Happy Birthday Isadora Duncan
Happy Birthday to early dance pioneer, choreographer and free spirit Isadora Duncan (1877-1927). The innovative and talented Duncan began teaching dance classes in her neighbourhood at the ripe old age of six. By the time she was ten she had a large enough following to leave school and begin making a living from her teaching. Later, as an adult she would reshape not only the definitions of dance (creating her own unique style inspired by Greek imagery and Italian Renaissance painting,s and rejecting the more rigid contraints of classical dance, shunning pointe shoes entirely), she also championed dance as a form of high art, when at the time many saw it as a subsidiary artform. Duncan is often referred to as the Mother of Modern dance, and is immortalised as the daring, barefoot dancer who moved with an uninhibited freedom, always in her trademark free-flowing dresses and tunics. Today her legacy lives on around the world, passed down from Isadora’s six protégés (fondly called the Isadorables) and continued through the Isadora Duncan Foundation and Company.
