Background
Loie Fuller was born in the little settlement of Fullersburg, Illinois, which was named after her forefathers.
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Loie Fuller was born in the little settlement of Fullersburg, Illinois, which was named after her forefathers.
At the age of five, Loie Fuller was beginning to play the piano and sing before groups of people and at thirteen, she was a temperance lecturer, becoming popular chiefly because she used the “horrible example” as a method of appeal.
While still in her teens she joined a group which was playing Shakespeare with little success. She studied for a time in Chicago, where she was finally engaged by James M. Flill to sing and act in Hooley’s Opera House, and from there she went to New York.
After a year spent in search of a position, Loie Fuller joined Nat Goodwin in the burlesque, Little Jack Sheppard, then appeared in Rider Haggard’s She under the management of Charles Frohman. In both productions, Miss Fuller achieved some success and immediately set out to capitalize it by heading a theatrical company of her own on a long South American tour which ended in disastrous bankruptcy.
In 1889, she went to London and appeared in an ill-starred venture, Caprice. After several other failures, she returned to New York. The turning point of Miss Fuller’s career came with a discovery made in an idle moment.
As she was entertaining herself one day by twirling and twining a beautiful piece of material about her body before a mirror, the light from a window reflected in the mirror and onto the fabric, suggesting to her the possibilities latent in the combination of movement and color.
A few days later, obtaining permission to dance before a producer, she exhibited the famous serpentine dance and explained to him the effects which changing lights would create. When she introduced her dance on the stage she won immediate success.
From that time on she experimented with light and color and movement, producing and appearing in ballets in London, Paris, Berlin, and New York. Her début in Paris took place in 1892 in the Folies-Bergère in the Fire Dance.
During the World War, Miss Fuller devoted herself to relief work in the Allied countries and won decorations from France, Belgium, and Rumania. After the war, she developed a school of dancing in Paris, from which she sent out troupes to various cities.
In 1908, Miss Fuller published Quinze Ans de ma Vie, which appeared in English in 1913 as Fifteen Years of a Dancer’s Life, with some account of her Distinguished Friends, with an introduction by Anatole France.
(Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We h...)
Loie Fuller considered her dancers as instruments of light rather than dancers, a conception which was her own, although her methods were imitated widely. In Europe, especially, she was very popular and numbered many notable people among her personal friends; foremost among them perhaps was Queen Marie of Rumania, with whom she traveled for a time in the United States in 1926.
Loie Fuller entered into a common-law marriage with Col. William Hayes. Upon discovering that he already had a wife, she instituted legal proceedings against him which resulted in his conviction.