Dancer. She received international recognition as an American modern dancer and choreographer, who was a pioneer in this style of dance and dubbed the "Mother of Modern Dance." Her free spirit could easily be seen in her dancing as well as her notorious personal life. Born Angela Isadora Duncan to parents Mary Dora Gray, a music teacher, and Joseph Charles Duncan, her father abandoned the family in 1880, leaving her mother to struggle financially to meet the needs for her four children, of which she was the youngest. After her parent's divorce, she moved with her family to Oakland, where the atmosphere in the household was described as impoverished but being bohemian, full of love and an appreciation for the arts. Eventually, after leaving formal schooling, she and her sister, Elizabeth, taught dance classes to help support the family. In 897, she coerced her family to relocate to Chicago where, she joined the touring company of theatrical producer, Augustin Daly. The tours led her to England, and upon returning to the United States, she and her family relocated to New York City nearly penniless. She rejected performing in vaudeville circuit variety shows. The family made an income at the homes of the wealthy and elite, by performing with her mother playing piano, while dancing and telling stories. Eventually the family earned enough money to pursue their ultimate dream of living in Europe. Sailing on a cattle boat at age 21, she and her family had little money for their near-empty stomachs. Upon arrival in London in 1899, the troupe resumed their in-home performances for the elite in most of Europe's most prominent cities, and as reputation spread, the family became well-received in European upper societies. In 1903, after being introduced to the works of Frederick Nietzsche in Germany, she began to formulate a philosophy all her own as it pertained to "the dance." In Berlin, she gave a speech entitled "The Dance of the Future," wherein she predicted a return to freeform and free-spirited dance like that of the ancient Greeks. She felt modern, popular dance, which was stylized ballet, at the time, was a disgrace to the human body, too rigid and stifling to the body's soul. She believed dance should emanate naturally from the body's solar plexus. Throughout Europe, she danced to sold-out performances with a full orchestra. With many patrons, she founded dance studios in Europe and the United States but none lasted. She and her family, especially her brother, Raymond, were drawn to Greece and the classical history, rebuilding an ancient Greek-inspired palace in Athens. They were known to wear long, draping clothes wrapped in the free-flowing style of the ancient Greeks, regardless of where they were or the season of the year. As a free-spirited woman, who scoffed at marriage, wore revealing clothes while prancing around barefoot, and had children out of wedlock with different men, she was considered scandalous during Victorian times. Even in Europe's more progressive cities, her lifestyle was frowned upon, yet even more in her native United States, which was much more conservative, and where she was spurned and an outcast. In 1906, she gave birth to her first child, Deidre, whose father was the famous set designer, Gordon Craig. The two never married, though remained close friends for the remainder of her life. Her second child, Patrick, was the result of her years-long love affair with Paris singer, a son of the sewing machine magnate, Isaac Singer. On April 13, 1913, she lost her two children and their nanny in an accident. After their car stalled on a hill overlooking the Seine River, the driver, who forgot to set the parking brake, left the car the to inspect the engine. At that point, the vehicle rolled down the hill into the river's deep waters, quickly sinking and drowning the nanny and two children. She never recovered, yet her choreography was positively impacted by the ordeal. In 1922 after having several public love affairs, she married the Russian poet, Sergei Yesenin, who was eighteen years her junior. The marriage was rocky from the start with her husband's verbal abusing temper, moody outbursts, and alcohol abuse. In 1923 she returned to the United States with her husband to perform in Boston, but her red costume and recent marriage to a Bolshevik angered her fellow Americans. Fearing that she had become a Communist supporter, she was booed and taunted when she took to the stage in Boston. In anger, she bared her breasts and infamously yelled at the audience, "This is red and so am I!" She left the country in a fury vowing never to return to its shores, a promise she kept. She and her husband separated the next year, and, in 1925, her husband was found dead from a gunshot wound under mysterious circumstances in Russia, but his death was labeled a suicide. Although she was considered wealthy, she handled her finances poorly, becoming almost destitute. At the end of her career, she suffered with alcohol abuse and depression from unsolved grief from the death of her children. She spent her last days in a Paris hotel room articulating her memoirs for her autobiography, "My Life," which was finished posthumously by friends and published in 1927 and reissued in 1972. Her last performance was at the Mogador Theatre in Paris on July 8, 1927. On the evening of September 14, 1927, she wrapped her body with a scarf hand painted by Russian artist Roman Chatlov before becoming a passenger in the backseat of a convertible Amilcar. After her driver heard screaming, he stopped the car to find her dead behind the vehicle as her scarf had become accidently wrapped around the spokes of the car's rear tire, pulling her from the car, and being dragged to death. By the 21st century, she has had over 40 biographies published about her life; two major films, a dozen television documentaries, several plays and poems, and showing her grace in flowing attire, countless drawings, paintings, and sculptures.