Obituaries : Maria-Theresa Duncan, 92, of ‘les Isadorables’ Dancers

NEW YORK â€”  Maria-Theresa Duncan, the last of Isadora Duncan’s adopted daughters who made up the dance group “les Isadorables,â€� died Monday in a Manhattan hospital. She was 92.

Her extended dancing career included appearances at the White House and Carnegie Hall, and she once summed up her life by saying, “I might as well stop living than stop dancing.�

She had lived in Manhattan but spent the last year of her life in a nursing home.

Born Therese Kruger in Dresden, Germany, in 1895, she was selected at age 9 by Duncan as one of six girls to tour America in an innovative dance troupe.

The two had met after a Christmas pageant that Isadora Duncan attended in a Greek tunic. “I couldn’t take my eyes off her and each time I came to the front of the stage I stopped and stared,� Maria-Theresa said in a 1977 interview.

Isadora Duncan, whose own two children drowned with their governess in Paris in 1913 when their car rolled into the River Seine, went on to adopt the girls after World War I.

The elder Duncan, whose controversial interpretations and sometimes naked performances scandalized the early 20th Century but didn’t prevent her being considered the mother of modern dance, died in 1927 in a bizarre accident when her scarf caught in her car’s rear wheel and strangled her.

Maria-Theresa Duncan’s solo career, which began in 1922, spanned 60 years. She performed at Carnegie Hall and, at the invitation of Eleanor Roosevelt, danced at the White House in 1934.

Later she created the Heliconiades, her first performance group. Her last performance was in a program of solo dances presented in New York City in 1983.

She was photographed by Edward Steichen, who described her as “a living reincarnation of a Grecian nymph.�

Maria-Theresa Duncan was married to art dealer Stephan Bourgeois, who died in the late 1960s.