Spark of Energy
No one could identify what Fuller was doing, although artists and writers across Europe tried to capture her in motion. She seemed to be the embodiment of the progress that the exhibition was celebrating—a living, breathing spark of electricity.
Nothing was newer than harnessed electric power, and nothing else seemed to hold more promise for the future in 1900. Loie Fuller’s whirling form was not new simply because her dance symbolized the larger scientific interests of her era. More than an exotic oddity performing at a world’s fair, she was a dancer as radically different and as fueled by new energies as the industrial accomplishments on view at the exposition.
Fuller was one of the sparks that lit the fire we call modern dance. Two other dancers, Isadora Duncan and Ruth St. Denis, each performing independently of the other, added their own fuel to the early flames. These American women, each following a self-determined method of dancing, were its precursors.
Of course, they did not set out to do any such thing; nor did they call their art “modern dance.” All these three women wanted to do was to express themselves as dancers in a highly personal way. Individually and separately, they rejected ballet or theatrical show dancing, the only two concert forms of dance acceptable at the beginning of the twentieth century, when their careers flourished. Their dancing was connected only by their will to experiment, for what they performed on stage could not have been more different from the other.
La Loie literally stumbled into her dance innovation. The oldest of the three dancers, Fuller was born in Illinois in 1862, but hers was not a typical Midwestern childhood. She performed on stages as a child actress and grew up in theater, later moving from Chicago to New York.
In 1890, while rehearsing for a play, she kept tripping over the voluminous material of her costume. Eventually, she cleverly placed sticks under her skirt, allowing her the practical accomplishment of being able to lift the fabric off the floor and thus avoid falling down on stage.
Fuller’s high theatricality and her submergence of self in costume and light to create a movement effect opened up new areas of theater to dancers. The respect she gained as an innovator created an artistic climate where other innovators could flourish. The skirt dance was about to disappear, but Duncan and St. Denis would be burdened with this characterization before they banished it forever.
Tags: accomplishment, american women, child actress, dance two, dancers, dancing, embodiment, forms of dance, industrial accomplishments, isadora duncan, loie fuller, modern dance, Nothing, oddity, precursors, progress, ruth st denis, skirt, Spark, three women