I have said that inspiration was Isadora’s guide. She did, of course, have theories of dance; but these theories were, for the most part, expressed in vague and general, rather than in precise and particular, terms. They can be summed up in a sentence. She believed that dance was life: therefore, the expression of some inner impulse, or urge, or inspiration. The source of this impulse she believed was centered in the solar plexus. She also believed she was of tremendous importance. Her own ideas of her own importance were, in my opinion, sometimes inflated. To her eternal credit it must be noted that she battled against sugary music, against trivial themes, against artificiality of all sorts. When her “inspiration” did not proceed directly from the solar plexus, she found it in nature--in the waves of the sea and their rhythms, in the simple process of the opening of a flower. These frank and simple and desirable objectives, if they had been all, would not have excited the tremendous opposition that was hers throughout her lifetime. Nor did this opposition, I believe, spring solely from her unconventional ideas on love and sex. Isadora insisted on becoming a citizen of the world, a champion of the world’s less fortunate, the underprivileged. In doing so she cleared the air of a lot of nonsense and a lot of nineteenth century prudery which was by way of being carried over into the twentieth. In Europe, in each and every country she visited, she arrayed herself on the side of the angels, i.e., the revolutionaries. The same is true in her own country. She shocked her wealthy patrons with demonstrations of her own particular brand of democracy. There was an occasion, during one of her appearances at the Metropolitan Opera House, when she walked with that especial Isadorian grace to the footlights and gave the audience, with special reference to the boxholders, the benefits of the following speech: “Beethoven and Schubert,” she said, “were children of the people all their lives. They were poor men and their great work was inspired by and belongs to humanity. The people need great drama, music, dancing. We went over to the East Side and gave a performance for nothing. What happened? The people sat there transfixed, with tears rolling down their cheeks. That is how they cared for it. Funds of life and poetry and art are waiting to spring from the people of the East Side.... Build for them a great amphitheatre, the only democratic form of theatre, where everyone has an equal view, no boxes; no balconies.... Why don’t you give art to the people who really need it? Great music should no longer be kept for the delight of a handful of cultured people. It should be given free to the masses. It is as necessary for them as air and bread. Give it to them, for it is the spiritual wine of humanity.”