Body Stages: The Metamorphosis of Loïe Fuller

What is dance? It is motion. What is Motion? The expression of a sensation.

What is Sensation? The reaction in the human body produced by an impression or idea perceived by the mind.

Loïe Fuller was one of the leading and most influential figures of the twentieth-century art scene. Her persona, choreographies and technical innovations have exerted a strong influence on the conceptual theories and achievements of choreographers, producers, theater and film directors, painters, sculptors, architects, and other performance artists of our times. Loïe Fuller played a decisive role in the Art Nouveau movement, she was the muse that inspired the Electricity Pavilion in 1900, and she orchestrated the first shows, in the contemporary sense of the word, in France. Through a number of photographs, paintings, sculptures and documents, this volume attempts to unravel the various strands of her extravagant life, to chart her dedication to the performance arts and to demonstrate her incredible technical inventiveness ― in short, to provide an insight into one of the most attractive and influential figures of contemporary creation.

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Loïe Fuller, born Marie Louise Fuller (Fullersburg, Illinois, 1862–Paris, 1928), was a dancer, choreographer, lighting technician, researcher, inventor of special stage effects, art curator, filmmaker, member of the French Astronomical Society and businesswoman. Moreover, from a very young age she was also a living legend; she was hailed as the muse of Art Nouveau and in 1900 had her own pavilion, designed by Henri Sauvage, at one of the most important events of the day: the World’s Fair in Paris.

Admired by Stéphane Mallarmé, Auguste Rodin, Arthur Symons, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Koloman Moser, Pierre Roche, Raoul Larche, Théodore Rivière, Jules Chéret, Umberto Boccioni, Giacomo Balla and Anton Pevsner, among many others, Fuller exercised an enormous influence on the artists of her day.