Loie Fuller

Marie Louise Fuller was born on January 15, 1862 in Fullersburg, Illinois, on a remote farm conveniently linked to Chicago by a newly-constructed plank road. When Fuller was two, her parents Reuben Fuller and Delilah Eaton moved to Chicago and opened a boarding house. Fuller's parents took her to the Progressive Lyceum, a hub of Freethought, on Sunday mornings.[2]

Fuller debuted on the stage as a toddler, performing a variety of dramatic and dance roles in Chicago. Her dramatic debut at the age of four was at the Chicago Academy of Music, playing a young boy in Was He Right?.[3] Fuller's career as a child perfomer progressed with little formal training and much variety, as she experimented with dramatic reading, singing, and dance.[4] As a child, Fuller's family moved in and out of Chicago, with Fuller eventually securing a part in Buffalo Bill's touring act at the age of nineteen.[2]

Marie Louise Fuller changed her name to the more glamorous "Loïe" at the age of sixteen. An early free dance practitioner, Fuller developed her own natural movement and improvisation techniques. In multiple shows she experimented with a long skirt, choreographing its movements and playing with the ways it could reflect light.

By 1891, Fuller combined her choreography with silk costumes illuminated by multi-coloured lighting of her own design, and created the Serpentine Dance.[5] After much difficulty finding someone willing to produce her work when she was primarily known as an actress, she was finally hired to perform her piece between acts of a comedy entitled Uncle Celestine, and received rave reviews.[6]

Portrait of Fuller by Frederick Glasier, 1902

Almost immediately, she was replaced by imitators (originally Minnie "Renwood" Bemis). In the hope of receiving serious artistic recognition that she was not getting in America, Fuller left for Europe in June 1892. She became one of the first of many American modern dancers who traveled to Europe to seek recognition. Her warm reception in Paris persuaded Fuller to remain in France, where she became one of the leading revolutionaries in the arts.[4]

A regular performer at the Folies Bergère with works such as Fire Dance, Fuller became the embodiment of the Art Nouveau movement and was often identified with symbolism, as her work was seen as the perfect reciprocity between idea and symbol.[2] Fuller began adapting and expanding her costume and lighting, so that they became the principal element in her performance—perhaps even more important than the actual choreography, especially as the length of the skirt was increased and became the central focus, while the body became mostly hidden within the depths of the fabric.[7] The choreography of the Serpentine Dance was filmed by multiple early filmmakers, including Auguste and Louis Lumière, but it is unclear whether the recordings depict Fuller herself.[8][9]

Table lamp: Dance of the Lily (Loie Fuller) - around 1901-Gilt bronze-Museum Wiesbaden-Raoul Larche (1860-1912)

Fuller at the Folies Bergère, poster by PAL (Jean de Paléologue)

Fuller's pioneering work attracted the attention, respect, and friendship of many French artists and scientists, including Jules Chéret, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, François-Raoul Larche, Henri-Pierre Roché, Auguste Rodin, Jean-Léon Gérôme, Franz von Stuck, Maurice Denis, Thomas Theodor Heine, Paul-Léon Jazet, Koloman Moser, Demétre Chiparus, Stéphane Mallarmé, and Marie Curie. Fuller was also a member of the Société astronomique de France (French Astronomical Society).

Fuller patented many of her innovations in stage lighting, including the use of chemical compounds for creating color gel, and the application of chemical salts to luminescent lighting and garments.[8]

Fuller also sought legal protection for her choreography, but was less successful. Her lawsuit against imitator Minnie Renwood Bemis was decided in Bemis' favor, allowing Bemis' performances at Madison Square Garden to continue. The judge in the case ruled that Fuller's original choreography told no story and therefore could not be copyrighted.[10][11] The precedent set by Fuller's case remained in place until the passage of the Copyright Act of 1976, which explicitly extended protection to nondramatic choreographic works.[12][13] Another notorious imitator was Lord Yarmouth, later 7th Marquess of Hertford, who performed the Serpentine Dance under the stage name of ‘Mademoiselle Roze’.[14][15]

Fuller supported other pioneering performers, such as fellow United States-born dancer Isadora Duncan. Fuller helped Duncan ignite her European career in 1902 by sponsoring independent concerts in Vienna and Budapest.[16]

Loie Fuller's original stage name was "Louie". In modern French "L'ouïe" is the word for a sense of hearing. When Fuller reached Paris she gained a nickname which was a pun on "Louie"/"L'ouïe". She was renamed "Loïe" - this nickname is a corruption of the early or Medieval French "L'oïe", a precursor to "L'ouïe", which means "receptiveness" or "understanding". She was also referred to by the nickname "Lo Lo Fuller".

Fuller met her romantic partner of over 30 years, Gab Sorère, in the mid-1890s. Sorère was born Gabrielle Bloch, the daughter of wealthy French bankers, in 1870, and eventually took the name Gab Sorère in 1920. Bloch first saw Fuller perform at the age of 14, and by 1898 Fuller and Bloch were living together.[17]

Fuller and Bloch's relationship initially attracted some attention in the press, as Bloch dressed exclusively in menswear, and was 8 years Fuller's junior. The press coverage of their relationship declined over time, focusing more on Fuller's mother, and allowing Bloch and Fuller to live a relatively unbothered life.[18]

Fuller met Crown Princess Marie of Romania, later to become Queen Marie, in 1902, at a performance in Bucharest. Marie and Fuller became close, and maintained an extensive correspondence as close friends. Their relationship was the subject of scandalous rumors,[19] alleging that Fuller and Queen Marie were lovers.[20] Fuller, through a connection at the United States embassy in Paris, played a role in arranging a United States loan for Romania during World War I.

Later, during the period when the future Carol II of Romania was alienated from the Romanian royal family and living in Paris with his mistress Magda Lupescu, she befriended them; they were unaware of her connection to Carol's mother Marie. Fuller initially advocated to Marie on behalf of the couple, but later schemed unsuccessfully with Marie to separate Carol from Lupescu.[21] With Queen Marie and American businessman Samuel Hill, Fuller helped found the Maryhill Museum of Art in rural Washington state, which has permanent exhibits about her career.[22]

Fuller occasionally returned to America to stage performances by her students, the "Fullerets" or Muses, but spent the end of her life in Paris. She died of pneumonia at the age of 65 on January 1, 1928, in Paris, two weeks shy of her 66th birthday. She was cremated and buried in the columbarium of the Père-Lachaise cemetery (site No. 5382) in Paris.[23]

Fuller depicted by Koloman Moser (1901)

Fuller painted by Toulouse-Lautrec

Poster featuring Fuller at the Folies Bergères by Jules Chéret

After Fuller's death, her romantic partner of thirty years, Gab Sorère inherited the dance troupe as well as the laboratory Fuller had operated.[24][17] Sorère took legal action against dancers who wrongfully used Fuller's fame to enhance their own careers[25] and produced both films and theatrical productions to honor Fuller's legacy as a visual effects artist.[26]

Fuller's work has been experiencing a resurgence of professional and public interest. Rhonda K. Garelick's 2009 study entitled Electric Salome demonstrates her centrality not only to dance, but also modernist performance.[27] Sally R. Sommer has written extensively about Fuller's life and times[28] Marcia and Richard Current published a biography entitled Loie Fuller, Goddess of Light in 1997.[29] The philosopher Jacques Rancière devoted a chapter of Aisthesis, his history of modern aesthetics, to Fuller's 1893 performances in Paris, which he considers emblematic of Art Nouveau in their attempt to link artistic and technological invention.[30] Giovanni Lista compiled a 680-page book of Fuller-inspired art work and texts in Loïe Fuller, Danseuse de la Belle Epoque in 1994.[31] In the 1980s, Munich dancer Brygida Ochaim[32] revived Fuller's dances and techniques, also appearing in the Claude Chabrol film The Swindler.

In 2016, Stéphanie Di Giusto directed the movie The Dancer about the life of Loïe Fuller, with actresses Soko as Loïe and Lily-Rose Depp as Isadora Duncan. Jody Sperling choreographed Soko's dances for the movie, served as creative consultant and was Soko's dance coach, training her in Fuller technique.[33] The movie premiered at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival.[34]

Fuller continues to be an influence on contemporary choreographers. Sperling, who re-imagines Fuller's genre from a contemporary perspective, has choreographed dozens of works inspired by Fuller and expanded Fuller's vocabulary and technique into the 21st century. Sperling's company Time Lapse Dance consists of six dancers all versed in Fuller-style technique and performance. Another is Ann Cooper Albright, who collaborated with a lighting designer on a series of works that drew inspiration from Fuller’s original lighting design patents.[35] Shela Xoregos choreographed a tribute, La Loȉe, a solo which shows several of Fuller's special effects.

Taylor Swift's 2018 Reputation Tour featured a segment dedicated to Fuller. During her performance of "Dress" each night on the tour, several dancers recreated the "Serpentine Dance."[36][37] In the reputation Stadium Tour concert film on Netflix, after “Dress” there is a message showing Taylor’s dedication to Fuller.[38]

Into the 2019 film Radioactive Loie Fuller (Drew Jacoby) is a friend of the main character Marie Curie. The scientist envisions Fuller dancing in the green light of radium.[39] The dancer also introduces the Curies to a medium.

Fuller's autobiographical memoir Quinze ans de ma vie was written in English, translated into French by Bojidar Karageorgevitch and published by F. Juven (Paris) in 1908 with an introduction by Anatole France.[40] She drafted her memoirs again in English a few years later, which were published under the title Fifteen Years of a Dancer's Life by H. Jenkins (London) in 1913.[41] The New York Public Library Jerome Robbins Dance Collection holds the nearly complete manuscript to the English edition and materials related to the French edition.

Fuller's autobiography is a first hand account, and she was known for being very adaptive in her story telling. There are seven highly dramatized versions of how she got her first silk skirt; however, the real story is unknown. As well as writing about inventing the Serpentine Dance, she also wrote extensively about her own theories of modern dance and motion.[42]

• List of dancers
• Women in dance

• Fuller, Loie (1908). Quinze ans de ma vie [Fifteen years of my life]. Translated by Karageorgevitch, Bojidar. Paris: F. Juven.
• — (1913). Fifteen years of a dancer's life, with some account of her distinguished friends. London: H. Jenkins.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Loie Fuller.

Wikisource has the text of a 1906 New International Encyclopedia article about "Loie Fuller".

• Loie Fuller archival collections at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts:
  • Loie Fuller papers, 1892–1913
  • Loie Fuller notebooks and letters, 1907-1911
  • Loie Fuller collection, 1914–1928
• United States patents for inventions by Fuller, via Google Patents:
  • US Patent 513102: Mechanism for the Production of Stage Effects
  • US Patent 518347: Garment for Dancers
  • US Patent 533167: Theatrical Stage Mechanism