Loie Fuller

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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.

Loie Fuller , 1862–1928, American dancer and theatrical innovator, b. Fullersburg, Ill., as Mary Louise Fuller. She began her career as a child, performing in burlesque, vaudeville, the circus, plays, and other popular entertainments. Self-taught as a dancer, Fuller explored the use of voluminous silken skirts, which, illuminated by the multicolored lighting she created, floated, flowed, and swirled in her famous "Serpentine Dance," first performed in New York in 1892. Later that year she traveled to Paris, where she and her dance productions became wildly successful. She was painted by Toulouse-Lautrec, sculpted by Rodin, exalted by Mallarmé and other writers, and dramatically portrayed in various art nouveau works. Remaining in Europe, Fuller became a successful artistic entrepeneur, forming her own school (1908) and founding a troupe that toured worldwide. She continued to experiment with lighting effects and other forms of stagecraft, and ultimately choreographed more than 100 dances.

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).