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In this episode, we dive into the life of Isadora Duncan.

In How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, the film from 2003, Kate Hudson’s character Andy dons a yellow diamond necklace in one scene that they call the “Isadora Diamond”. That $6 million 80-carat yellow diamond in the necklace was designed by Harry Winston and is named after Isadora Duncan. whose philosophy earned her the title of “the creator of modern dance”.

Angela Isadora Duncan, was born in San Francisco on May 26, 1877. The youngest of the four children of banker, mining engineer and connoisseur of the arts, Joseph Charles Duncan and Mary Isadora Gray. Soon after her birth, Joseph was caught embezzling from the two banks that he was hired to set up. He used the money to fund his private stock speculations. Joseph was lucky to avoid prison time.

Her mother Mary left Joseph and moved the children to Oakland to find work as a seamstress and piano teacher. The family lived in extremely poor conditions in Oakland and Angela Isadora attended school until she was ten years old. School was too constricting for her and she decided to drop out. To make money for the family, Angela Isadora joined her three older siblings and began teaching dance to local children. She was not a classically trained dancer or ballerina. Her unique, novel approach to dance showed joy, sadness and fantasy, rediscovering the beautiful, rhythmical motions of the human body.

Joseph remarried and started a new family, they all perished aboard the British passenger steamer SS Mohegan, which ran aground off the coast of the Lizard Peninsula of Cornwall England on the 14th of October in 1898. Only 91 out of 197 on board survived.

Eventually, Angela Isadora went east to audition for the theater. In Chicago, she auditioned for Augustin Daly, who was one of the most influential men in American theater during his lifetime. She secured a spot in his company, which took her to New York City. In New York, she took classes with American Ballet dancer Marie Bonfanti. The style clashed with her unique vision of dance. Her earliest public appearances back east met with little success. Angela Isadora was not interested in ballet, or the popular pantomimes of the time; she soon became cynical of the dance scene.

She was 21 years old, unhappy and unappreciated in New York, Angela Isadora boarded a cattle boat for London in 1898. She sought recognition in a new environment with less of a hierarchy. When she arrived, ballet was at one of its lowest ebbs and tightrope walkers and contortionists were dominating their shared music hall stages.

Duncan found inspiration in Greek art, statues and architecture. She favored dancing barefoot with her hair loose and wore flowing toga wrapped scarves while dancing, allowing her freedom of movement. The attire was in contrast to the corsets, short tutus and stiff pointe shoes her audience was used to. Under the name Isadora Duncan, she gave recitals in the homes of the elite. The pay from these productions helped Isadora rent a dance studio, where she choreographed a larger stage performance that she would soon take to delight the people of France.

Duncan met Desti in Paris and they became best friends. Desti would accompany Isadora as she found inspiration from the Louvre and the 1900 Paris Exposition where Loie Fuller, an American actress and dancer was the star attraction. Fuller was the first to use theatrical lighting technique with dance, manipulating gigantic veils of silk into fluid patterns enhanced by changing coloured lights.

In 1902, Duncan teamed up with Fuller to tour Europe. On tour, Duncan became famous for her distinctive style. She danced to Gluck, Wagner and Bach and even Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony. Female audiences adored her despite the mixed reaction from the critics. She inspired the phenomenon of young women dancing barefoot, scantily clad as woodland nymphs who crowded theaters and concert halls throughout Europe. Contracts and the commercialization of the art while touring distracted Isadora from her goal, educating the young on her philosophy of dance.

"Let us first teach little children to breathe, to vibrate, to feel, and to become one with the general harmony and movement. Let us first produce a beautiful human being. let them come forth with great strides, leaps and bounds, with lifted forehead and far-spread arms, to dance.”

In 1904, she moved to Berlin to open the Isadora Duncan School of Dance. The school had around 20 students who mostly had mothers who were the primary breadwinners, and the fathers were either ill or absent. The school provided room and board for the students. For three years, her sister, Elizabeth Duncan was the main instructor, while Isadora was away, funding the school from tour. Elizabeth was not free spirited like her sister and taught in a strict manner. During the third year, Duncan had a child with theater designer Gordon Craig. Deirdre Beatrice, born September 24, 1906.

At the school, Duncan created a new troupe of six young girls. Anna, Maria, Irma, Elizabeth, Margot, and Erica. The group was called the "Isadorables", a nickname given to them by the French poet Fernand Divoire. At the start of World War I, the Isadorables were sent to New York with the rest of the new students from Bellevue.

Occultist Aleister Crowley founded the religion of Thelema. He identified himself as the prophet entrusted with guiding humanity into the Æon of Horus in the early 20th century. Isadora and her bohemian companion Desti fell into his circle after meeting him at a party. Crowley fell in love with Desti and she became a member of Crowley's occult order.

Crowley published widely over the course of his life and wrote that Duncan "has this gift of gesture to a very high degree. Let the reader study her dancing, if possible in private than in public, and learn the superb 'unconsciousness' — which is magical consciousness — with which she suits the action to the melody."

Duncan had a love affair with Paris Singer, one of the many sons of sewing machine magnate Isaac Singer. The fling resulted in a son, Patrick Augustus, born May 1, 1910. A year later, Isadora was dancing on tables until dawn at the Pavillon du Butard hunting lodge mansion in the gardens of Versailles. Paul Poiret, the French fashion designer and founder of the haute couture house, known to throw lavish parties, was recreating the roman festival Bacchanalia hosted by Louis XIV at Versailles. On the table in a Poiret Greek evening gown, Duncan tried to not knock over the 900 bottles of champagne that were consumed by the 300 guests.

The following year Isadora acquired the Hôtel Paillard in Paris, which she turned into her new temple of dance called Dionysion. Dionysion was the name of a poem that Crowley had published. Which maakes m e curious how far into Crowleys cult did Isaadora dive?

On a rainy afternoon Annie Sims, Isadora’s nanny, loaded the children into the car for a drive to meet Isadora in Versailles. Morverand, the chauffeur, had only just pulled onto the road, when a taxi-cab bolted towards the car. Morverand jammed on his brakes, causing the engine to also stop. He got out of the car to check the engine, and turned the starting lever and the car bounded forward towards the river, down the river bank and plunged down 30 feet into the Seine. Morverand was left standing on the street.

In the downpour of rain, few were out and about. The only witness, a young woman who watched the car exit the gate then crash, ran back to Duncan’s house. Augustine, Isadora’s brother, was the only one home. Augustine ran to the scene, seized Morverand by the throat and knocked him down on the bank. A crowd of boatmen stopped the fight and began looking for the sunken car. The search lasted an hour and a half. A motor boat that was dragging the river discovered the car, which was hauled to the surface, where the bodies of the nanny and Isadora’s two small children were found inside. Two doctors made efforts to save them but there was no luck. Morverand gave himself up at the police commissary. He explained that he did not understand how the accident happened. All of Paris was sympathetic.

Isadora went through a depression while mourning her children, and spent several months on the Greek island of Corfu with her brother and sister. She then went for a stay at the Viareggio Seaside Resort in Italy, where she met the beautiful and rebellious actress Eleonora Duse. Duse wore men's clothing and was one of the first women in Italy to openly declare her queerness. The two had a romantic fling in Italy yet Duncan was desperate for another child. She became pregnant after begging the young sculptor Romano Romanelli, basically an Italian stranger to sleep with her. She gave birth to a son on August 13, 1914 but he died a few hours after birth. She immediately returned to the States.

Three months later Duncan was living in a townhouse in Gramercy Park in New York City. Dionysion was moved to Manhattan in a studio at 311 Fourth Avenue on the northeast corner of 23rd Street and Fourth Avenue. The area is now considered Park Avenue South. One month later, The Isadorables made their American debut on December 7, 1914 at Carnegie Hall with the New York Symphony.

Mabel Dodge, who owned an avant garde salon at 23 Fifth Avenue, the point of rendezvous for the whole of New York's of the time, described The Isadorables: "They were lovely, with bodies like cream and rose, and faces unreal with beauty whose eyes were like blind statues, as though they had never looked upon anything in any way sordid or ordinary".

Duncan used the ultra modern Century Theater at West 60th Street and Central Park West for her performances and productions. The keys were gifted to Duncan by Otto Kahn, sometimes referred to as the "King of New York". Kahn was a German-born American, a well known investment banker, appearing on the cover of Time Magazine. He reorganized and consolidated railroads, was a philanthropist, a patron of the arts and served as the chairman of the Metropolitan Opera. Isadora, somehow, was evicted from the Century by the New York City Fire Department after one month.

Duncan felt defeated and decided to once again leave the States to return to Europe to set up school in Switzerland. She planned to board the RMS Lusitania, but her financial situation at the time drove her to choose a more modest crossing. The Lusitania was sunk by a German U-boat 11 miles off the southern coast of Ireland, killing 1,198 passengers and crew.

During her voyage to Europe, Isadora discovered that their manager had arranged for a tour for the Isadorables without her. She was so upset that she stopped speaking to her students, despite the man's actions being completely out of their control. After struggling to keep afloat there, the school was dispelled and the younger students sent home to their families. The girls eventually made up with Duncan and in 1917 Isadora adopted all six Isadorables.

Yet troubles ensued. The Isadorables were living in Long Island and Isadora urged them to leave New York. Each girl, except for Gretel, had fallen in love and did not wish to go. When Isadora found out her brother Augustine assisted the group in a performance at the Liberty Theater, she forbade them from continuing, producing a legal contract which prevented them from separating from her. They had no choice but to cancel their time at the Liberty. The girls eventually left Duncan a few years later but stayed together as a group for some time. While Duncan ran another school in Paris that was shortly closed due to World War I, the girls entertained troops in the US.

Isadora Duncan went against traditional cultural standards. Her scandalous love life as bisexual made her a controversial figure on the front pages of the papers. She was a feminist, a Darwinist, a Communist and an atheist. Her leftist sympathies took her to the Soviet Union at the end of the Russian Revolution. To her, it seemed to be the land of promise.

Duncan opened a school in Moscow and Irma, one of the Isadorables, took the teaching position at the school while Isadora toured and performed. She met the poet Sergey Aleksandrovich Yesenin, eighteen years her junior in Russia and they were married in May of 1922, even though matrimony was against her beliefs. Together, they left for a US tour. Fear of the “Red Menace” was at its height in North America, and the couple was unjustly labeled as Bolshevik agents.

On tour in Boston, she waved a red scarf and bared her breast on stage in Boston, proclaiming, "This is red! So am I!" For this, her American citizenship was revoked. As she left the country, Duncan bitterly told reporters: “Good-bye America, I shall never see you again!” Yesenin’s increasing mental instability turned him against her and they were ultimately unhappy. He returned alone to the Soviet Union after the tour and committed suicide.

Her spotlight was dimming, her fame dwindled. For a number of years she lived out public dramas of failed relationships, financial woes, and drunkenness on the Mediterranean and in Paris, running up debts at hotels. Her financial burdens were carried by a decreasing number of friends and supporters who encouraged her to write her autobiography. They believed the books success could support her extravagant waywardness.

On September 14, 1927 in Nice, France Duncan was asked to go on a drive with the handsome French-Italian mechanic Benoît Falchetto in a sporting car made by the French Amilcar company. Desti sat with Isadora as she dressed for the occasion. Duncan put on a long, flowing, hand-painted silk scarf created by the Russian-born artist Roman Chatov. Desti asked her to instead wear a cape in the open-air vehicle because of the cold weather, but Isadora paid no mind.

A cool breeze blew from the Riviera as the women met Falchetto at the Amilcar. The engine made a rumble as Falchetto put on his driving-goggles. Isadora threw the enormous scarf around her neck and hopped in. She turned to look at Desti and said "Adieu, mes amis. "Je vais à l'amour", "I am off to love’.

They sped off and Isadora leaned back in her seat to enjoy the sea breeze. The wind caught her enormous scarf that, tragically, blew into the well of the rear wheel on the passenger side, wrapping around the open-spoked wheel and rear axle. Isadora was hurled from the open car in an extraordinary manner, breaking her neck and nearly decapitating her. Instantly killing her.

At the time of her death, Duncan was a Soviet citizen. Her will was the first Soviet citizen to undergo probate in the United States.

In medicine, the Isadora Duncan Syndrome refers to injury or death consequent to entanglement of neckwear with a wheel or other machinery. The accident gave rise to Gertrude Stein’s mordant remark that “affectations can be dangerous.”

Duncan was known as "The Mother of Dance" was cremated, and her ashes were placed in the columbarium at Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. On the headstone of her grave is inscribed École du Ballet de l'Opéra de Paris ("Ballet School of the Opera of Paris"). Duncan's autobiography My Life was published in 1927. The Australian composer Percy Grainger called it a "life-enriching masterpiece."

A plaque commemorating Isadora Duncan’s place of birth is at 501 Taylor Street on Lower Nob Hill, fittingly near the Theater District in San Francisco. San Francisco renamed an alley on the same block from Adelaide Place to Isadora Duncan Lane.

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