Dance, sometimes called the original art, is also the universal art, for man has always carried it with him. Ballet, which trans

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问题     Dance, sometimes called the original art, is also the universal art, for man has always carried it with him. Ballet, which transformed dancing into a controlled dramatic art, arose out of the lavish(盛大奢华的)efforts of the Italian Renaissance court to entertain itself. By the beginning of the 20th century, American pioneers of modern dance were declaring independence from the ballet. Their prophet(先知;倡导者)was Isadora Duncan(1878-1927), who at age 6 was teaching neighborhood infants how to wave their arms gracefully, explaining to her mother that she was running a dancing school.
    Born in San Francisco, the fourth child of a reckless businessman who abandoned the family, Isadora led a vagrant childhood as her mother moved her children about to evade unpaid landlords, all the while instilling in the children a love of drama and music. At age 19, Isadora became "the pet of society" in New York, dancing on private occasions for wealthy ladies. She studied Greek vases and sculptures in museums for the figures of ancient dancers and developed her own ideal of Greek dance, shocking society audiences in London and Paris with her bare feet and legs, her clinging and revealing costumes and her free movements. " Toe walking deforms the feet," she declared, " Corsets(束腹;妇女的胸衣)deform the body; nothing is left to be deformed but the brain. " In France, she arrived at her own simple dance formula, which made "solar plexus"(太阳神经丛)a familiar phrase among those who could not locate it. "For hours I would stand still, my two hands folded between my breasts, covering the solar plexus... I was seeking and finally discovered the central spring of all movement. "
    Performing her "free dance" in European capitals, she shocked the classic ballet of imperial Russia. Prince Peter Lieven, the patron of the ballet, saw in Isadora "the beginning of the new outlook... she was the first to dance the music and not dance to the music. " With her scanty costumes, she was always controversial when touring in America and never more so than in the 1920s, when she was viewed as a "Bolshevik agent" for teaching dance to Soviet children and creating dances for Lenin’s funeral. Her life was full of passionate love affairs and tragedies. She lost a husband to suicide: her two children drowned with their nurse when their automobile ran into the Seine.
    In 1927, penniless and at the end of her career, she pretended that she wanted to buy a flashy Bugatti sports car, which she had delivered to her for a test ride with the handsome driver. Wearing a long red scarf wrapped around her neck, she climbed in announcing "Adieu, mes amis. Je vais a la gloire. "(Farewell, my friends, I go to glory. ")As the car lunched(东歪西倒)forward, the scarf caught in the spokes of a wheel and she was strangled.
    "I shall not teach the children to imitate my movements—I shall help them develop those movements natural to them. " Isarado once said, but she preaches the liberation of the dance less effectively in her words than in herself. " When she raised her arms, it was an incredible experience. " The English choreographer Sir Frederick Ashton remembered. "She could also stand still—and often did—but it was an alive stillness and it was dancing. "
In general, we can say Isadora had a______life.

选项 A、happy
B、miserable
C、dramatic
D、tragic

答案C

解析 通读全篇,我们可以看到Isadora的生活并不幸福;她童年很不幸,中年又失去了丈夫和孩子;但也不能说悲惨(miserable)或有悲剧性(tragic),因她的舞蹈事业给她带来了巨大的荣誉与幸福,所以选C dramatic。
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