Duncan, Isadora (1878–1927)

US dancer. A pioneer of modern dance, she adopted an emotionally expressive free form, dancing barefoot and wearing a loose tunic, inspired by the ideal of Hellenic beauty. She danced solos accompanied to music by Beethoven and other great composers, believing that the music should fit the grandeur of the dance.

Having made her base in Paris in 1908, she toured extensively, often returning to Russia after her initial success there in 1904.

She died in an accident when her long scarf caught in the wheel of the sportscar in which she was travelling. She was as notorious for her private life as for her work, which was considered scandalous at the time. Her frequent alliances with artists and industrialists, her marriage to the Russian poet Sergei Esenin, and the tragedy of her two children who were drowned in a freak car accident, were documented in her autobiography My Life (1927).