Modern dancing and dancers

by J. E. Crawford Flitch

Loie Fuller devoted the next few months to developing the novel effects which she had discovered and to inventing an accompaniment of slow, gliding steps such as would best accord with the involutions of the skirt rising and falling upon the air.

The invention of the Serpentine Dance coincided with the discovery of electricity as a method of lighting the stage. Until that time gas alone had been used. Loie Fuller immediately saw the possibilities of the new scientific illumination, and with the aid of a few friends she devised a means by which the effect of vivid sunshine could be obtained through the use of powerful electric lights placed in front of reflectors. Then various experiments with colour were tried; for the white light of the electricity were substituted different shades of reds, greens, purples, yellows, blues, by the combination of which innumerable and wonderful rainbow-like effects of colour were obtained. Played upon by the multitudinous hues, the diaphanous silk gave an impression of startling originality and beauty. Coming at a time when the artistic lighting of the stage was scarcely studied at all, the riot of colour created a sensation. Nothing like it had been seen before. The old-fashioned limelight, the flickering gas-jets, the smoking red and blue flames dear to the Christmas pantomime, paled before this discovery of science which apparently possessed inexhaustible possibilities as a stage illuminant.

Loie Fuller introduced her new dance with its accessories to the variety stage in the States, where she soon became famous. But it was not until she came to Europe that her performance received its full meed of appreciation, not as a mere raree-show sandwiched in between the turns of acrobats and performing seals, but as a thing of intrinsic beauty. She visited first Germany and then Paris. The Parisians, who have the habit in common with the ancient Athenians of spending their time in nothing else but either to tell or to hear some new thing, welcomed the novelty of her dancing and quickly adopted her as “La Loie.” Her début at the Folies Bergère was a triumph. To the accompaniment of the tinkling strains of Gillet’s “Loin du Bal”—a melody inevitably associated with Loie Fuller’s dancing—the dazzling figure of light suddenly shone out of the gloom of the darkened stage like some mysteriously illuminated flower, fluttering its petals in the breeze. On batons held in each hand were hung yards upon yards of shimmering gossamer fabric. The least movement of the wand sent the airy mass floating in undulating billows and twisting in streaming spirals. And as the multitudinous moving forms succeeded one another, the light from below shifted through all the combinations of the colours of the rainbow. “La Loie” immediately became the rage. The management of the Folies Bergère engaged her for three years at the handsome salary of two hundred pounds a week—an engagement which unfortunately circumstances prevented her from fulfilling. Not unnaturally, therefore, when some time afterwards she revisited America, she was enthusiastically welcomed on the sacred stage of New York’s Metropolitan Opera House.

Strict connoisseurs of the dance are disposed to scoff at Loie Fuller’s performance, but the fact must not be overlooked that the arrangement of the drapery is not such an easy matter as might be supposed when viewed from the other side of the footlights. When the enormous dimensions of the skirt are taken into account, the achievement of managing it with grace is not altogether to be despised. The strain on the arms is severe. To wave them in such a manner that the folds of the skirt do not become entangled with one another, and that the whole of it is in motion at the same time, is a feat of dexterity difficult of accomplishment. Certainly the crowd of imitators who sought notoriety in this style never achieved the variety and beauty of the effects which “La Loie” obtained. Amateurs who took up the dance in the enthusiasm of the moment gave exhibitions of embarrassed entanglement that provided their audience with a more amusing entertainment than they had anticipated. I have heard of at least one lady, who elected to follow in Loie Fuller’s footsteps for the sake of charity, becoming so enveloped in her hundred yards of drapery that she had at last to be carried ignominiously from the stage in the arms

LETTY LIND

Photograph: Ellis & Walery

of an attendant and unravelled behind the scenes like a twisted ball of string.

After it was first introduced, the Serpentine Dance underwent much elaboration. Not only were various harmonies of colour thrown upon the dress, but also strange and wonderful patterns of flowers and lace and barbaric designs. The variety of effects thus obtained were endless. At one moment the skirt was a moving wave of rose-pink; the next it had changed to a dark purple on which gleamed golden stars; afterwards it took the design of a Japanese embroidery; and again it became a flame of fire burning in the darkness. And not content with these bewildering displays, some of those whose business it is to refine upon vulgarity devised a startling and terrible novelty—they utilised the dancer as a backcloth and projected upon her photographs of the prominent people of the day!