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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