Unusual...striking...innovative... controversial...

Born on this day in San Francisco, California, Isadora Duncan (1877-1927) revolutionized American Modern Dance, introducing a new "free" style, where emotion propelled movement and improvisation.

She danced barefoot and bare-legged, in filmy scarves, without traditional corsets. She was a "free" spirit, liberated before it was fashionable for women to be liberated, dancing solo when it was unheard of to do so.

In 1904, Duncan established her first school in Germany, teaching poorer children and paying for their expenses. She began to assemble her famous dance group, the Isadorables.

Passionate and provocative... She said the Pacific Ocean and waving Sierra Nevada pine forests inspired her dynamic movements.  In her autobiography, My Life, Duncan wrote, "I was born under the star of Aphrodite who was also born of the sea."

Duncan moved with spontaneous expressions, walking, skipping, running, leaping. Freedom carefully choreographed, with graceful technique and style. She was triumphant.

"If my art is symbolic of any one thing, it is symbolic of the freedom of woman and her emancipation," she explained. The solar plexus, she said, is where the soul lives. "To dance is to live," she taught. "Dance the way I dance and you will live to be 100."

From your center, live by instinct, faith, and emotion.