artists created sculpture, jewelry, photographs and paintings of her. And by nineteen ten, Isadora Duncan had become the most famous dancer in the world. Isadora Duncan was often asked to explain her style of dancing and to say how dance as an art might change over time. In nineteen-oh-three, when she was twenty-six, she made a famous speech in Berlin. She said:"Nature is the source of the dance. The movement of the waves, of winds, of the earth is ever in the same lasting harmony. We do not stand on the beach and inquire of the ocean what was its movement of the past and what will be its movement in the future. Every creature moves according to its nature ... that is according to its feelings and physical structure. The movements of the savage were natural and beautiful. So too were the movements of the classical Greeks wearing simple tunics and sandals. "In my school, I shall not teach the children to imitate my movements ...but to make their own. The primary or fundamental movements of the new school of the dance must have within them the seeds from which will evolve all other movements, each in turn to give birth to others in an unending sequence of still higher and greater expression, thoughts, and ideas.
"The dancer of the future will be one whose body and soul have grown so harmoniously together that the natural language of that soul will have become the movement of the body. This is the mission of the dancer of the future. She is coming, the dancer of the future: the free spirit, who will inhabit the body of new women; more glorious than any woman that has yet been; more beautiful than all women in past centuries: The highest intelligence in the freest body." Isadora Duncan had very liberal ideas for the time. She believed in equal rights for women. She did not think a couple had to be married to have children. She had two children, Deirdre and Patrick, by two different men. She was not married to either of them. She also did not hide the fact that she was bisexual. She had a number of lovers, both men and women. She thought the Bolshevik Revolution and Communism were good for Russia.
She said: "My motto is: no limits. Virtuous people are simply those who have not been tempted sufficiently. We may not all break the Ten Commandments, but we are all certainly capable of it. Within us lurks the breaker of all laws, ready to spring out at the first real opportunity. You were once wild. Don't let them tame you." Isadora Duncan is remembered as the mother of modern dance. But she is also remembered for the tragedy in her life. In nineteen thirteen, Isadora's two children, Deirdre and Patrick, along with their nurse, were drowned in the Seine River in Paris. The car they were riding in had stopped running.
The driver got out to fix the engine, but he did not set the brakes. When the car suddenly started again, it ran down a bank into the river. Isadora was greatly saddened by this. For a while she thought she would never dance again. In nineteen twenty-two, she married a Russian poet named Sergei Yesenin. He was almost twenty years younger than she was. He became a violent alcoholic and then had a mental breakdown. Three years later, he killed himself.
In the late nineteen twenties, Isadora Duncan's dancing career was over. People began to think of her as a sad person whose best days were gone. She was seen in public many times after she had too many alcoholic drinks. She ran out of money, but continued to stay at the finest hotels. She had many debts that she could not pay. Newspapers carried stories of her "reckless" and "scandalous" life style. In nineteen twenty-seven, her life ended suddenly. Isadora Duncan was in Nice, France. She was riding in a car that had the roof down. She wore a long scarf around her neck. One end of the scarf got caught in the rear wheel of the car. The heavy silk tightened around her neck and broke it. She died instantly at the age of fifty.
重点解析
1.restrict 限制；约束；限定
The long skirt restricted her movements.
长裙妨碍了她的行动。
2.inhabit 栖息；居住于；占据
The valley is inhabited by the Dani tribe.
这个山谷里居住着丹尼部落。
3.sculpture 雕塑；雕刻
He collects modern sculpture.
他收藏现代雕塑。
4.harmony 协调；和睦；融洽
We must try to live in peace and harmony with ourselves and those around us...
我们必须努力和我们自己及周围的人和睦相处。
5.inquire 询问；查究；问明
He called them several times to inquire about job possibilities.
他给他们打了几次电话打听就业的可能性。
6.evolve 发展；进化
Birds are widely believed to have evolved from dinosaurs.
鸟类普遍被认为是从恐龙进化而来的。
参考译文
我是马里奥·里特尔。这里是VOA慢速英语栏目《美国人物志》。今天吉姆·特德将为大家讲述现代舞之母艾莎道拉·邓肯。1877年安琪拉·艾莎道拉·邓肯出生于加利福尼亚旧金山。她是四个孩子里最小的。3岁的时候，她的父母离婚了。母亲玛丽抚养着艾莎道拉和她的兄弟姐妹。家里很穷。艾莎道拉给当地的小孩子上舞蹈课挣外快。5岁的时候，她就开始教小朋友了。玛丽·邓肯教她的孩子音乐、舞蹈、戏剧和文学。小艾莎道拉认为这就是她所需要的教育。她很久都没去学校。她说去学校就不能跳舞，不能思考艺术。
艾莎道拉想将舞蹈作为她的终身事业。她想按照自己的方式生活，不想让别人告诉她什么是正确的什么是错误的。艾莎道拉想跳的那种舞蹈是一种全新的舞蹈，不同于那个时候的其他舞种。她认为舞蹈是一种艺术而非娱乐。艾莎道拉·邓肯不喜欢芭蕾。她说芭蕾舞者的那些站姿、弯腰和动作规矩太多。她说芭蕾“丑陋且违反天性。”她希望自己的‘现代’舞风格自由且自然。艾莎道拉喜欢以一种非常平稳的动作移动四肢。她说这就像是海洋中的海浪或是树枝在风中摇曳。艾莎道拉的青少年时期都在旧金山度过。她继续教孩子跳舞，大部分是年轻的女孩。她还去了当地的图书馆查阅莎士比亚的作品，了解古希腊文化。
18岁的时候，艾莎道拉劝她的母亲搬到芝加哥，然后去纽约。她认为这两个大城市中跳舞对她的事业有帮助。她在几家舞蹈公司或舞者团体找到了工作。但是她需要按照指示跳舞。舞台上她并非独舞，不能成为表演的明星。有时艾莎道拉·邓肯会去一些富人家中或花园舞会上跳舞。但很快，很难找到维持生活的工作。短期内，她失业了，再次陷入贫穷。1899年，她用最后的钱买了一张去欧洲的船票。艾莎道拉·邓肯来到伦敦。连续几个月她都会去英国博物馆。她学习刻有古希腊女性舞蹈画面的希腊花瓶和雕刻。
1900年，她在伦敦兰心大戏院为一群观众舞蹈。观众喜欢她的表演。很快艺术爱好者们就在谈论这位来自美国的新舞者。人们开始认为她有很大的天赋。艾莎道拉·邓肯开始在表演中使用肖邦、施特劳斯、柴可夫斯基和瓦格纳音乐。她的名声财富得到提升。跳舞时，艾莎道拉·邓肯穿着很薄的衣服。有时她穿着很长的白色束腰外衣，就是那种古代希腊女性穿的那种。她希望人们在她赤脚跳跃时，能看到她的肢体。一些人因此批评了她。他们认为穿成这样是不道德的。那时大部分女性穿着的裙子都把身体大部分给遮住了，尤其是四肢。艾莎道拉·邓肯在巴黎、柏林、越南和其他欧洲城市都住过。她跳舞并开设舞蹈学校。报纸中会写到她，艺术家的雕像、珠宝、照片和画中都有她。到1910年，艾莎道拉·邓肯已经成为了世界最知名舞者。
艾莎道拉·邓肯经常被问到她的舞蹈风格并解释随着时代发展，如何将舞蹈作为一种艺术1903年，她26岁，她在柏林做了一场非常成功的演讲。她说：自然是舞蹈之源。海浪、风和地球的移动都是同样一种持久的和谐。我们不能站在沙滩上，询问海洋它过去和未来的动作。每种生物的移动都是自然的指示...那是感情和肢体的结构。野蛮人的动作是自然的是美的。穿着简单束腰外衣和凉鞋的古典希腊人的动作也是如此。在我的学校里，我不会教孩子们模仿我的动作...而是让他们做出自己的动作。舞蹈学校的主要或基本动作必须包含这些，这些动作可以进化成所有其他动作，反过来也会形成各种一系列的表情、思想和想法。未来的舞者是那些肢体和灵魂和谐成长的人这种灵魂的自然语言将成为身体的动作。这是未来舞者的任务。她即将到来，未来的舞者：自由的灵魂，将寄居于这样的新女性的身体中；她们将比任何女性更加光彩熠熠，比过去任何世纪的所有女性更加美丽。这是最自由身体中最高的天分。”
就那个时代而言，艾莎道拉·邓肯拥有着非常自由的思想。她认为女性应有平等权利。她认为情侣不一定要结婚才能生孩子。她和两个不同的男人生过两个孩子，迪尔德丽和帕特里克。她没有和这两个人结婚。她没有隐藏她是双性恋的事实。她有很多情人，男女皆有。她认为布尔什维克革命和共产主义对俄罗斯而言是有益的。
她说：“我的座右铭是：无止境。善良的人只是还没有受到足够的诱惑。我们或许不会十诫都破，但我们肯定都会破戒。我们之间潜伏着所有法律的破坏者，他们随时准备冲出来。不要让他们驯服你。”
艾莎道拉·邓肯是现代舞之母。但是她的悲剧人生同样为人所记。1913年，艾莎道拉的两个孩子迪尔德丽和帕特里克以及他们的保姆被淹死在巴黎塞纳河中。他们驾驶的车坏了。司机下车修引擎，但是他没有刹车。车子突然启动，冲进河里。艾莎道拉非常悲伤。有一段时间，她认为自己再也不会跳舞了。
1922年，她嫁给了俄罗斯诗人谢尔盖·叶赛宁，他比她小近20岁。他变成了一名暴力酗酒者，然后还出现了精神崩溃。三年后，他自杀了。上世纪90年代末，艾莎道拉·邓肯的舞蹈事业结束了。人们开始认为她是一个可悲的人，光彩的日子已经不在了。人们多次看到她酗酒。她的钱用光了，却还继续住在最好的酒店里。她负债累累，却没钱偿还。新闻里说她的生活方式鲁莽且可耻。1927年，她突然去世。艾莎道拉·邓肯当时在法国尼斯。她开着敞篷车。她脖子上围着一条长围巾。围巾另一段卡在后车胎里。丝绸勒住她的脖子。她就这么立即丧命，年50岁。
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