Who doesn't want to live to be 100?

Unusual...striking...innovative... controversial... That was Isadora Duncan (1877-1927)

She was born on this day in San Francisco, California and revolutionized American Modern Dance, introducing a new "free" style, where emotion propelled movement and improvisation.

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

Passionate and provocative... She said nature -- specifically 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.

"It is not for us to arrive at knowledge. We know, as we love, by instinct, faith, emotion."

Dance to health and happiness.