Isadora Duncan

Isadora Duncan (1877-1927), American dancer, whose creation of an expressive dance style, based on her vision of the dances of the ancient Greeks, laid the groundwork for the modern dance movement of the 20th century.

Born Dora Angela Duncan in San Francisco, California, Duncan made her professional debut in Chicago, Illinois, in 1899. She subsequently toured Europe and the United States in dance recitals and established schools near Berlin in 1904, in Paris in 1914, and in Moscow in 1921. Her personal life was tragic. An advocate of free love, she had a daughter by the British stage designer Edward Gordon Craig and a son by Paris Singer, American heir to a sewing-machine fortune. Both children were killed in an automobile accident in 1913. She married the Russian poet Sergey Yesenin in 1922, but they separated shortly thereafter. Duncan lived in poverty for many years, making one final dramatic appearance in Paris before her own death in an automobile accident in Nice, France, in 1927.

Duncan's dancing was characterized by free, flowing movements expressive of inner emotion and inspired by natural phenomena such as waves and winds. She was fascinated with ancient Greek ideals of human form and beauty. She usually appeared in a diaphanous tunic, her feet, arms, and legs bare and her long hair unbound. When she first introduced her style of dancing in America, Duncan met with strong opposition. Eventually her ideas came into wide favor. Through her effect on the Russian-born choreographer Michel Fokine, she greatly influenced 20th-century ballet. Her beliefs about her art also gave rise to a new type of dance known as interpretive dancing. Among the choreographers she influenced were the Americans Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn. Because of her antipathy for formalized techniques and her use of natural movements, Duncan's dancing seemed highly improvisatory. Duncan's autobiography, My Life, was published in 1927.

See also Modern Dance.