Book excerpt: How They Became Famous Dancers tells the story of 12 famous dancers who lived from the seventeenth into the twenty-first centuries: Louis XIV, John Durang, Marie Taglioni, William Henry 'Juba' Lane, Anna Pavlova, Rudolf Laban, Doris Humphrey, Michio Ito, Mrinalini Sarabhai, Pearl Primus, Amalia Hernandez, and Arthur Mitchell.