Very few people know about the established and quite eccentric choreographer Mary Louise Fuller. Known as Loie Fuller, she was one of the few to actually be able to impress and scare, if possible, the infamous Isadora Duncan. She was a hypochondriac and a homosexual. She had her own scientific laboratory, knew the discoverers of radium, and was considered "marvelously intelligent" by Anatole France, who wrote the preface in her autobiography. .
By 1887, Loie was an established actress, playing leading roles at New York's Bijou Theater. After a while, Loie was finding it difficult to find work. While looking for auditions, and finding no roles, Loie was asked by her manager if she could dance. She decided that she could. "When you are starving," Loie explained, "you sometimes forget to be strictly truthful.".
Loie earned her first dancing job by pinning a cloth around herself and waving her arms, making the cloth move in a majestic manner. She told the stage manager that her act required dim lights, and then moved her arms in graceful way and received applause and a contract. This, supposedly, happened in London, and Fuller did appear in "Caprice" at the Gaiety Theatre in 1889. She named her dance "The Serpentine", and it quickly became not merely popular but the status of a fad. Many dancers in the United States were not only becoming Serpentine dancers but they were actually claiming to be Loie Fuller. Ruth St. Denis pointed out that Fuller, "probably suffered more imitators than any woman alive." .
It was very fortunate for Loie's career that she learned to use her skirt rather than her body. She was a stocky built, full-bodied woman that was not really much of a dancer. In her "Fire Dance" she did little with her body but move around in circles and wave her arms. Most of her dances consist of her arms manipulating her dress. But her costume changes to different colors and patterns and the lights surrounding her make it seem that she is doing much more than she actually is.
