Born in
San Francisco on November 1, 1874, Duncan was the third of the four children of Joseph Charles Duncan (a banker) and of Mary Isadora Gray (the youngest daughter of Thomas Gray, a California state senator). Their other children were
Elizabeth,
Augustin, and
Isadora, a dancer. In 1891, at the age of 17, Raymond developed a theory of movement which he called
kinematics, "a remarkable synthesis of the movements of
labor and of daily life." He believed that the importance of labor lay in the development of the worker, not in production or in earnings. In 1898, Duncan, his mother and his brother left America; they lived for a time in
London,
Berlin,
Athens, and
Paris. In 1900, he met the German poet
Gusto Graeser in Paris, and was deeply impressed by his ideas of natural and simple life. Duncan's theory of movement led him to work particularly closely with his sister Isadora (1877–1927), a dancer. Duncan became particularly fond of Greece; he and his Greek wife, Penelope Sikelianos, lived in a
villa outside Athens which was furnished in a historically accurate manner, with many of the furnishings handmade by Raymond, whose craftwork included
ceramics,
weaving, and
carpentry. No one was permitted to enter the villa in modern dress, and the family themselves dressed in
classical Greek attire both at home and abroad (which caused some consternation in 1907 Berlin). In 1909, Raymond and Penelope returned to the United States for a series of performances of classical Greek plays; they toured
Philadelphia,
Chicago,
Kansas City,
San Francisco,
Portland, and other cities. The couple also gave lectures and classes on
folk music, weaving, dancing, and
Greek music. They then spent several months in the
Pacific Northwest with the
Klamath Indians. While they were visiting New York in early 1910, the New York City police took their son Menalkas Duncan to the Children's Society when he was found on the street wearing classical attire. In 1911, Duncan and Penelope returned to Paris. At 31 Rue de Seine, they founded a school, the Akademia, which offered free courses in their specialty areas of dance, arts, and crafts; they later opened a similar school in London. Each school, based on the idea of the
Platonic Academy, was "an open house for every new effort in theatre, literature, music and art". ==Personal life==