A desire to travel brought Duncan to Chicago where she auditioned for many theater companies, finally finding a place in Augustin Daly's company. Her different approach to dance is evident in these preliminary classes, in which she “followed fantasy and improvised, teaching any pretty thing that came into head”. Workĭuncan began her dancing career by teaching lessons in her home from the time she was six through her teenage years. Her father, along with his third wife and their daughter, died in 1898 when the British passenger steamer SS Mohegan hit some rocks off the coast of Cornwall. She soon became disillusioned with the form. In 1896 Duncan became part of Augustin Daly's theater company in New York. As her family was very poor, she and her three siblings taught dance classes to local children to earn extra money. In her early years, Duncan did attend school but, finding it to be constricting to her individuality, she dropped out. She worked there as a seamstress and piano teacher. Her parents were divorced when she was an infant, and her mother moved with her family to Oakland. Soon after Isadora's birth, her father was exposed in illegal bank dealings, and the family became extremely poor. Her two brothers were Augustin Duncan and Raymond Duncan her sister, Elizabeth Duncan, was also a dancer. Duncan was the youngest of four children. Angela Isadora Duncan was born in San Francisco, California to Joseph Charles Duncan (1819–1898), a banker, mining engineer and connoisseur of the arts, and Mary Isadora Gray (1849–1922).

Isadora 1968