Loie Fuller

Loie Fuller (born Marie Louise Fuller; January 15, 1862 – January 1, 1928), also known as Louie Fuller and Loïe Fuller, was an American dancer and a pioneer of modern dance and theatrical lighting techniques.

Auguste Rodin said of her, "Loie Fuller has paved the way for the art of the future."

Early life and debut

Marie Louise Fuller was born on January 15, 1862, in Fullersburg, Illinois, on a remote farm conveniently linked to Chicago by a newly-constructed plank road. When Fuller was two, her parents Reuben Fuller and Delilah Eaton moved to Chicago and opened a boarding house. Her early exposure to the arts came through her parents - her father was a skilled fiddler and dance caller, while her mother had aspired to be an opera singer before marriage. Fuller's parents took her to the Progressive Lyceum, a hub of Freethought, on Sunday mornings.

Fuller debuted on the stage as a toddler, performing a variety of dramatic and dance roles in Chicago. Her first performance, according to her memoir, was reciting "Mary Had a Little Lamb" at a Sunday school event. Her formal dramatic debut at the age of four was at the Chicago Academy of Music, playing a young boy in Was He Right?. Fuller's career as a child performer progressed with little formal training and much variety, as she experimented with dramatic reading, singing, and dance. From 1878 to 1879, she toured with the Felix A. Vincent Company, performing in "Aladdin," a pantomime spectacle filled with magical scene transformations. This experience exposed her to important principles of stagecraft.