La Loïe

La Loïe

Loïe Fuller (born Marie Louise Fuller; 1862-1928), the woman starring in this piece, was actually a pioneer of modern dance and theatrical lighting techniques. She performed doing many things in a a variety of productions in the Chicago area often as a child but one of her first jobs as an adult was touring with Buffalo Bill’s western melodramas act in the 1880s.

She would eventually travel to Europe and experiment with choreographing the movement of long skirts and the ways they would play with and reflect light.

Fuller would go on to patent “many of her innovations in stage lighting, including the use of chemical compounds for creating color gel, and the application of chemical salts to luminescent lighting and garments.”

I was so fascinated by this woman I decided to retain her name for this piece: La Loïe.

Historical sources utilized:

Loïe Fuller by Benjamin Joseph Falk. Photograph. 1901

Black and white delphinium (Larkspur) enlarged 6 times from Urformen der Kunst by Karl Blossfeldt. Photograph. 1928