FIFTEEN YEARS OF
A DANCER’S LIFE

WITH SOME ACCOUNT OF HER
DISTINGUISHED FRIENDS

BY
LOIE
FULLER

WITH AN INTRODUCTION
BY

ANATOLE FRANCE

“SHE OUGHT TO WRITE OUT HER MEMORIES AND HER IMPRESSIONS.”—Alexandre Dumas

HERBERT JENKINS LIMITED
ARUNDEL PLACE, HAYMARKET
LONDON, S.W.

MCMXIII

Photo Langfier
LOIE FULLER

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN FRENCH.

LONDON AND NORWICH PRESS, LIMITED, LONDON AND NORWICH

INTRODUCTION

I HAD seen her only as she had been seen by multitudes from every corner of the globe, on the stage, waving her draperies in the first light, or transformed into a great resplendent lily, revealing to us a new and dignified type of beauty. I had the honour of being presented to her at a luncheon of the tour du monde at Boulogne. I saw an American lady with small features, with blue eyes, like water in which a pale sky is reflected, rather plump, quiet, smiling, refined. I heard her talk. The difficulty with which she speaks French adds to her power of expression without injuring her vivacity. It obliges her to rely on the rare and the exquisite, at each moment to create the requisite expression, the quickest and best turn of speech. Her words gush forth, the unaccustomed linguistic form shapes itself. As assistance she employs neither gestures nor motions, but only the expression of her eyes, which changes like the landscapes that are disclosed along a beautiful highway. And the basis of her conversation, now smiling and now serious, is one of charm and delightfulness.

This brilliant artist is revealed as a woman of just and delicate sensibility, endowed with a marvellous perception of spiritual values. She is one who is able to grasp the profound significance of things that seem insignificant, and to see the splendour hidden in simple lives. Gleefully she depicts, with keen and brilliant stroke, the humble folk in whom she finds some ennobling and magnifying beauty. Not that she is especially devoted to the lowly, the poor in spirit. On the contrary she enters easily into the lives of artists and scholars. I have heard her say the most delicate, the subtlest things about Curie, Mme. Curie, Auguste Rodin and other geniuses. She has formulated, without desiring to do so, and perhaps without knowing it, a considerable theory of human knowledge and philosophy of art.

But the subject of conversation which comes closest to her is religious research. Should we recognize in this fact a characteristic of the Anglo-Saxon race, of the effect of a Protestant education, or simply a peculiarity of temperament of which there is no explanation? I do not know. At all events she is profoundly religious, with a very acute spirit of inquiry and a perpetual anxiety about human destiny. Under various guises, in various ways, she has asked me about the cause and the final outcome of things. I need not say that none of my replies were couched in a manner to satisfy her. Nevertheless she has received my doubts serenely, smiling at everything. For she is distinctly an amiable being.

As regards understanding? Comprehension? She is marvellously intelligent. She is even more marvellously instinctive. Rich in so many natural gifts she might have become a scholar. I have heard her employ a very comprehensive vocabulary in discussing the various subjects of astronomy, chemistry and physiology. But it is the unconscious in her that counts. She is an artist.

I have been unable to resist the pleasure of recalling my first meeting with this extraordinary and delightful woman. What a rare chance! You admire afar off, as in a vision, an airy figure comparable in grace to those dancers whom one sees on Pompeiian wall paintings, moving in their light draperies. Some day you discover once again this apparition in real life, softened in colour and hidden under those thicker robes with which mortals cover themselves, and you perceive that she is a person of good mind and good heart, a soul somewhat inclined to mysticism, to philosophy, to religion, a very deep, a very cheerful and a very noble soul.

There you have to the life this Loie Fuller, in whom our Roger Marx has hailed the chastest and most expressive of dancers, beautifully inspired, who reanimates within herself and restores to us the lost wonders of Greek mimicry, the art of those motions, at once voluptuous and mystical, which interpret the phenomena of nature and the life history of living beings.

ANATOLE FRANCE

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

FIFTEEN YEARS OF A
DANCER’S LIFE

I
MY STAGE ENTRANCE

“WHOSE baby is this?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, anyway, don’t leave it here. Take it away.”

Thereupon one of the two speakers seized the little thing and brought it into the dancing-hall.

It was an odd little baggage, with long, black, curly hair, and it weighed barely six pounds.

The two gentlemen went round the room and asked each lady if the child were hers. None claimed it.

Meanwhile two women entered the room that served as dressing-room and turned directly toward the bed where, as a last resort, the baby had been put. One of them asked, just as a few minutes before the man in the dancing-hall had asked:

“Whose child is this?”

The other woman replied:

“For Heaven’s sake what is it doing there? This is Lillie’s baby. It is only six weeks old and she brought it here with her. This really is no place for a baby of that age. Look out; you will break its neck if you hold it that way. The child is only six weeks old, I tell you.”

At this moment a woman ran from the other end of the hall. She uttered a cry and grasped the child. Blushing deeply she prepared to take it away, when one of the dancers said to her:

“She has made her entrance into society. Now she will have to stay here.”

From that moment until the end of the ball the baby was the chief attraction of the evening. She cooed, laughed, waved her little hands and was passed round the hall until the last of the dancers was gone.

I was that baby. Let me explain how such an adventure came about.

It occurred in January, during a very severe winter. The thermometer registered forty degrees below zero. At that time my father, my mother, and my brothers lived on a farm about sixteen miles from Chicago. When the occasion of my appearance in the world was approaching, the temperature went so low that it was impossible to heat our house properly. My mother’s health naturally made my father anxious. He went accordingly to the village of Fullersburg, the population of which was composed almost exclusively of cousins and kinsmen, and made an arrangement with the proprietor of the only public-house of the place. In the general room there was a huge cast-iron stove. This was, in the whole countryside, the only stove which seemed to give out an appreciable heat. They transformed the bar into a sleeping-room and there it was that I first saw light. On that day the frost was thick on the window panes and the water froze in dishes two yards from the famous stove.

I am positive of all these details, for I caught a cold at the very moment of my birth, which I have never got rid of. On my father’s side I had a sturdy ancestry. I therefore came into life with a certain power of resistance, and if I have not been able to recover altogether from the effects of this initial cold, I have had the strength at all events to withstand them.

A month later we had returned to the farm, and the saloon resumed its customary appearance. I have mentioned that it was the only tavern in town, and, as we occupied the main room, we had inflicted considerable hardship upon the villagers, who were deprived of their entertainment for more than four weeks.

When I was about six weeks old a lot of people stopped one evening in front of our house. They were going to give a surprise party at a house about twenty miles from ours.

They were picking up everybody en route, and they stopped at our house to include my parents. They gave them five minutes in which to get ready. My father was an intimate friend of the people whom they were going to surprise; and, furthermore, as he was one of the best musicians of the neighbourhood he could not get out of going, as without him the company would have no chance of dancing. He accordingly consented to join the party. Then they insisted that my mother go, too.

“What will she do with the baby? Who will feed her?”

There was only one thing to do in these circumstances—take baby too.

My mother declined at first, alleging that she had no time to make the necessary preparations, but the jubilant crowd would accept no refusal. They bundled me up in a coverlet and I was packed into a sleigh, which bore me to the ball.

When we arrived they supposed that, like a well-brought-up baby, I should sleep all night, and they put me on the bed in a room temporarily transformed into a dressing-room. They covered me carefully and left me to myself.

There it was that the two gentlemen quoted at the beginning of this chapter discovered the baby agitating feet and hands in every direction. Her only clothing was a yellow flannel garment and a calico petticoat, which made her look like a poor little waif. You may imagine my mother’s feelings when she saw her daughter make an appearance in such a costume.

That at all events is how I made my debut, at the age of six weeks. I made it because I could not do otherwise. In all my life everything that I have done has had that one starting-point; I have never been able to do anything else.

I have likewise continued not to bother much about my personal appearance.

II
MY APPEARANCE ON A REAL STAGE AT TWO YEARS AND A HALF

WHEN I was a very small girl the president of the Chicago Progressive Lyceum, where my parents and I went every Sunday, called on my mother one afternoon, and congratulated her on the appearance I had made the preceding Sunday at the Lyceum. As my mother did not understand what he meant, I raised myself from the carpet, on which I was playing with some toys, and I explained:

“I forgot to tell you, mamma, that I recited my piece at the Lyceum last Sunday.”

“Recited your piece?” repeated my mother. “What does she mean?”

“What!” said the president, “haven’t you heard that Loie recited some poetry last Sunday?”

My mother was quite overcome with surprise. I threw myself upon her and fairly smothered her with kisses, saying,

“I forgot to tell you. I recited my piece.”

“Oh, yes,” said the president, “and she was a great success, too.”

My mother asked for explanations.

The president then told her: “During an interval between the exercises, Loie climbed up on the platform, made a pretty bow as she had seen orators do, and then, kneeling down, she recited a little prayer. What this prayer was I don’t remember.”

But my mother interrupted him.

“Oh, I know. It is the prayer she says every evening when I put her to bed.”

And I had recited that in a Sunday School thronged by free-thinkers!

“After that Loie arose, and saluted the audience once more. Then immense difficulties arose. She did not dare to descend the steps in the usual way. So she sat down and let herself slide from one step to another until she reached the floor of the house. During this exercise the whole hall laughed loudly at the sight of her little yellow flannel petticoat, and her copper-toed boots beating the air. But Loie got on her feet again, and, hearing the laughter, raised her right hand and said in a shrill voice: ‘Hush! Keep quiet. I am going to recite my poem.’ She would not stir until silence was restored. Loie then recited her poem as she had promised, and returned to her seat with the air of having done the most natural thing in the world.”

The following Sunday I went as usual to the Lyceum with my brothers. My mother came, too, in the course of the afternoon, and took her seat at the end of a settee among the invited guests who took no part in our exercises. She was thinking how much she had missed in not being there the preceding Sunday to witness my “success,” when she saw a woman rise and approach the platform. The woman began to read a little paper which she held in her hand. After she had finished reading my mother heard her say:

“And now we are going to have the pleasure of hearing our little friend Loie Fuller recite a poem entitled: ‘Mary had a little Lamb.’”

My mother, absolutely amazed, was unable to stir or to say a word. She merely gasped:

“How can this little girl be so foolish! She will never be able to recite that. She has only heard it once.”

In a sort of daze she saw me rise from my seat, slowly walk to the steps and climb upon the platform, helping myself up with feet and hands. Once there I turned around and took in my audience. I made a pretty courtesy, and began in a voice which resounded throughout the hall. I repeated the little poem in so serious a manner that, despite the mistakes I must have made, the spirit of it was intelligible and impressed the audience. I did not stop once. Then I courtesied again and everybody applauded me wildly. I went back to the stairs and let myself slide down to the bottom, as I had done the preceding Sunday. Only this time no one made fun of me.

When my mother rejoined me, some time after, she was still pale and trembling. She asked me why I had not informed her of what I was going to do. I replied that I could not let her know about a thing that I did not know myself.

“Where have you learned this?”

“I don’t know, mamma.”

She said then that I must have heard it read by my brother; and I remembered that it was so. From this time on I was always reciting poems, wherever I happened to be. I used to make little speeches, but in prose, for I employed the words that were natural for me, contenting myself with translating the spirit of the things that I recited without bothering much over word-by-word renderings. With my firm and very tenacious memory, I needed then only to hear a poem once to recite it, from beginning to end, without making a single mistake. I have always had a wonderful memory. I have proved it repeatedly by unexpectedly taking parts of which I did not know a word the day before the first performance.

It was thus, for instance, when I played the part of Marguerite Gauthier in La Dame aux Camélias with only four hours to learn the lines.

On the Sunday of which I have been speaking, my mother experienced the first of the nervous shocks that might have warned her, had she been able to understand, that she was destined to become the prey of a dreadful disease, which would never leave her.

From the spring which followed my first appearance at the Folies-Bergère until the time of her death she accompanied me in all my travels. As I was writing this, some days before her end, I could hear her stir or speak, for she was in the next room with two nurses watching over her night and day. While I was working I would go to her from time to time, rearrange her pillows a little, lift her, give her medicine, or some little thing to eat, put out her candle, open the window a moment, and then I would return to my task.

After the day of my debut at the Chicago Progressive Lyceum I continued my dramatic career. The incidents of my performances would suffice to fill several volumes. For without interruption, adventures succeeded one another to such an extent that I shall never undertake the work of describing them all.

I should say that when this first theatrical incident took place I was just two and a half years old.

III
HOW I CREATED THE SERPENTINE DANCE

IN 1890 I was on a tour in London with my mother. A manager engaged me to go to the United States and take the principal part in a new play entitled, “Quack, M.D.” In this piece I was to play with two American actors, Mr. Will Rising and Mr. Louis de Lange, who has since then been mysteriously assassinated.

I bought what costumes I needed and took them with me. On our arrival in New York the rehearsals began. While we were at work, the author got the idea of adding to the play a scene in which Dr. Quack hypnotised a young widow. Hypnotism at that moment was very much to the fore in New York. To give the scene its full effect he needed very sweet music and indeterminate illumination. We asked the electrician of the theatre to put green lamps along the footlights and the orchestra leader to play a subdued air. The great question next was to decide what costume I was to wear. I was unable to buy a new one. I had spent all the money advanced me for my costumes and, not knowing what else to do, I undertook to run over my wardrobe in the hope of finding something that would be fit to wear.

In vain. I could not find a thing.

All at once, however, I noticed at the bottom of one of my trunks a small casket, a very small casket, which I opened. Out of it I drew a light silk material, comparable to a spider’s web. It was a skirt, very full and very broad at the bottom.

I let the skirt dangle in my fingers, and before this little heap of fragile texture I lingered in reverie for some time. The past, a past very near and yet already far away, was summoned up before me.

It had happened in London some months before.

A friend had asked me to dine with several officers who were being wined and dined just before leaving for India, where they were under orders to rejoin their regiment. The officers were in handsome uniforms, the women in low dresses, and they were pretty, as only English women are.

At table I was seated between two of the youngest officers. They had very long necks and wore extremely high collars. At first I felt myself greatly overawed in the presence of people so imposing as my neighbours. They looked snobbish and uncommunicative. Presently I discovered that they were much more timid than I, and that we should never be better acquainted unless one or the other of us resolved to overcome his own nervousness and, at the same time, that of his companions.

But my young officers were afraid only in the presence of women. When I told them I hoped they might never be engaged in a war, and especially that they might never have to do any killing, one of them answered me very simply:

“I fancy I can serve as a target as well as any other man, and certainly the people who draw on me will understand that war is on.”

They were essentially and purely English. Nothing could unsettle them, provoke them or change them in the least. At our table they seemed timid. They were nevertheless men of the kind who go into the presence of death just as one encounters a friend in the street.

At this period I did not understand the English as I have subsequently come to know them.

I left the table without remembering to ask the names of my neighbours, and when I thought about the matter it was too late.

I recalled, however, that one of them took the trouble, in the course of our conversation, to learn the name of the hotel at which I was staying. I had quite forgotten the incident when, some time after, I received a little casket, addressed to me from India.

It contained a skirt of very thin white silk, of a peculiar shape, and some pieces of silk gauze. The box was not more than sixteen inches long and was hardly taller than a cigar box. It contained nothing else, not a line, not a card. How odd! From whom could it come?

I knew no one in India. All at once, however, I remembered the dinner and the young officers. I was greatly taken with my pretty box, but I was far from suspecting that it contained the little seed from which an Aladdin’s lamp was destined to spring for my benefit.

This, of course, was the casket which I had just discovered in my trunk.

Deep in thought I stooped and gathered up the soft, silky stuff. I put on the Hindu skirt, the skirt sent me by my two young officers, those young men who must by this time have “served as targets” somewhere out there in the jungle, for I never heard from them again.

My robe, which was destined to become a triumphal robe, was at least a half a yard too long. Thereupon I raised the girdle and so shaped for myself a sort of empire robe, pinning the skirt to a décolleté bodice. The robe looked thoroughly original, perhaps even a little ridiculous. It was entirely suitable for the hypnotism scene, which we did not take very seriously.

Photo Sarony
LOIE FULLER IN HER ORIGINAL SERPENTINE DRESS

We “tried the play on the dog” before offering it to the New York public, and I made my debut as a dancer at a theatre in a small city of which the average New Yorker had hardly heard. No one, I suppose, outside its boundaries took the slightest interest in what went on in that city. At the end of the play, on the evening of the first presentation, we gave our hypnotism scene. The stage scenery, representing a garden, was flooded with pale green light. Dr. Quack made a mysterious entrance and then began his work of suggestion. The orchestra played a melancholy air very softly, and I endeavoured to make myself as light as possible, in order to give the impression of a fluttering figure obedient to the doctor’s orders.

He raised his arms. I raised mine. Under the influence of suggestion, entranced—so, at least, it looked—with my gaze held by his, I followed his every motion. My robe was so long that I was continually stepping upon it, and mechanically I held it up with both hands and raised my arms aloft, all the while that I continued to flit around the stage like a winged spirit.

There was a sudden exclamation from the house:

“It’s a butterfly! A butterfly!”

I turned on my steps, running from one end of the stage to the other, and a second exclamation followed:

“It’s an orchid!”

To my great astonishment sustained applause burst forth. The doctor all the time was gliding around the stage, with quickening steps, and I followed him faster and faster. At last, transfixed in a state of ecstasy, I let myself drop at his feet, completely enveloped in a cloud of the light material.

The audience encored the scene, and then encored it again—so loudly and so often that we had to come back twenty times, or more.

We were on the road about six weeks. Then came our opening in one of the New York suburbs, where Mr. Oscar Hammerstein, who has since become a famous impresario, owned a theatre.

The play was unsuccessful, and even our hypnotism scene was not strong enough to save it from the attacks of the critics. No New York theatre cared to give it house room, and our company broke up.

The day after this opening at Mr. Hammerstein’s theatre a local newspaper of the little community in which we had successfully presented this “Quack, M.D.,” which the New York managers refused to touch, wrote a ridiculously enthusiastic article on what it called my “acting” in the hypnotism scene. But as the play had not “made good,” no one thought that it would be possible to take a single scene out of it, and I was left without an engagement.

Nevertheless, even in New York, and in spite of the failure of the play, I personally secured some good press notices. The newspapers were in agreement in announcing that I had a remarkable string to my bow—if I only knew how to make the most of it.

I had brought my robe home to sew up a little tear. After reading these comforting lines I leaped from the bed and arrayed only in my night-gown, I put the garment on and looked at myself in a large glass, to make sure of what I had done the evening before.

The mirror was placed just opposite the windows. The long yellow curtains were drawn and through them the sun shed into the room an amber light, which enveloped me completely and illumined my gown, giving a translucent effect. Golden reflections played in the folds of the sparkling silk, and in this light my body was vaguely revealed in shadowy contour. This was a moment of intense emotion. Unconsciously I realised that I was in the presence of a great discovery, one which was destined to open the path which I have since followed.

Gently, almost religiously, I set the silk in motion, and I saw that I had obtained undulations of a character heretofore unknown. I had created a new dance. Why had I never thought of it before?

Two of my friends, Mrs. Hoffmann and her daughter Mrs. Hossack, came from time to time to see how I was getting on with my discoveries. When I found an action or a pose which looked as if it might amount to something they would say: “Hold that. Try it again.” Finally I reached a point where each movement of the body was expressed in the folds of silk, in a play of colours in the draperies that could be mathematically and systematically calculated.

The length and size of my silk skirt would constrain me to repeat the same motion several times as a means of giving this motion its special and distinctive aim. I obtained a spiral effect by holding my arms aloft while I kept whirling, to right and then to left, and I continued this movement until the spiral design was established. Head, hands and feet followed the evolutions of the body and the robe. It is very difficult, however, to describe this part of my dance. You have to see it and feel it. It is too complicated for realisation in words.

Another dancer will obtain more delicate effects, with more graceful motions, but they will not be the same. To be the same they must be created in the same spirit. One thing original, though up to a certain point it is not so good as an imitation, is in reality worth much more.

I studied each of my characteristic motions, and at last had twelve of them. I classed them as Dances No. 1, No. 2, and so on. The first was to be given under a blue light, the second under red light, the third under a yellow light. For illumination of my dances I intended to have a lantern with coloured glass in front of the lens. I wanted to dance the last one in total darkness with a single ray of yellow light crossing the stage.

When I had finished studying my dances, I went in search of a manager. I was acquainted with them all. During my career as singer and actress I had served all of them more or less frequently.

I was, however, hardly prepared for the reception which they gave me. The first one laughed me in the face as he said:

“You a dancer! Well, that’s too good! When I want you for a theatrical part I’ll look you up with pleasure; but as for dancing, good heavens! When I engage a dancer she will have to be a star. The only ones I know are Sylvia Gray and Lettie Lind in London. You cannot outclass them, take my word for it. Good-evening.”

He had lost all respect for my perspicacity and he made fun of the idea of my being a dancer.

Mrs. Hoffmann had come with me, and was waiting in the lobby, where I rejoined her. She noted at once how pale and nervous I was. When we left the theatre it was night. We walked in silence through dark streets. Neither spoke. Some months later, however, my friend told me that all that evening I never stopped emitting little groans like those of a wounded animal. She saw that I was cut to the very quick.

Next day I had to continue my search, for necessity was spurring me on.

Mrs. Hoffmann offered me the privilege of coming to live with her and her daughter—an offer which I accepted gratefully, not having the faintest idea when and how I could ever repay her.

Some time later I had to give in; since I was known as an actress, nothing could hurt me more than to try to become a dancer.

One manager went so far as to tell me that two years of absence from New York had caused the public completely to forget me, and that, in trying to recall myself to their memory, I should seem to be inflicting ancient history on them. As I had then just passed my twentieth birthday I was extremely irritated by that insinuation, and I thought: “Would it then be necessary for me painfully to build up a reputation and to look old to prove that I was young to-day?”

Unable to restrain my feelings any longer, I told the manager what I thought.

“Hell,” he replied, “it isn’t age that counts. It’s the time the public has known you, and you have become too well known as an actress to come back here as a dancer.”

Everywhere I encountered the same answer, and finally I became desperate. I was aware that I had discovered something unique, but I was far from imagining, even in a daydream, that I had hold of a principle capable of revolutionising a branch of æsthetics.

I am astounded when I see the relations that form and colour assume. The scientific admixture of chemically composed colours, heretofore unknown, fills me with admiration, and I stand before them like a miner who has discovered a vein of gold, and who completely forgets himself as he contemplates the wealth of the world before him.

But to return to my troubles.

A manager who, some time before, had done his best to engage me as a singer, and who had absolutely refused to consider me as a dancer, gave a careless consent, thanks to the intervention of a common friend, to an interview at which I was to show him my dances.

I took my robe, which made a neat little bundle, and I set out for the theatre.

Mrs. Hoffmann’s daughter accompanied me. We went in by the stage entrance. A single gas jet lighted the empty stage. In the house, which was equally dark, the manager, seated in one of the orchestra chairs, looked at us with an air of boredom, almost of contempt. There was no dressing-room for my change of clothing, not even a piano to accompany me. But the opportunity was a precious one, all the same. Without delay I put on my costume, there on the stage and over my dress. Then I hummed an air and started in to dance very gently in the obscurity. The manager came nearer and nearer, and finally ascended the platform.

His eyes glistened.

I continued to dance, disappearing in the darkness at the rear of the stage, then returning toward the gas jet. Finally I lifted a part of my robe over my shoulders, made a kind of cloud which enveloped me completely and then fell, a wavering mass of fluffy silk, at the manager’s feet. After that I arose and waited in keenest anxiety to hear what he would say.

He said nothing. Visions of success were crowding upon each other in his brain.

Finally he broke his silence and gave my dance the name of “The Serpentine Dance.”

“There is the name that will go with it,” he said, “and I have just the music that you need for that dance. Come to my private office. I am going to play it for you.”

Then for the first time I heard an air which later became very popular, “Au Loin du Bal.”

A new company was rehearsing “Uncle Celestin” at the theatre. This company was to go on the road for several weeks before playing in New York. My new manager offered me, for this tour, an engagement at fifty dollars a week. I accepted, making it a condition that I should be featured on the placards, in order to regain in a measure the prestige I had lost.

A few days after I joined the company and made my first appearance at a distance from New York. For six weeks I appeared before country audiences, feverishly counting the hours until I should at last have my chance in the big city.

During this tour, contrary to the conditions I had imposed, I was not featured. The posters did not even announce me, and yet my dance, which was given during an interval and without coloured lights, was successful from the first.

A month and a half later in Brooklyn its success was phenomenal. The week following I made my debut in New York, at what was one of the prettiest theatres in town.

There I was able for the first time to realise my dances just as I had conceived them; with darkness in the house and coloured lights on the stage. The house was packed and the audience positively enthusiastic. I danced my first, my second, my third. When I had finished the whole house was standing up.

Among the spectators was one of my oldest friends, Marshall P. Wilder, the little American humourist. He recognised me and called my name in such a way that everybody could hear it, for they had neglected to put it on the programme! When the audience discovered that the new dancer was its old favourite comedian, the little soubrette of a former day, it gave her an ovation such as, I suppose, never another human being has received.

They called out, “Three cheers for the butterfly! Three cheers for the orchid, the cloud, the butterfly! Three cheers!” And the enthusiasm passed all bounds. The applause resounded in my ears like the ringing of bells. I was overcome with joy and gratitude.

Next morning I arose early to read the papers. Every New York newspaper devoted from a column to a page to “Loie Fuller’s Wonderful Creation.” Numerous illustrations of my dances accompanied the articles.

I buried my face in my pillow and shed every tear that, for a long time, had lurked in my discouraged soul. For how many months had I waited for this good luck!

In one of these articles a critic wrote “Loie Fuller had risen from her ashes.” Next day the whole city was plastered with lithographs, reproduced from one of my photographs, representing me larger than life, with letters a foot high announcing: “The Serpentine Dance! The Serpentine Dance!” But there was one circumstance came near giving me heart failure. My name was nowhere mentioned.

I went to the theatre and reminded the manager that I had accepted the modest salary he offered on condition that I should be featured. I hardly understood when he remarked drily that he could not do more for me.

I asked him then whether he supposed that I was going to continue dancing under such conditions.

“Nothing can compel you to do so,” answered the manager. “In any case, I have taken my precautions in case you do not care to keep on.”

I left the theatre in desperation, not knowing what to do. My head swam. I went home and consulted my friends.

They advised me to go and see another manager, and, if I secured an engagement, simply to drop the other theatre.

I went to the —— Theatre, but on the way I began to cry, and I was in tears when I arrived there. I asked to see the manager, and told him my story.

He offered me one hundred and fifty dollars a week. I was to make my first appearance at once, and sign a contract dating from the next day.

On reaching home I asked if nothing had come for me from the other theatre.

Nothing had come.

That evening my friends went to the theatre, where they saw a poster announcing, for the following evening, the initial appearance in the “Serpentine” of Miss —— ——. When they told me that piece of news I understood that my six weeks on the road had been profitably employed by my manager and one of the chorus girls to meet just this situation, and I understood, too, why my name was not mentioned on the first posters.

They had stolen my dance.

I felt myself overcome, dead—more dead, as it seemed to me, than I shall be at the moment when my last hour comes. My very life depended on this success, and now others were going to reap the benefit. I cannot describe my despair. I was incapable of words, of gestures. I was dumb and paralysed.

Next day, when I went to sign my new contract, the manager received me rather coldly. He was willing to sign only if I would give him the privilege of cancelling at his own discretion. He felt that my imitator at the Casino, announced for the same day, would diminish greatly the interest that would be felt in what he ironically called my “discovery.”

I was obliged to accept the conditions which he imposed, but I experienced all the while an access of rage and grief as I saw in what a barefaced manner they had stolen my invention.

Heartbroken, with my courage oozing, I made my appearance at the Madison Square Theatre and, to my astonishment, to my immense satisfaction, I saw that the theatre had to turn people away. And it was that way as long as my engagement lasted.

As for the other theatre, after three weeks of featuring my imitator, it was obliged to close its doors to rehearse a new opera.

IV
HOW I CAME TO PARIS

A LITTLE while after my appearance at the Madison Square Theatre I was asked to dance for the benefit of a charity at the German theatre in New York. I had forgotten all about my promise until the day of the performance, when a card arrived to call it to my mind. I had neglected to ask my manager’s permission to appear on that evening, not thinking that he would refuse to grant the privilege of my participating in a philanthropic affair.

A short time before there had taken place the first part of a painful incident which was destined to rupture the pleasant relations subsisting between the management of the Madison Square and myself. My manager’s associate had asked me as a great favour to come to open a ball given by some friends in his honour. Delighted to be of service to him, I readily agreed to do so. When I asked him the date of this affair he told me not to bother about that.

It was just then that I asked permission to dance at the German theatre for the benefit of an actress who was ill. The manager consented. At the German theatre they had engaged a Roumanian orchestra for me. The leader of this orchestra, Mr. Sohmers, an enthusiastic man, as the Roumanians are apt to be, came to see me after I had danced and foretold for me the wonderful artistic success which I was sure to meet with in Europe. He advised me to go to Paris, where an artistically inclined public would give my dances the reception they deserved. From that moment on this became a fixed idea with me—to dance in Paris. Then the manager of the German theatre proposed to me a tour abroad, beginning with Berlin.

I promised to think the matter over and acquaint him with my decision.

Some days later the famous ball took place which my manager’s associate had asked me to open. I went to it.

They took us, a friend who accompanied me, and myself, into a little drawing-room where they begged me to wait until some one should come and fetch me for my appearance on the stage. More than an hour passed. Finally a gentleman came to tell me that everything was ready. Through a corridor I reached the platform, which had been erected at the top of the ball-room. It was terribly dark, and the only light perceptible was the little ray that filtered through from one of my lanterns that was imperfectly closed. The hall looked totally empty. I saw, when I had taken my bearings, that the whole audience was disposed in the galleries, forming a balcony half-way up the room. The orchestra finished its overture and I began to dance. After having danced three times, as I was accustomed to do at the theatre, I returned to the scene to acknowledge the applause and I saw before me in luminous letters a sign with the words: “Don’t think Club.”

That looked queer to me, but I did not attach much importance to it. I bowed again to the magnificently gowned women and the men, who were all in sombre black, and then, walking through the same passage way, I once more reached the dressing-room, where I put on my outdoor clothes and left. At the door I entered the carriage that had brought me there, and while we were on our way home I kept wondering what the Don’t Think Club could be.

That worried me in spite of myself.

The next morning my friend brought me a newspaper, in which I found on the first page a long article headed:

“LOIE FULLER OPENS THE DON’T THINK CLUB.”

There followed a description of the affair and of the orgies which took place there. The article had been written with a deliberate purpose of creating a scandal. I was exasperated beyond measure. I had gone there merely to please my manager, and the humiliation inflicted upon me wounded me deeply.

Possibly he thought that I would never know where I had been. A single newspaper might print something about the affair; but most probably my manager thought it would never come to my notice. No newspaper men had been invited to the performance. There was one guest, a very little man but with a great reputation, who found himself among the invited, and he wrote the scandalous article, so I have been told.

I have since had my revenge, a terrible revenge; for this man, then at the climax of his career, so mismanaged his affairs and those of others, that he was imprisoned.

“Everybody is blaming him for the article,” my manager explained to me when I reproached him for having dragged me to this club.

That was his only excuse. He thought he was lessening the insult by offering me more money. This offer so increased my anger that I tendered my resignation. I felt in no wise under obligation to a man who I thought had morally lost all right to consideration. This was the reason for my leaving, never to return.

The notion of going to Paris possessed me after that more completely than before. I wanted to go to a city where, as I had been told, educated people would like my dancing and would accord it a place in the realm of art.

I was making at this time one hundred and fifty dollars a week and I had just been offered five hundred. I decided, nevertheless, to sign a contract with the manager of the German theatre that guaranteed me sixty-five dollars instead of five hundred. But the objective, after a tour in Europe, was Paris!

While I was dancing in New York I had to begin to invent special robes for my new dances. These were just being made and, when I was about to leave for Europe, they were ready.

The manager of the German Theatre had gone ahead and had reserved berths for us on one of the steamers.

After taking leave of my friends I was still full of hope and ambition. My mother in vain tried to share my feelings; she could not avoid painful misgivings. As for me, I wanted to think only of the good things that awaited, and to forget all the past annoyances.

During the voyage an evening entertainment was organised for the benefit of the seamen and I agreed to dance. A stage was arranged by the bridge. There with the sea for a background and with the coloured lights used for signalling as the media of illumination, I tried for the first time a series of new dances, each with a special gown.

The enthusiasm of passengers and crew knew no bounds and I felt that I had taken my first step in the conquest of a new world.

We landed in Germany. My manager came to meet us and took us to Berlin. But, to my great annoyance, I found that I was not to make my initial appearance for a month, and I could not discover in what city I was to make it.

That meant a month of inactivity.

Finally I learned that I was to make my debut, not at the Opera as my manager had promised, but in a music hall. The Opera was closed, and the music hall was the only place where I could dance.

In that event I would dance only my first dance and would exhibit only a single gown, just as I had done in New York. I then chose three of my numbers and prepared myself for my appearance. But this debut was made without personal interest. In America the best theatres offered me engagements on much better terms than those I had to accept in Europe. In Berlin I was obliged to appear where my New York manager wished. If, before signing the contract, he had told me where I should have to dance I should have declined. But when the time for my appearance was at hand I was without resources and quite at his mercy. To cap the climax my mother fell seriously ill.

At the time of which I am writing cholera had just broken out at Hamburg. My mother’s illness came on so suddenly that it was thought she was stricken with cholera. Everybody at the hotel was frightened, and we were obliged to take my poor mother to the cholera hospital.

All these circumstances, conjoined with frightfully trying weather, put me in bad shape for the struggle. I renounced everything, my pride, my highest hopes, and I started in assiduously to gain our livelihood. But I was disabled and without courage.

After a month my German manager informed me he did not care to continue my contract. He was going back to the United States with a company that he had come for the express purpose of engaging in Germany. It seemed clear to me that his only motive in bringing me to Europe had been to procure the means with which to engage this new company and take it back with him. He travelled with his wife, a pretty American woman, who had become a close friend of mine, and who reproached him most bitterly on my account.

Our manager left Berlin with his company, leaving me with only just enough money to pay my bills at the hotel when I had completed the contract that held me to the music hall in Berlin. I then had absolutely no engagement in sight. I learned that he was getting ten thousand marks—about $2,500—a month for me. And yet he had given me only about $300 a month. What was I to do? My appearance in Berlin had been deplorable and was likely to have an unfortunate influence on my whole career in Europe. My purse was empty, my mother ill. We had not the slightest hope of an engagement and we had no one to help us.

A theatrical agent, an unknown man at that time, who has since become a theatrical manager, Mr. Marten Stein, came to see me, and I tried to continue at the music hall where I was dancing. I was obliged to make concessions to keep going a week or two more, to get money enough to go away and to look for a new engagement. I kept thinking more than ever of Paris. If I could only go there!

In these circumstances Mr. Marten Stein secured for me a dozen performances in one of the beer gardens at Altona, the well-known pleasure resort near Hamburg. I earned there several hundred marks, which allowed us to go to Cologne, where I had to dance in a circus between an educated donkey and an elephant that played the organ. My humiliation was complete. Since then, however, occasions have not been lacking when I have realised that the proximity of trained horses and music-mad elephants is less humiliating than intercourse with some human beings.

Finally I left for Paris.

To economise as closely as possible we had to travel third class. But what did that matter? That was only a detail. I was going to Paris to succeed there or to sink into obscurity.

V
MY APPEARANCE AT THE FOLIES-BERGÈRE

PARIS! Paris! At last Paris!

It seemed to me that I was saved and that all my troubles were coming to an end. Paris was the port after storm, the harbour of refuge after the furious rage of life’s tempest. And I thought in my simplicity that I was going to conquer this great Paris that I had so long coveted.

In America I had often danced on important stages during the intervals between operatic acts, and I fancied that it would be the same in Paris.

Accordingly upon my arrival, which occurred in October, 1892, even before going to my room at the Grand Hotel, I instructed my agent, Mr. Marten Stein, to call upon M. Gailhard, manager of the National Academy of Music and Dancing, to whom I had written from Germany to propose my dancing at his theatre.

National Academy of Dancing!

I still believed, in my simple soul, in names. I fancied that an institution of this sort ought to be receptive of innovations in dancing.

My illusion, alas! was to be short-lived. Mr. Stein returned looking very downcast. He had been received by M. Pedro Gailhard, but that gentleman, in the deep voice which he has skilfully developed and which for twenty-one years has awakened the echoes of the directors’ office at the Opera, did not conceal from him the fact that he had no great desire to engage me.

“Let her show me her dances if she cares to,” he said, “but all I can do, in case these dances please me, would be, on condition of her performing nowhere else, to guarantee her a maximum of four performances a month.”

“Four performances? That is hardly enough,” my agent ventured to remark.

“It is too many for a dancer who before coming to Paris already has imitators here.”

Influenced by the voice and bearing of a man who had formerly played the part of Mephistopheles on the stage which he now directed, Mr. Stein did not dare to make further inquiries.

The impression made upon me by the terms that my agent brought back is easily imagined. To accept four appearances a month, even if M. Gailhard actually made a proposition to that effect, was not to be thought of. That, from a pecuniary standpoint, was altogether insufficient. I thought the matter over. My mind was quickly made up. After dinner I bundled my agent and my mother into a carriage and gave the driver the address of the Folies-Bergère, for I knew that my agent, on his own responsibility, had written to the manager of this big music hall. On the way I explained to Mr. Stein that I was governing myself by the advice that he had given me sometime before, and that I was going to ask the manager of the Folies-Bergère for an engagement.

Imagine my astonishment when, in getting out of the carriage in front of the Folies, I found myself face to face with a “serpentine dancer” reproduced in violent tones on some huge placards. This dancer was not Loie Fuller.

Here was the cataclysm, my utter annihilation.

Nevertheless I went into the theatre. I stated the object of my visit. I asked to see the manager. They told me that I could be received only at the close of the performance, and they assigned us, my mother, Mr. Stein and myself, seats in one corner of the balcony, whence we were able to follow the performance.

The performance!

I could not help poking a little fun at that performance. It would be hard to describe what I saw that evening. I awaited the “serpentine dancer,” my rival, my robber—for she was a robber, was she not, she who was stealing not only my dances but all my beautiful dreams?

Finally she came out. I trembled all over. Cold perspiration appeared on my temples. I shut my eyes. When I reopened them I saw there on the stage one of my contemporaries who, some time before, in the United States, having borrowed money from me had neglected to repay it. She had kept right on borrowing, that was all. But this time I had made up my mind to force her to give back what she had taken from me.

Presently I ceased to want to do anything of the sort. Instead of further upsetting me the sight of her soothed me. The longer she danced the calmer I became. And when she had finished her “turn,” I began to applaud sincerely and with great joy.

It was not admiration that elicited my applause but an entirely opposite feeling. My imitator was so ordinary that, sure of my own superiority, I no longer dreaded her. In fact I could gladly have kissed her for the pleasure that her revelation of inefficiency gave me.

After the performance, when we were in the manager’s presence, M. Marchand was then the man, I let him know how I felt, through the intermediation of Mr. Stein, who acted as interpreter.

The hall by this time was empty. There were only six of us on the stage; M. Marchand, his wife, the second orchestra leader, M. Henri Hambourg, Mr. Stein, my mother and I.

“Ask M. Marchand,” I said to Mr. Stein, “why he has engaged a woman who gives a feeble copy of my dances when you wrote him from Berlin to propose his talking with me.”

Instead of translating my question my “interpreter” replied:

“Are you really so sure of yourself? Have you forgotten that you have been proposing to dance at the Opera? Perhaps he knows about it.”

“That doesn’t matter,” I replied. “Put the question to him just the same. And besides, this man doesn’t know anything.”

I learned afterwards that M. Marchand spoke English and understood it as well as Mr. Stein and I. He must have had great difficulty, that evening, in checking a longing to laugh. As a matter of fact he restrained it perfectly, for we were unable to detect it, and we did not discover that he was familiar with Shakespeare’s language.

Mr. Stein forthwith translated my question.

“I engaged this dancer,” replied M. Marchand in French, “because the Casino de Paris is announcing a serpentine dance and because I cannot afford to let them get ahead of me.”

“But,” I asked, “are there other dancers of this sort at Parisian theatres?”

“No. The one at the Casino has broken her engagement. But for my part I had already engaged your imitator. As you see, she is meeting with no great success, and I fancy that you will hardly achieve it either. Nevertheless, if you care to give me a rehearsal I am at your service.”

“Thank you. You would like me to give you a rehearsal so that a thief may steal some more of my dances!”

But my agent urged me so strongly to show the manager what my dances were like, especially as compared with those of my imitator, that I decided to do so.

I put on my robes, one after the other, and began to dance. The orchestra was composed of a single violin, and for illumination I had only the footlights.

When I had finished the manager made me come into his private office and proposed to engage me then and there. I was to make my appearance as soon as the other dancer had ended her engagement.

“No,” I declared. “If I come to you this woman will have to go.”

“But,” he said, “I have engaged her. She cannot leave until the end of her agreement.”

“You have only to pay her for her performances and she will go.”

He objected then that lithographs, newspaper advertisements and other things had been prepared for her, and that, if she stopped dancing, the public might protest.

“Very well. In that case I will dance in her place, under her name, with her music, until you have arranged everything for my debut.”

The next day he paid my imitator and she left the theatre.

That same evening I took her place and I was obliged to repeat her dance four or five times.

Then we set ourselves at work seriously upon rehearsals for my debut, which was announced to occur a week later.

After I had danced twice under my imitator’s name the manager of the Folies-Bergère took me to the office of the Figaro.

I knew well that from the point of view of advertising this was an excellent idea, but I did not know until long after that my definite engagement had depended on the impression I created there. I have not forgotten that I owe my entire career to the memorable success I achieved on that occasion.

Eight days later the general rehearsal occurred, which ended only at four o’clock in the morning, and still I had been unable to complete my programme, comprising five dances: 1, the serpentine; 2, the violet; 3, the butterfly; 4, a dance the public later called the “white dance.” As a finale I intended to dance with illumination from beneath, the light coming through a square of glass over which I hovered, and this was to be the climax of my dances. After the fourth number my electricians, who were exhausted, left me there unceremoniously.

I was unwilling to make my appearance without my last dance, but, in the face of my manager’s threat to cancel our contract, I finally yielded.

Next day I was able, nevertheless, to rehearse this fifth dance, and at the time of the performance everything was ready for my initial appearance.

The enthusiasm of the audience grew progressively while I danced.

When the curtain fell after the fourth dance, the applause was deafening and the music that served as prelude to dance number five could not be heard. Upon the manager’s order the curtain was raised again and again, and the plaudits continued to deafen us. I had to yield to the inevitable; it was impossible, and useless, to keep on dancing. The four dances, with the encores, had lasted forty-five minutes and, despite the stimulus of great success, I had reached the limit of my strength.

I looked at the manager and asked:

“How about the last one?”

“We don’t need it. Those you have just danced have been enough to stir the audience up. Don’t you hear the cheering?”

A moment later we were surrounded by a great crowd and I was almost dragged to my dressing-room.

Photo Lafitte
THE DANCE OF FLAME

From that day on I had adventure after adventure. Not until long afterward was I able to get the benefit of my fifth dance. Some years later I initiated at Paris the dance of the fire and the lily, and that once again at the Folies-Bergère. I remember an ovation very similar to that at my first appearance. This time, however, I was no longer an unknown performer, as in 1892. I had numerous Parisian friends in the house. Many of them came upon the stage to congratulate me, and amongst them, Calvé. She took me in her arms, kissed me and said:

“It’s wonderful! Loie, you are a genius.”

And two big tears coursed down her cheeks. I have never seen Calvé prettier than at that moment.

Well, that is the story of my first appearance in Paris.

VI
LIGHT AND THE DANCE

SINCE it is generally agreed that I have created something new, something composed of light, colour, music, and the dance, more especially of light and the dance, it seems to me that it would perhaps be appropriate, after having considered my creation from the anecdotal and picturesque standpoint, to explain, in more serious terms, just what my ideas are relative to my art, and how I conceive it both independently and in its relationship to other arts. If I appear to be too serious I apologise in advance.

I hope that this theoretical “essay” will be better received than a certain practical essay that I undertook, soon after my arrival in Paris, in the cathedral of Notre Dame.

Notre Dame! The great cathedral of which France is justly proud was naturally the objective of one of my earliest artistic pilgrimages, I may say of the very earliest. The tall columns, whose shafts, composed of little assembled columns, rise clear to the vaults; the admirable proportions of the nave; the choir, the seats of old carved oak, and the railings of wrought iron—this harmonious and magnificent pile impressed me deeply. But what enchanted me more than anything else was the marvellous glass of the lateral rose windows, and even more, perhaps, the rays of sunlight that vibrated in the church, in various directions, intensely coloured, as a result of having passed through these sumptuous windows.

I quite forgot where I was. I took my handkerchief from my pocket, a white handkerchief, and I waved it in the beams of coloured light, just as in the evening I waved my silken materials in the rays of my reflectors.

Suddenly a tall imposing man, adorned with a heavy silver chain, which swung from an impressive neck, advanced ceremoniously toward me, seized me by the arm and led me toward the entrance, directing a conversation at me which I appreciated as lacking in friendliness although I did not understand a word. To be brief he dropped me on to the pavement. There he looked at me with so severe an expression that I understood his intention was never to let me enter the church again under any pretext.

My mother was as frightened as I was.

Just then a gentleman came along, who, seeing us completely taken aback, asked us what had happened. I pointed to the man with the chain, who was still wrathfully surveying us.

“Ask him about it,” I said.

The gentleman translated the beadle’s language to me.

“Tell that woman to go away; she is crazy.”

Such was my first visit to Notre Dame and the vexatious experience that my love of colour and light caused.

When I came to Europe I had never been inside an art museum. The life that I led in the United States had given me neither motive nor leisure to become interested in masterpieces, and my knowledge of art was hardly worth mentioning. The first museum whose threshold I crossed was the British Museum. Then I visited the National Gallery. Later I became acquainted with the Louvre and, in due course, with most of the great museums of Europe. The circumstance that has struck me most forcibly in regard to these museums is that the architects have not given adequate attention to considerations of light.

Thanks to this defect I get in most museums an impression of a disagreeable medley. When I look at the objects for some moments the sensation of weariness overcomes me, it becomes impossible to separate the things one from another. I have always wondered if a day will not come when this problem of lighting will be better solved. The question of illumination, of reflection, of rays of light falling upon objects, is so essential that I cannot understand why so little importance has been attached to it. Nowhere have I seen a museum where the lighting was perfect. The panes of glass that let the light through ought to be hidden or veiled just as are the lamps that light theatres, then the objects can be observed without the annoyance of the sparkle of the window.

The efforts of the architect ought to be directed altogether in that direction—to the redistribution of light. There are a thousand ways of distributing it. In order that it may fulfil the desired conditions light ought to be brought directly to pictures and statues instead of getting there by chance.

Colour is disintegrated light. The rays of light, disintegrated by vibrations, touch one object and another, and this disintegration, photographed in the retina, is always chemically the result of changes in matter and in beams of light. Each one of these effects is designated under the name of colour.

Our acquaintance with the production and variations of these effects is precisely at the point where music was when there was no music.

In its earliest stage music was only natural harmony; the noise of the waterfall, the rumbling of the storm, the gentle whisper of the west wind, the murmur of the watercourses, the rattling of rain on dry leaves, all the sounds of still water and of the raging sea, the sleeping of lakes, the tumult of the hurricane, the soughing of the wind, the dreadful roar of the cyclone, the crashing of the thunder, the crackling of branches.

Afterwards the singing birds and then all the animals emitted their various sounds. Harmony was there; man, classifying and arranging the sounds, created music.

We all know what man has been able to get from it since then.

Man, past master of the musical realm, is to-day still in the infancy of art, from the standpoint of control of light.

If I have been the first to employ coloured light, I deserve no special praise for that. I cannot explain the circumstance; I do not know how I do it. I can only reply, like Hippocrates when he was asked what time was: “Ask it of me,” he said; “and I cannot tell you; ask it not and I know it well.”

It is a matter of intuition, of instinct, and nothing else.

Sight is perhaps the first, the most acute, of our senses. But as we are born with this sense sufficiently well developed to enable us to make good use of it, it is afterward the last that we try to perfect. For we concern ourselves with everything sooner than with beauty. So there is no reason for surprise that the colour sense is the last to be developed.

Yet, notwithstanding, colour so pervades everything that the whole universe is busy producing it, everywhere and in everything. It is a continued recurrence, caused by processes of chemical composition and decomposition. The day will come when man will know how to employ them so delightfully that it will be hard to conceive how he could have lived so long in the darkness in which he dwells to-day.

Our knowledge of motion is nearly as primitive as our knowledge of colour. We say “prostrated by grief,” but, in reality, we pay attention only to the grief; “transported with joy,” but we observe only the joy; “weighed down by chagrin,” but we consider only the chagrin. Throughout we place no value on the movement that expresses the thought. We are not taught to do so, and we never think of it.

Who of us has not been pained by a movement of impatience, a lifting of the eyebrows, a shaking of the head, the sudden withdrawal of a hand?

We are far from knowing that there is as much harmony in motion as in music and colour. We do not grasp the facts of motion.

How often we have heard it said: “I cannot bear this colour.” But have we ever reflected that a given motion is produced by such and such music? A polka or a waltz to which we listen informs us as to the motions of the dance and blends its variations. A clear sparkling day produces upon us quite a different effect from a dull sad day, and by pushing these observations further we should begin to comprehend some more delicate effects which influence our organism.

In the quiet atmosphere of a conservatory with green glass, our actions are different from those in a compartment with red or blue glass. But usually we pay no attention to this relationship of actions and their causes. These are, however, things that must be observed when one dances to an accompaniment of light and music properly harmonised.

Light, colour, motion and music.

Observation, intuition, and finally comprehension.