In 1910, Duncan met the occultist Aleister Crowley at a party, an episode recounted by Crowley in his Confessions. Despite mixed reaction from critics, Duncan became quite popular for her distinctive style and inspired many visual artists, such as Antoine Bourdelle, Dame Laura Knight, Auguste Rodin, Arnold Rönnebeck, André Dunoyer de Segonzac, and Abraham Walkowitz, to create works based on her. She spent most of the rest of her life touring Europe and the Americas in this fashion. This took Duncan all over Europe as she created new works using her innovative technique, which emphasized natural movement in contrast to the rigidity of traditional ballet.
In 1902, Loie Fuller invited Duncan to tour with her.
In France, as elsewhere, Duncan delighted her audience. From London, she traveled to Paris, where she was inspired by the Louvre and the Exposition Universelle of 1900. The earnings from these engagements enabled her to rent a studio, allowing her to develop her work and create larger performances for the stage. She performed in the drawing rooms of the wealthy, taking inspiration from the Greek vases and bas-reliefs in the British Museum. While in New York, Duncan also took some classes with Marie Bonfanti but was quickly disappointed in ballet routine.įeeling unhappy and unappreciated in America, Duncan moved to London in 1898. This took her to New York City where her unique vision of dance clashed with the popular pantomimes of theater companies. A desire to travel brought her to Chicago, where she auditioned for many theater companies, finally finding a place in Augustin Daly's company. Joseph Duncan, along with his third wife and their daughter, died in 1898 when the British passenger steamer SS Mohegan ran aground off the coast of Cornwall.Ībraham Walkowitz's Isadora Duncan #29, one of many works of art she inspiredĭuncan's novel approach to dance had been evident since the classes she had taught as a teenager, where she "followed fantasy and improvised, teaching any pretty thing that came into head". Although he avoided prison time, Isadora's mother (angered over his infidelities as well as the financial scandal) divorced him and from then on, the family struggled with poverty. Soon after Isadora's birth, her father was found to have been using funds from two banks he had helped set up to finance his private stock speculations. Her brothers were Augustin Duncan and Raymond Duncan her sister, Elizabeth Duncan, was also a dancer. Isadora Duncan was born in San Francisco, the youngest of the four children of Joseph Charles Duncan (1819–1898), a banker, mining engineer and connoisseur of the arts, and Mary Isadora Gray (1849–1922).
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