Ros's performances

i miss the days when she was my professor, and i had the occassional pleasure of waking up to 8 AM phone calls from Ms. Finley:

Isadora/Ros

I've had this fascination with Isadora Duncan and her tragic life and freak death for a long time.
I'm haunted by the very last image in Karl Reisz's film ISADORA (or, "The Loves of Isadora"), starring Vanessa Redgrave, where her new beau picks her up from a fabulous party, she waves to the guests and shouts "Adieu mes amis, je vais a la gloire!" (Goodbye, my friends, I am off to glory!) and she and her lover speed off in his 1924 Bulgatti. The friends are still waving as the car rounds the corner, when Isadora's long flowing red scarf gets caught in the spokes of the wheel. There is a quick cut to a close-up of Redgrave's face contorted in strangulation and then the screen goes black and credits roll.

Her death prompted Gertrude Stein to write: "Affectations can be dangerous."

Pg 12

• Ros's body

"We all looked down: there she was, sprawled face-down in the middle of the room. She must have been there all the time."

"Ros's front was bathed with blood--indeed it was still fountaining from a hole between her breasts, soaking her silvery frock, puddling the carpet. I could hardly believe my eyes. I had forgotten that blood was that red, a primary red like children's paintboxes, brilliant and alive, yet stagy, cosmetic. Her eyes were open, staring vacantly, and blood was trickling from the corners of her mouth."

pg 11: "Eager to help, she took a job as a nude model for a life-drawing class in a men's prison..."