Loïe Fuller
Loïe Fuller, born Mary Louise Fuller, began as an actress in Chicago in the 1880’s. She soon traveled to New York City and got the part of a hypnotized patient in a quickly forgotten play. The one thing that was remembered was a scene in which Fuller ran around the stage with a very full skirt flying behind her and whirling up around cheeks.
Inspired, Fuller decided to become a solo dance performer. She went to all the theater owners she knew to sell her show, but they call said she was an actress and could never make it as a dancer. Undeterred, she planned a trip to Europe. In London she hoped to work with the great Sara Bernhardt, but Sara did not have time to mentor the actress turned dancer. Fuller went on to Paris. By the time she got there she was broke and her next contract had fallen through. The Paris Opera denied her. They had a ballet company and didn’t need a solo act. The Folies Bergere, birthplace of the can-can, already had an impersonator performing there, so Fuller went to see the theater director. With sheet music for one piano and her costume, she earned the name Loïe and was dubbed: ‘La’ Loïe Fuller. Soon she became one of the best acts in Paris. Her skirts became longer, bigger and slowly the waists disappeared, allowing more fabric to flow freely around her.
Loïe’s dancing progressed from Vaudeville skirt dancing to inspirational abstract art when she extended her skirts with bamboo rods. “Fire Dance,” or “Le Danse de Feu,” was one of the first dances with these rods and it was also one of the first to utilize the new electric lights to their full effect. “Fire Dance” began as the “Dance of the Sun” in her 1895 production of “Salome.” It premiered as a solo in 1896 to a stunned and mesmerized audience.
Part of what captured the audience’s attention was Loïe’s abstract (or what we now call Modern) movement, but the other part was the way in which she utilized the new electric stage lights. Before this time, Ballets and Operas we performed with gas front lights to a still illuminated house. They also used all kinds of lavish sets or at least painted backdrops. Loïe did away with any kind of colorful background and hung the stage in black velvet. She also turned out the house lights. From the darkness she would appear, first as a ghostly creature then as an illuminated jewel in the center of the stage.
The trap door was removed and replaced with a pane of glass. From below this, two of the new electric lights shined upwards through the glass. Another light came from directly above the dancer, while still others came from the sides at all angles. Doing away with the standard ‘front light only’ created a depth to her movement the audience was not used to. Now add to that her work with color.
Loïe was the first to create and use color scrollers. She took large circles of glass and painted on gelatin of various reds, oranges, yellows, greens, blues and violets. These disks were then mounted at the front of the light and were turned by the hand. For fire dance she had over 14 electricians manning a light each and they would take the cue to change to the next color from Loïe’s brother, who was her master electrician. Stationed at one of the lights below Loïe, he would take a cue from her foot, and then turn his wheel slowly to the next blue or purple. Seeing this change the electricians at the shins would rotate to their next color, and so on up to the final man hanging from the cat walk directly above Loïe. These effects in the pitch black of the stage and house, where what made her living fire such a success.
This success was due in part to the art Nuevo movement of that time in Paris. The idea of a women becoming fire was directly in line with the link of humans and nature. She inspired artists like Toulouse Lautrec, Jules Cheret and Pierre Roche. Stephane Mallarme preserved the dance in poetry. August Rodin did a number of studies of dancers, based on inspiration and coaxing from Loïe. And Loïe taught and mentored Isadora Duncan before Duncan went on to be given the crown: Mother of Modern Dance.
Later on in life she would form a dance company and school based on natural dancing. Her girls would perform all over the world to huge outdoor audiences and small gatherings of parlor guests. She continued to perform her solos at the Champs Elysees Theater in Paris on occasion. In the end, she passed away on New Years Day, 1928 in a hotel on the Champs Elysees.