THE SERPENTINE DANCE
Although its origin was in a manner accidental, the Serpentine Dance was
a derivation of the Skirt Dance. The accident happened to an American,
with whose name it will always remain associated--Loie Fuller. For the
matter of that it was an accident which might have happened to any woman
at any time, and as a matter of fact it actually befell Lady Emma
Hamilton nearly a hundred years earlier. Goethe relates how at the house
of the British Ambassador at Caserta he met “a beautiful young
Englishwoman, who danced and posed with extraordinary grace.” A moment’s
whim led her to pick up two shawls of varied hues and wave them as she
danced. Struck by the brilliant effect of colour, she called to Sir
William Hamilton to hold the candles in such a way that the light shone
through the gauzy drapery. She did not pursue the discovery any further,
however--indeed in the absence of electricity it would have been of
little avail if she had. It is improbable that Loie Fuller ever heard of
this incident, for the suggestion of the Serpentine Dance came to her
quite spontaneously.
Loie Fuller was born in Chicago. It is said that she made her first bow
before the public at the immature age of two, and at eleven the
elocutionary powers which she displayed in her little temperance
lectures had given her fame throughout the state of Illinois as the
“Western Temperance Prodigy.” The only lessons that she ever received in
dancing were given her by a friend who tried to teach her the Highland
Fling, but she introduced so many variations of her own that the friend
had to abandon the attempt. At Chicago a professional musician was so
favourably impressed with her singing that he offered to give her free
tuition for two years. As Loie Fuller was gifted with an excellent
memory, assiduous in mastering the details of whatever work she was
engaged in, always willing to take any part, big or little, that was
offered her, it is not surprising that she should early have won for
herself a considerable reputation. She travelled with a touring company,
playing in both comedy and tragedy. She first appeared in New York in
_Jack Sheppard_, in which her salary was seventy-five dollars a week.
Shortly afterwards she was in the cast of _Caprice_ in London. She
returned to America to take part in _Quack M.D._ at the Harlem Opera
House. It was while rehearsing for this piece that she received from a
young Indian officer, whom she had met in London, a present which was to
change her whole career.
One morning a box was delivered at the hotel where she was staying, and
on opening it she found that it contained an Eastern robe of fine white
silk, the sort that passes through a ring uncreased. The difficulty--not
infrequently incidental to presents--was to know what to do with it. To
cut it up would have been a desecration. The quality of the texture was
so rare that the piece was fine enough for a museum. Yet its excessive
length rendered it useless as a dress without mutilation. But no woman,
certainly no American woman, could receive such a present without
endeavouring to exhaust all its possibilities as wearing apparel. Taking
a piece of string, Loie Fuller fastened the material loosely about her.
While playfully waving the soft folds of silk in the air she caught
sight of herself in a mirror facing the window. At that moment the sun’s
rays transfigured the dress into a mass of shimmering light. The beams
dancing among the transparent folds of the Eastern material gave it an
indescribable delicacy. So strange and beautiful was the effect that the
dancer stood for hours before the mirror lost in admiration. She tried
innumerable variations of pose, and all were delightful. Suddenly while
gazing at the floating clouds of sunlit drapery there came a sound of
distant music. The melody was one that the dancer knew well, and in step
to the music she danced round the room, tossing the light billowy
material about her. At that moment the Serpentine Dance was born.
Loie Fuller devoted the next few months to developing the novel effects
which she had discovered and to inventing an accompaniment of slow,
gliding steps such as would best accord with the involutions of the
skirt rising and falling upon the air.
The invention of the Serpentine Dance coincided with the discovery of
electricity as a method of lighting the stage. Until that time gas alone
had been used. Loie Fuller immediately saw the possibilities of the new
scientific illumination, and with the aid of a few friends she devised a
means by which the effect of vivid sunshine could be obtained through
the use of powerful electric lights placed in front of reflectors. Then
various experiments with colour were tried; for the white light of the
electricity were substituted different shades of reds, greens, purples,
yellows, blues, by the combination of which innumerable and wonderful
rainbow-like effects of colour were obtained. Played upon by the
multitudinous hues, the diaphanous silk gave an impression of startling
originality and beauty. Coming at a time when the artistic lighting of
the stage was scarcely studied at all, the riot of colour created a
sensation. Nothing like it had been seen before. The old-fashioned
limelight, the flickering gas-jets, the smoking red and blue flames dear
to the Christmas pantomime, paled before this discovery of science which
apparently possessed inexhaustible possibilities as a stage illuminant.
Loie Fuller introduced her new dance with its accessories to the variety
stage in the States, where she soon became famous. But it was not until
she came to Europe that her performance received its full meed of
appreciation, not as a mere raree-show sandwiched in between the turns
of acrobats and performing seals, but as a thing of intrinsic beauty.
She visited first Germany and then Paris. The Parisians, who have the
habit in common with the ancient Athenians of spending their time in
nothing else but either to tell or to hear some new thing, welcomed the
novelty of her dancing and quickly adopted her as “La Loie.” Her début
at the Folies Bergère was a triumph. To the accompaniment of the
tinkling strains of Gillet’s “Loin du Bal”--a melody inevitably
associated with Loie Fuller’s dancing--the dazzling figure of light
suddenly shone out of the gloom of the darkened stage like some
mysteriously illuminated flower, fluttering its petals in the breeze. On
batons held in each hand were hung yards upon yards of shimmering
gossamer fabric. The least movement of the wand sent the airy mass
floating in undulating billows and twisting in streaming spirals. And as
the multitudinous moving forms succeeded one another, the light from
below shifted through all the combinations of the colours of the
rainbow. “La Loie” immediately became the rage. The management of the
Folies Bergère engaged her for three years at the handsome salary of two
hundred pounds a week--an engagement which unfortunately circumstances
prevented her from fulfilling. Not unnaturally, therefore, when some
time afterwards she revisited America, she was enthusiastically welcomed
on the sacred stage of New York’s Metropolitan Opera House.
Strict connoisseurs of the dance are disposed to scoff at Loie Fuller’s
performance, but the fact must not be overlooked that the arrangement of
the drapery is not such an easy matter as might be supposed when viewed
from the other side of the footlights. When the enormous dimensions of
the skirt are taken into account, the achievement of managing it with
grace is not altogether to be despised. The strain on the arms is
severe. To wave them in such a manner that the folds of the skirt do not
become entangled with one another, and that the whole of it is in motion
at the same time, is a feat of dexterity difficult of accomplishment.
Certainly the crowd of imitators who sought notoriety in this style
never achieved the variety and beauty of the effects which “La Loie”
obtained. Amateurs who took up the dance in the enthusiasm of the moment
gave exhibitions of embarrassed entanglement that provided their
audience with a more amusing entertainment than they had anticipated. I
have heard of at least one lady, who elected to follow in Loie Fuller’s
footsteps for the sake of charity, becoming so enveloped in her hundred
yards of drapery that she had at last to be carried ignominiously from
the stage in the arms
[Illustration: LETTY LIND
_Photograph: Ellis & Walery_]
of an attendant and unravelled behind the scenes like a twisted ball of
string.
After it was first introduced, the Serpentine Dance underwent much
elaboration. Not only were various harmonies of colour thrown upon the
dress, but also strange and wonderful patterns of flowers and lace and
barbaric designs. The variety of effects thus obtained were endless. At
one moment the skirt was a moving wave of rose-pink; the next it had
changed to a dark purple on which gleamed golden stars; afterwards it
took the design of a Japanese embroidery; and again it became a flame of
fire burning in the darkness. And not content with these bewildering
displays, some of those whose business it is to refine upon vulgarity
devised a startling and terrible novelty--they utilised the dancer as a
backcloth and projected upon her photographs of the prominent people of
the day!
Among the most famous of Loie Fuller’s dances were the Widow Dance,
which she danced in a black robe, the Rainbow Dance, the Flower Dance,
the Butterfly Dance, the Good-night Dance and the Mirror Dance. In the
latter the multiplication of mirrors gave the appearance of eight Loies
dancing at the same time, the whole stage being bathed in a flood of
light and filled with a maze of cloud-like vestures. But the most
successful elaboration of the Serpentine Dance was that known as the
“Danse du Feu.” It is said to have owed its birth to another happy
accident. It was originally designed for Loie Fuller’s play _Salomé_, in
which it was the dance commanded by Herod. It was called “The Salute of
the Sun,” as it drew its inspiration from the effects of the sunset. The
Paris audience, however, mistook its intention. Overlooking the evening
light which gilded the pinnacles of Solomon’s temple, they saw only the
fiery rays playing upon the dancer’s dress, and exclaimed with delight,
“A fire dance, a fire dance!” With her fertile imagination La Loie saw
the possibility of the new idea and determined to give them a fire dance
indeed.
As in all other Serpentine variations, the Fire Dance necessitated a
vast paraphernalia of accessories and an army of associates. The
dancer’s dress was a voluminous smoke-coloured skirt, to which long
strips of the same material were loosely attached. She danced in the
centre of a darkened stage before an opening in the floor through which
a powerful electric light shot up flame-coloured rays. At first only a
pale indecisive bluish flame appeared in the midst of the surrounding
darkness; little by little it took shape, quickened into life, trembled,
grew, mounted upwards, until it embraced all the stage in its wings of
fire, developed into a mighty whirlwind in the midst of which emerged a
woman’s head, smiling, enigmatical, while a shifting phosphorescence
played over the body that the lambent flames held in their embrace. The
effect has been described as a superhuman vision. Undoubtedly from the
point of view of sensationalism, “La Danse du Feu” was little short of
an inspiration.
The Fire Dance became popular. The stages of all the variety theatres in
Paris became enveloped in flame. Legions of dancers waving burning
veils, under a cross-fire from masked batteries of limelight men, took
possession of the stage. The art of dancing appeared about to perish in
a general conflagration. Ballets were converted into luminous
symphonies. Such themes as _Les Amours du Roi des Tenèbres pour
l’Aurore_ and _Arc-en-ciel_ gave marvellous scope for the display of the
talents, if not of the dancers, at any rate of the electricians. The
common light of day was henceforth too meagre to please; every
atmospheric effect from dawn to sunset was exhausted; moonlight was
turned on in floods and the night skies were ransacked for comets and
meteors; the kingdom of faery was invaded and despoiled of its sheen by
intrepid managers, who poured upon the stage from electric projectors
the light that never was on land or sea.
It is doubtful whether this invention of Loie Fuller comes within the
sphere of dancing in the proper sense of the word at all. The Serpentine
Dance has no steps, no gestures, no poses, none of the usual criteria by
which dancing can be judged. The function of the limbs is merely to put
measureless lengths of drapery in motion. The dancer juggles with stuffs
and veils as others with knives and billiard balls. Loie Fuller’s chief
merit was her faculty of invention. The best part of her work was done
off the stage. When the dance began it was the activity of the army of
operators in the wings that became the centre of interest. If we were
adequately to discuss the theory of the Serpentine Dance we should have
to converse of electricity and optics. It belongs to the realm of
science rather than of art. It is an art of electricians and mechanics;
it is they, and not the lady upon whom they operate, who should come
before the footlights to take the applause and receive the floral
tributes of the audience.
Although Loie Fuller was an expert in the art of theatrical illumination
rather than in that of dancing, that she possessed a considerable
artistic talent is unquestionable. Her love of colour amounted to a real
passion. She was peculiarly sensitive to its effects. Every colour had a
different influence upon her; she was unable to dance the same measure
in a yellow light as in a blue. There was something more than
sensationalism in her wonderful Lily Dance, when she disposed the
serpentine skirt in such a way that it floated across the stage like the
bizarre and gigantic flower of a strange dream; in her Rose Dance, when
she sank down covered with crimson petals; in her Radium Dance, one of
the most beautiful effects of colour and lighting ever seen upon the
stage, almost prohibitive on account of its costliness; in her Fire
Dance, which was full of a kind of demoniacal splendour, the madness of
a hashish-begotten delirium.
She owed her success very largely to her immense capacity for taking
pains. No detail was too small to demand her attention. She had
miniature models of the stage constructed for her, with which she
conducted her experiments. The complicated lighting apparatus was
managed by her brothers, with whom she practised almost daily, inventing
and elaborating new effects. She devised with equal care the design of
her dresses. The secret of their shape was jealously guarded. On leaving
the theatre, her mother, who always accompanied her, enveloped her in a
huge black cloak. One silk gown was painted by artists in sections, and
the artists themselves had no idea as to what their work was intended
for.
Loie Fuller herself is perfectly aware of the limitations of her
dancing. She has made her genial apologia as follows:--“To-day
everything is governed by laws and precedents, and as I obey no laws of
the dancing schools and follow no precedents, I suppose, you know, that
really I am not a dancer at all! I have never studied, and I don’t
believe the ancient Greek dancers ever studied how to move their feet,
but danced with their whole bodies--with their head and arms and trunk
and feet. I believe that they studied more the _impression_ that they
wished to convey by their dancing than the actual way of dancing.” The
criticism that she ignored the obvious fact that no human being was
really necessary in her performance at all, and that a small motor or
gas-engine could have done the work with equal animation and less
fatigue, is a little less than just.
Latterly La Loie has come under the influence of Miss Isadora Duncan. In
Paris she directs a school of young children, whom she instructs in the
“natural” style of dancing. Her pupils appeared in London in 1908, when
they performed Mozart’s ballet, _Les Petits Riens_. The performance was
no less notable for its lighting than for its grace of movement, as each
of the fourteen movements of the ballet was seen against a great open
sky, changing with the history of the day from dawn to sunset.
The influence of Loie Fuller upon the theatre will always be felt,
particularly in the lighting of the scene and in the disposition of
draperies. But she was never a great dancer. She was an apparition.