B. COLORED LIGHTS AND FLUTTERING SCARVES
It is a far cry from Isadora to another American dancer, whose “children” I toured across America and back, in 1926.
Loie Fuller, “the lady with the scarf,” was at that period championed by her friend, the late Queen Marie of Roumania, when that royal lady embarked upon a lecture tour of the United States that same year. Loie Fuller was loosely attached to the royal entourage.
“La Loie” had established a school in Paris, and wanted to exhibit the prowess of her pupils. I was inveigled into bringing them quite as much by Loie Fuller’s dynamic, active manager, Mrs. Bloch, as I was by the aging dancer herself.
Loie Fuller was something of a phenomenon. Born in Chicago, in 1862, her first fame was gained as a child temperance lecturer in the mid-west. According to her biographers, she took some dancing lessons, but found the lessons too difficult and abandoned them after a short time. Switching to the study of voice, she gave up her youthful Carrie Nation attacks on alcohol and obtained a singing part in a stage production. As the story goes, while she was appearing in this stage role, a friend in India made her a gift of a long scarf of very light weight silk. Playing with her present, watching it float through the air with the greatest of ease, she found her vocation. It was as simple as that.
Here was something new: a dance in which a great amount of fluttering silk was kept aloft, the while upon it there constantly played variegated lights, projected by what in the profession is known as a “color-wheel,” a circular device containing various colored media, rotated before an arc-lamp. Thus was born the Serpentine Dance.
Here was no struggle on the part of the artist to find her medium of expression, no seeking for a new technique or slogging effort perfecting an old one; no hours spent sweating at the barre; no heartache. Loie Fuller was not concerned with steps, with style, with a unique and individual quality of movement. Loie Fuller had a scarf. Loie Fuller had an instantaneous success. Her career was made on the Serpentine Dance. But she also had one other inspiration. A “sunrise” stage effect that she used was mistaken by the audience as a dance of fire, as the light rays touched her flowing scarves and draperies. “La Loie” was not one to miss a chance. She gathered her electricians about her—for in the early days of stage lighting with electricity nothing was impossible. The revolving “light-wheels” were increased in number, as were the spot-lights.
Since all this happened in Paris, Loie Fuller’s Danse de Feu became to France what the Serpentine Dance had been to America. The French adopted her as their own. Widely loved, she became “La Loie.” Her stage arrangements were often startling; they could not always be called dancing. The arms and feet of her “children” were always subordinated to the movements of the draperies. So tricky was the business of the draperies that it is said that none of her designers or seamstresses were permitted to know more than a small part of their actual construction.
Her imitators were many, with the result that, for a time, the musical comedy stages of both Europe and America had an inundation of illuminated dry goods. It was the “children” who kept “La Loie’s” serpentine and fire dances alive.
When Loie Fuller suggested the American tour, the idea interested me because of the novelty involved. It was, incidentally, my only “incognito” tour. I accepted an invitation from Queen Marie of Roumania to visit her at the Royal Palace in Bucharest to discuss the proposed tour with Her Majesty and Loie Fuller, who was a close friend and confidante of the Queen. The tour was in the interest of one of the Queen’s pet charities and, moreover, it had diplomatic overtones. Naturally, under the circumstances, no managerial auspices were credited on the programmes.