Dancer Spotlight - Isadora Duncan

Many do not know who the “mother of dance” is considered to be. Angela Isadora Duncan (1877 - 1927) was an American and French dancer. Duncan performed to acclaim throughout Europe throughout her prime dancing years. Breaking with the convention of the dance society during her time, Duncan envisioned dance to be a style of free and natural movements inspired by the classical Greek arts and mythologies. Duncan took inspiration from ancient Greece dance and combined it with her American love of freedom. Duncan moved away from her first style of dance (rigid ballet) and towards an unconventional philosophy of natural movement. Due to this, Isadora Duncan has become one of the most enduring influences on contemporary art culture and is credited with inventing what came to be known as “modern dance”. Duncan believed dance was meant to encompass all that life had to offer—joy and sadness. Duncan was determined to “dance a different dance,” throughout her life and to tell her own life story through abstract, universal expressions of the human condition. Duncan did not just defy social customs in the dance world, but in all aspects of her life as well. Duncam was viewed as an early feminist, declaring that she wouldn't marry and then had two children out of wedlock due to these beliefs. Isadora Duncan’s death was as dramatic as her life, when on September 14, 1927, she met a young driver in Nice and suggested they go for a spin in his open-air Bugatti sports car. As the car took off, she reportedly shouted to her friends, “Goodbye my friends, I go to glory!” Moments later, her trailing hand-painted scarf became entangled in the rear wheel, breaking her neck instantly. Duncan's legacy as well as her dance techniques are carried on in the formation of the Isadora Duncan Heritage Society, by Mignon Garland, who had been taught dance by two of Duncan's key students.