LOIE FULLER born Marie Louise Fuller died on this date (b: 1862); also known as Louie Fuller and Loïe Fuller, Fuller was an American dancer who was a pioneer of both modern dance and theatrical lighting techniques
Born in the Chicago suburb of Fullersburg, Illinois, now Hinsdale, Illinois, Fuller began her theatrical career as a professional child actress and later choreographed and performed dances in burlesque (as a skirt dancer), vaudeville, and circus shows. Her debut took place when she was four years. 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.
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.
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. 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.
An 1896 film of the Serpentine Dance by the pioneering film-makers Auguste and Louis Lumière gives a hint of what her performance was like. (The unknown dancer in the film is often mistakenly identified as Fuller herself; however, there is no actual film footage of Fuller dancing.)
Her modernism weaves itself into her queerness, which she discovered and embraced first in Paris. Loïe’s very introduction to the city, fleeing an unhappy marriage which seems to have been no more than a failed attempt at “fitting in”, started with a first lesbian relation with the painter Louise Abbéma, who was also, allegedly, Sarah Bernhardt’s former lover. She introduced her to a buzzing sapphic socialite scene, notably the circle of friends of Nathalie Barney, American lesbian poet extraordinaire, who assembled around her a clique of fabulous queer women artists in Paris.
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 held many patents related to stage lighting including chemical compounds for creating color gel and the use of chemical salts for luminescent lighting and garments (stage costumes US Patent 518347). She attempted to create a patent of her Serpentine Dance as she hoped to stop imitators from taking her choreography and even claiming to be her. Fuller submitted a written description of her dance to the United States Copyright Office; however, a US Circuit Court judge ended up denying Fuller’s request for an injunction, as the Serpentine Dance told no story and was therefore not eligible for copyright protection. At that time dance was only protected if it qualified as “dramatic” and Fuller’s dance was too abstract for this qualification. The precedent set by Fuller’s case remained in place from 1892 until 1976, when Federal Copyright Law explicitly extended protection to choreographic works.
One notorious imitator was Lord Yarmouth, later 7th Marquess of Hertford, who performed the Serpentine Dance in England and the colonies under the stage name of ‘Mademoiselle Roze’. 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.
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 formed a close friendship with Queen Marie of Romania; their extensive correspondence has been published. 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. 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.
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.