| Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: Loie Fuller |
For more information on Loie Fuller, visit Britannica.com.
| American Theater Guide: Loie Fuller |
Fuller, Loie (1863–1928), actress. Born in Fullersburg, Illinois, she demonstrated her precociousness by giving temperance lectures while still a small child. From the lecture stage to the legitimate stage was a simple move, which she made still in her teens, playing in a variety of touring companies. Fuller's New York debut was in Humbug (1886), and thereafter she acted with Nat Goodwin in Little Jack Sheppard (1886), Turned Up (1886), The Skating Rink (1887), and The Gentlemanly Savage (1887). Her performances won her commendatory notices, especially in the trouser title role of Sheppard. She next played Aladdin in Arabian Nights (1887) and Ustane in a musical dramatization of Rider Haggard's She (1887). While in England, she devised the skirt or serpentine dance that made her famous; in it she performed with the voluminous drapery twirling and shedding prismatic hues in the calcium light. Fuller first offered the dance in America in Quack, M. D. (1891) and later in Uncle Celestin (1892) and in A Trip to Chinatown (1892). Although she appeared briefly in several other Broadway entertainments, she spent most of her remaining career in dance recitals. Autobiographies: Fifteen Years of My Life, 1908; Fifteen Years of a Dancer's Life, 1913.
| Dictionary of Dance: Loie Fuller |
Fuller, Loie (b Fullersburg, III., 22 Jan. 1862, d Paris, 21 Jan. 1928). US dancer, choreographer, designer, and director. She had no formal dance education but gained her experience on stage as an actress, playwright, singer, dancer, and producer between 1865 and 1891. In 1891 a chance manœuvre dealing with an over-long skirt gave her the idea of The Serpentine Dance (1891), a solo whose effects were created by manipulating long trains of silk. Her subsequent dances gained her a world-wide audience, particularly in Europe where she made her debut in 1892. Embraced as a fellow revolutionary by the Symbolists, Impressionists, and Art Nouveau movements she was painted and sculpted by many artists. Her works employed light, thrown on lengths of diaphanous silk which she then manipulated with her own body movements and with long sticks to create an exotic range of forms, as in The Butterfly (1892), Clouds (1893), and Fire Dance (1895). From 1900 she began creating group works and using more complex costumes and light effects. She formed her own school in 1908 and in the same year published her autobiography, Quinze ans de ma vie (English translation, London, 1913). She continued performing until 1925 during which time she made significant contributions to the arts of stage costume and lighting.
| Columbia Encyclopedia: Loie Fuller |
Bibliography
See her autobiography, Fifteen Years of a Dancer's Life (1908, tr. 1913); biographies by S. R. Sommer and M. Harris (1989) and R. N. and M. E. Current (1997).
| Wikipedia: Loie Fuller |
Loie Fuller (also Loïe Fuller; (January 15, 1862 – January 1, 1928) was a pioneer of both modern dance and theatrical lighting techniques.
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Born Marie Louise Fuller in the Chicago suburb of Fullersburg, 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. An early free dance practitioner, Fuller developed her own natural movement and improvisation techniques. Fuller combined her choreography with silk costumes illuminated by multi-coloured lighting of her own design.
Although Fuller became famous in America through works such as Serpentine Dance (1891), she felt that she was not taken seriously by the public who still thought of her as an actress. Her warm reception in Paris during a European tour persuaded Fuller to remain in France and continue her work. A regular performer at the Folies Bergère with works such as Fire Dance, Fuller became the embodiment of the Art Nouveau movement. Her Serpentine Dance was filmed in 1896 by the pioneering film-makers Auguste and Louis Lumière.
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, Stéphane Mallarmé, and Marie Curie. 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). Fuller was also a member of the French Astronomical Society.
Loie Fuller's original stage name was "Louie".In modern French "L'ouie" is the word for a sense of hearing. When Fuller reached Paris she gained a nickname which was a pun on "Louie"/"L'ouie". She was renamed "Loïe" - this nickname is a corruption of the early or Medieval French "L'oïe", a precursor to "L'ouie", which means "receptiveness" or "understanding".
Fuller is responsible for the European tours of the early modern dancers (she was the first American modern dancer to perform in Europe), introducing Isadora Duncan to Parisian audiences and developing the acceptance of modern dance as a serious art form. Her 'Chinese dancers' were the subject of the second section of W.B. Yeats' poem 'Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen'.
After the Paris Exposition Universelle in 1900, Fuller toured Europe with Sada Yacco and company, acting as manager and press agent for the Japanese performers [1].
Fuller formed a close friendship with Queen Marie of Romania; their extensive correspondence has been published. Fuller, through a connection at the U.S. embassy in Paris played a role in arranging a U.S. 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.[2] 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 where she died of breast cancer on New Years Day 1928, aged 65. Cremated, her ashes are interred in the columbarium at Cimetière du Père Lachaise in Paris.
Fuller’s work has been experiencing a resurgence of professional and public interest. Sally R. Sommer has written extensively about Fuller’s life and times[3] Marcia and Richard Current published a biography entitled Loie Fuller, Goddess of Light in 1997.[4] And Giovanni Lista compiled a 680-page book of Fuller-inspired art work and texts in Loïe Fuller, Danseuse de la Belle Epoque, 1994.[5]
Fuller continues to be an influence on contemporary choreographers. Among these are Jody Sperling who re-imagines Fuller’s genre from a contemporary perspective.[1]
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Fuller's autobiographical memoire "Quinze ans de ma vie" was written in French and published by F. Juven (Paris) in 1908 with an introduction by Anatole France. She drafted her memoires 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. 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.[6]
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 | Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| American Theater Guide. The Oxford Companion to American Theatre. Copyright © 2004 by Oxford University Press, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Dictionary of Dance. The Oxford Dictionary of Dance. Copyright © 2000, 2004 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Columbia Encyclopedia. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2003, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/. Read more |
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| Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Loie Fuller". Read more |
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