Isadora Duncan
Isadora Duncan (1878 – 1927) was an American dancer of great renown in the late 19th and early 20th century, known for dance themes and moves derived from Greek art, and for wearing long flowing scarves. Born in San Francisco, California, her performance won high acclaim and garnered accolades, particularly overseas, after she left America to escape artistic constraints, and ended up living in Western Europe and the Soviet Union from age 22 until her death in 1927.
She was born into an artistically inclined family of comfortable means, to a father who was a mining engineer, banker, and art connoisseur. Unfortunately, her father was exposed for engaging in fraud and ruined, causing the family to crash into poverty. However, the father’s artistic bent rubbed off on his offspring: of Isadora’s three siblings, her sister became a dancer, as did a brother who also became a poet, artist, and philosopher, while another brother became an actor and director.
Duncan’s career began in childhood when she started giving dance lessons to neighborhood kids, and from early on, she demonstrated a free-spirited style that set her apart. By her late teens, she was performing in Chicago and New York, but feel constrained in America, she emigrated first to London, then to Paris, where her career took off and she quickly became one of the world’s most famous dancers.
On September 14, 1927, Duncan was testing out a new car in Nice, France. As was her wont, she wore one of her signature long and flowing hand-painted silk scarves. A gust of wind blew one of the scarf’s ends out of the car, where it became entangled in a wheel and dragged Duncan out of the vehicle and into the roadway. Her neck was broken in the accident.
Her death was but the latest, and final, an episode in an unfortunate history with automobiles: in 1913, her two children, aged 3 and 5, had drowned when a car carrying them plunged into the Seine. Later that year, she was herself injured in an automobile accident, as she would be again in a car crash in Leningrad, in 1924. On another occasion, she narrowly escaped death by drowning when her car plunged into the water.