Time magazine called her "the Dancer of the Century." Her technique, used by dance companies throughout the world, became the first long-lasting alternative to the idiom of classical ballet. Her pioneering movements-powerful, dynamic, jagged, edgy, forthright-combined with her distinctive system of training, were the epitome of American modernism, performance as art. Her work continued to astonish and inspire for more than sixty years as she choreographed more than 180 works. Neil Baldwin, author of admired biographies of Man Ray and Thomas Edison, gives us the artist and performer, the dance monument who led a cult of dance worshippers as well as the woman herself in all of her complexity.