In Paris Miss Fuller had a sketch in which she, a solitary figure, stood on a height at dawn, silhouetted against the sky. The rising sun was arranged to illuminate, one after another, the prominences in the landscape falling away into the distance. The figure, on being touched by the rays, represented its awakening by the fluttering, raising and full play of its hundred yards or so of drapery.
It happened that an audience mistook the intent of the effect, and greeted it as a dance of fire. The upward rush of the cloth, obviously, had suggested flame. “La Loïe” lost not a moment in seeing the possibilities, nor an hour in setting to work on their development. Stage electric lighting was new; so new that it acknowledged no limitations. Electricians were enthusiastic over new problems, because new problems were being solved by new and sometimes sensational inventions. To lighting Miss Fuller turned to make the effect of the fire dance unmistakable and startling. With the result that the colours and movement of flame were almost counterfeited. Variously coloured glasses lent their tints to the rays of spot lights; set into discs made to revolve in front of the lamp, they simulated the upward rush that helps make flame exciting. As a precaution against theft of ideas, the essential parts of the electric arrangements are said to have been trusted exclusively to Miss Fuller’s brothers.
La Danse de Feu, consistently prepared as such, created an enthusiasm in Paris probably equal to the “hit” of the Serpentine in America. Indeed Miss Fuller was practically adopted into the French nation, where she was affectionately and widely known as “La Loïe.” French is the language in which she wrote her memoirs. (Mes Mémoires, Loie Fuller.)
Her work, always startling, never failed of being agreeable also. By a loose application of the word it was justified in being called dancing. Strictly speaking it was not, from the point of view of step, movement or posture. Interest in steps the work frankly disclaimed by its own terms; an easy movement from place to place, with reference always to the drapery, was all that was undertaken in the department of foot-work. The arms were equally subordinated to the drapery; their movements, as interpretation or decoration, meant nothing. The performer held in each hand a short pole as aid to manipulation of the cloth, in which her arms were buried most of the time. They committed no awkwardness, nor did they contribute to the effect except as they furnished motive power. As to the drapery, any idea of making it a vehicle of controlled lines would obviously have been out of the question. Colour without form was the result; and form, when all is said and done, is the essence not only of dancing, but of any art that would attempt to convey a message to the senses as well as pleasure to the eye.
Imitators affected Miss Fuller very little. So closely were her means guarded—it is said that no one of her designers and sewing-women knew more than a part of the construction of her draperies—that attempts to reproduce her work were generally laborious compromises with failure. But the musical comedy stage underwent an inundation of illuminated dry-goods. With the mechanical problem simplified by the distribution of the hundred yards of drapery among forty people, there followed a sea of cavorting rainbows and prisms that lacked even a semi-careful selection of colours.
The World’s Fair in Chicago brought to America a variety of dancers, most of them good. The novelty element was the work of the Orient. The Oriental point of view differs from that of England and America; it accepts as natural the existence of sex. In all its expressions, whether literary, sculptural, pictorial, or choreographic, the subject of sex is neither avoided nor emphasised. It takes its place among the actuating dramatic motives exactly as it has done in the expressions of all civilisations of all times, except those of our Anglo-Saxon civilisation since about 1620, in which it is evaded, and of certain decadent civilisations, where it is an obsession.
The World’s Fair crowd was so amazed by the Oriental disregard of Puritan tradition that it could see nothing in dances of India and North Africa except obscenity. Instead of trying to acquaint the public with the wealth of poetic symbolism of the dances, and their unlimited scope of meaning, every manager on the Midway at once adopted the motto of the majority of his profession: “Give the public what it wants.” That at least is the inference from conditions. Before the fair was a month old there was hardly an Oriental dancing attraction on the grounds that did not claim, in the sly-dog language of naughty suggestion, to surpass all competitors in lewdness. And it verily seemed as though most of them were justified in their claims.
They all made money. And they created against Oriental dancing a prejudice just beginning to melt now at the end of twenty years; the majority of the public is still convinced that no Oriental dancing is anything but a pretext for offensiveness. For any physical quality truly is offensive the moment it is unduly insisted upon. And with few exceptions the managers of the unhappy Arabs dancing in this country have inspired their charges to exaggerate one quality to the almost complete exclusion of every other one.
The ghastly reaction of such a state of affairs is on dancing in general. In this present year, 1913, one of the most prominent and successful managers in America said: “There are two ways to succeed with dancers. If they have a sensational acrobatic novelty that never has been seen before, that will make money. Otherwise you’ve got to take their clothes off, if you want anybody to look at ’em. Duncan? St. Denis? What does the American public care about art? They have succeeded because they took their clothes off.”
It sounds unreal, it is so demonstrably silly. But it was what that manager said. In his profession there are several who hold contrary beliefs; but the one quoted is of the opinion common among the present custodians of the dancing art in America. In their offices is determined what character of dancing shall occupy the stage; to their beliefs the lover of good dancing must give heed.