Elizabeth M. Drake-Boyt Dance as a Project of the Early Modern Avant-garde The Florida State University: College of Arts and Sciences A Dissertation submitted to the Program in the Humanities In partial fulfillment of the Requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Degree Awarded: Spring Semester, 2005b
" Footnote 1: Conclusions
"An example of this conceptual flow from the spiritual self to spiritual works of art made from the self might be St. Denis' famous encounter with a poster for Egyptian cigarettes [1904] featuring a fanciful depiction of Isis, which she said completely congealed for her ideas for a new expressive dance (An Unfinished Life, 1939). The spiritual impetus offered her by the poster was filtered first through St. Denis, as she had herself photographed as the Egyptian goddess (1904), then created a series of Hindu Indian dances on spiritual themes of which one was Incense (1906), and only after that choreographed Egypta (1910) the first of a series directly related to the image on the cigarette poster. She herself stated there was but a very little difference between a theme of Ancient Egypt and a theme of modern Hindu worship, in part because the impetus of her conceptual starting point filtered through her personal spiritualism did not change (as she herself did not change), regardless of exotic theme."