Anna Paliy grew up loving Isadora Duncan, not only for how she moved, but more so for what she said.
Duncan, an American dancer who dazzled audiences throughout Europe and Russia in the early 1900s, captured Paliy’s imagination during her undergrad studies in comparative literature with this quote:
“It has taken me years of struggle, hard work and research to learn to make one simple gesture, and I know enough about the art of writing to realize that it would take as many years of concentrated effort to write one simple, beautiful sentence.”
“I just love that,” says Paliy, a PhD candidate and former competitive gymnast who has always appreciated dance as a form of communication. “This quote inspired me to apply to the Centre for Drama, Theatre & Performance Studies for a PhD. I feel it expresses the parallels I’m trying to explore between dance, art and language.”
Paliy is currently researching the connection between dance and visual art. Her dissertation examines art inspired by traveling Eastern European ballet dancers in the early 20th century, with a focus between the years 1910 and 1930.