Today I wanted to talk about the dancer and technological innovator, Loïe Fuller and to delve into both her scientific work and the behind-the-scenes study that contributed to her pioneering performances.
Loïe was ‘la fée lumière’ – a dancer known for her signature ‘skirt dancing’ and experimentations with concealed electric lights which she used to illuminate her flowing dresses in time to the music.
By the 1890s she was the most famous dancer in the world. Her image adorned illustrations and advertisements. Toulouse-Lautrec captured her image in a print inspired by her appearance at Folies Bergère. There were Loïe Fuller cocktails, blouses, belts, bonnets and shoes.
Her every performance was greeted with great public interest but in particular it was the choreography for her 1895 ‘Fire Dance’ entranced audiences around the world. You can see an example of it from dancer Jessica Lindberg in 2019 here
But Loïe was not only interested in developing stage technology but also the effects she could create with the actual fabric worn in her voluminous costumes.
Chiefly she wanted to make her dresses glow in the dark.
This was a quest that consumed her attention for many years and -befitting someone with a huge amount of curiosity and a lot of star power - she consulted and learnt from the very best scientists in the world.
So, in 1896, she made the trip to Thomas Edison’s Menlo Park Laboratory in New Jersey. Here she toured the site with Edison himself and was introduced to his newest creation, the Fluoroscope. This technology was to generate the newly discovered X-rays and had been built by the team only four days after the report of Wilhelm Röntgen’s exciting discovery had reached the US earlier that year.
There are many different recorded reactions to seeing the effects of X-rays for the first time. Anna Bertha Ludwig, the wife of Röntgen exclaimed: ‘I have seen my death.’ When Edward VII, then the Prince of Wales, was shown an X-ray photograph of his own hand he merely stated: ‘How disgusting!’
We know what Fuller thought of the experience thanks to a collection of her notebooks preserved in the New York Public Library, which I was lucky enough to visit back in 2018.
Loïe wrote:
"Mr Edison explained to me that the wall in the box [the machine] was covered with phosphorescent salts and these salts compressed the light as sand did water and that was why one could see the bones, they were outlined against the light because they were thick and solid and the flesh around the bones resembles matter like a veil. This curious stuff all aglow... Held me spellbound. It suddenly occurred to me that if I could have a dress permeated with that substance it would be wonderful. I asked Mr Edison if the salts would retain the luminous when the lamp was gone. He hadn't thought of that so we tried it and lo and behold the light remained."
At this point Loïe was fixated on phosphorescence, a topic Edison had also done a lot of work with and the reason for her visit. It was an observed effect that some minerals – when exposed to an external light – glowed. A mineral was said to fluoresce if it stopped glowing immediately after that light had been removed. Phosphoresce was when the glow continued for a short period of time.
Loïe was disappointed when Edison, instead of helping her research this effect further, warned her of the dangers of working with phosphorescent materials and the impact they could have on her health. It was this concern that had led to him abandoning his own research in this area and – in turn – would lead him away from experimentation with X-rays only a few years later.
Her next scientific investigation focused on the work of Marie Skłodowska Curie and Pierre Curie, a team based in Paris where Loïe also lived. The Curies had been working on another form of invisible rays, radioactivity, and had isolated two new elements – polonium and radium – from the mineral pitchblende in 1898. It was radium that Loïe was particularly interested in because the salts of radium also glowed in the dark.
Radium salts had one advantage over phosphorescent materials – they didn’t require an external light to trigger the effect and the glow was permanent. This effect was subsequently understood to be caused by its radiation agitating the nitrogen that is naturally present in the air. This vibration creates a buzz of energy, which is perceptible as a shimmer of light, just luminous enough to be visible in the dark.
However, radium in the early 1900s was a newly discovered element, time consuming to isolate and was, in consequence, the most expensive and rarest substance in the world. Loïe went straight to the original source and asked the Curies for their advice in her quest to obtain radium and create a glow in the dark butterfly wing dress.
Unfortunately she was disappointed again – the Curies advising that there was simply not enough radium in existence as well as warning her against the potential dangers of experimenting with the substance.
This initial correspondence has been presented in many histories as a rebuff from the eminent scientists to a mere *SHUDDER* dancer but it is clear that is not what happened. They became friends – Loïe gave the Curies a private performance at their home, she in turn was invited to their laboratories and watched them work. Pierre even helped her set up a laboratory, at 24 rue Cortambert, and advised on the equipment she would need to continue her experiments.
And continue she did – without necessarily taking heed of the advice of the scientists that she had sought out for advice. When Fuller debuted her ‘Radium Dance’ in 1904 at the Théàtre-Sarah-Bernhardt, Paris. the dress she wore was illuminated with a phosphorescent material.
It was also reported that she had actually managed to extract her own radium in 1905. Whilst I am not convinced that she actually did do this in theory it was a possibility. She had a laboratory, thought her relationship with the Curies she would have understood the complex process, she may even have been gifted the source mineral (pitchblende) from them.
She even had a team of laboratory assistants in the form of her pupils, young girls who were reported to work in her lab when not training or performing.
Whether or not Fuller had succeeded in isolating radium it is clear from her performance notebooks that she continued her fascination with the element and incorporated it into her work, even if just symbolically.
Her notes are full of radium – from detailed notes on what it looked like to how much it cost – to some undated performance notes from a show at the Kaiser Krone Theatre in Keil which gives some fascinating director’s notes for another ‘Radium Dance.’
The Radium is a soft-strange light.
It is like the moon
it throws no rays
it is not brilliant
and it must be seen in absolute darkness.
It is a new unknown light
and should not be looked upon
or judged by a bright light
and it should be seen very near.
By 1911 her experimentations seem to have reached fruition with a lecture scheduled in London on ‘Radium, with illustrations composed of silks which have been subjected to radium; and, by an easy transition, on her theories of movement and dancing, which will be illustrated by her little pupils.’
But in actual fact this was first postponed and then seemingly cancelled. The final reference to her work with radium was reported in the New York Times, in early February 1911, concluding that ‘as to radium being used for scientific effects on the stage or in her dances, Miss Fuller says that the new element is useless for this purpose.’
It seems that her experiments with radium were over.