Born on this date in 1878 was the dancer Isadora Duncan. Here are ten facts about her:
She was born in San Francisco. Her father, a banker, turned out to be an embezzler. Not only was he embezzling at work, but he’d stolen his wife’s jewellery and the family silver and shared the proceeds with his mistress. Isodora’s mother divorced him and moved her four children to Oakland.
Isodora was a free spirit from a young age. She dropped out of school at 10 and taught herself in the local library. She had already decided that marriage was slavery and that she wanted to dedicate her life to the arts.
She started teaching dance classes when she was 14 years old.
She wasn’t a fan of Ballet, though. It deformed the female body, she said, and simply wasn’t natural.
She took her dance inspiration from ancient Greece: natural and free. She would dance to classical music, such as Strauss, Chopin and Beethoven, but in her own way.
She lived in many places. In 1899, her mother moved to London with Isodora and her siblings. There, Isodora met Mrs. Patrick Campbell, who introduced her to London society. In 1903 she moved to Berlin, where she embraced the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, and started a dance group called the Isadorables.
In 1917, she moved to Moscow, where she married for the only time, to poet Sergei Esenin who was 17 years younger than she was. She returned to America with him on tour, but he left her and went back to Russia. He had a mental breakdown and was later found dead in a hotel room. His death has never been explained.
Prior to her marriage, Isodora had three children by three different fathers. The first two fathers were Gordon Craig and Paris Singer, heir to the Sewing machine fortune. These two children died in a tragic accident. The car they were in accidentally rolled into the River Seine in Paris and both children drowned. In her grief, Isodora begged the Italian sculptor Romano Romanelli to get her pregnant. Her third child was stillborn. After her children died, Duncan adopted six of her international dance students who migrated to America and took her last name.
She was not without her critics. George Balanchine said of her, "To me it was absolutely unbelievable-a drunken, fat woman who for hours was rolling around like a pig." Elsa Lanchester described her as "an untalented bag of bones".
She’s perhaps most famous for the way she died. On September 14, 1927 she got into the passenger seat of an open topped car. She had been advised to wear a cape because it was cold, but she refused, and just wore her flowing silk scarf, which had been created by the Russian-born artist Roman Chatov, and was a gift from her friend Mary Desti. As her friends waved her off, she reportedly said, "Adieu, mes amis. Je vais à la gloire!" ("Farewell, my friends. I go to glory!"), although this account was disputed and witnesses claimed she actually said "Je vais à l'amour" ("I am off to love"), and her friend Mary Desti altered her words so it wouldn’t sound as if she was off for a romantic tryst. The scarf caught in the wheels of the car and strangled her. Death caused by entanglement of neckwear with a wheel or other machinery has been named Isadora Duncan Syndrome after this occurrence.
Beta
(Combat Team Series #2)
Steff was abducted by an evil alien race, the Orbs, at fourteen. Used as a weapon for years, he eventually escapes, but his problems are just beginning. How does a man support himself when his only work experience is a paper round and using an Orb bio-integrated gun?
Warlord is an alien soldier who knows little but war. When the centuries-old conflict which ravaged his planet ends, he seeks out another world where his skills are still relevant. There are always wars on Earth, it seems. However, none of Earth's powerful armies want him.
Natalie has always wanted to visit England and sees a chance to do so while using her martial arts skills, but there are sacrifices she must make in order to fulfil her dream.
Maggie resorted to crime to fund her sister's medical care. She uses her genetic variant abilities to gain access to the rooms of wealthy hotel guests. The Ballards look like rich pickings, but they are not what they seem. When Maggie targets them, little does she know that she is walking into a trap.
Hotel owner Hamilton Lonsdale puts together a combat team to pit against those of other multi-millionaires. He recruits Warlord, Natalie, Maggie and Steff along with a trained gorilla, a probability-altering alien, a stockbroker whose work of art proved to be much more than he'd bargained for, a marketing officer who can create psionic forcefields, a teleporting member of the landed gentry, and a socially awkward fixer. This is Combat Team Beta.
Steff never talks about his time with the Orbs, until he finds a woman who lived through it, too. Steff believes he has finally found happiness, but it is destined to be short-lived. He is left with an unusual legacy which he and Team Beta struggle to comprehend; including why something out there seems determined to destroy it.
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