A swirl of blues and greens....an ocean wave....a woman in motion. By all accounts, when she danced, Loie Fuller dominated the stage as definitively as The Great Wave Off Kanagawa dominated Mount Fuji in Hokusai's Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji. Whatever they meant by it, critics likened Fuller to a force of nature. In Joseph Paget-Fredericks' gouache, Loie Fuller performing Claude Debussy's La Mer (inspired by Hokusai) is a wave in human form. To achieve that effect Fuller converted a staircase and hundreds of square feet of silk into lapping waves. Pavel Tchelitchew, who later designed several ballets for George Ballanchine, remembered the 1925 performance for its "dreamlike costumes of trailing silk and
its phantasmagorical lighting."
Loie Fuller (1862-1928) was in images more than any other performer of her time: Toulouse-Lautrec, Koloman Moser, Jules Cheret, Joseph Paget-Fredericks (1905-1963), who became a painter, choreographer and designer, also knew Fuller as a friend from his childhood.
Fuller's parents ran a boardinghouse in Chicago. Joseph's mother, Constance Paget, was the daughter of a British journalist whose family had made a theatrical museum at their home and his father Arthur Remy von Hohenthal Fredericks was the nephew of the Russian arts minister who arranged for the Ballets-Russes to appear in Paris in 1909.
Fuller's first appearance at the Folies-Bergere on Nov. 5, 1892 created
an impression as forceful as that of the Ballets Russes. Young girls copied her clothing and
mannerisms. Stephane Mallarme,
who saw her perform a few months later, wrote: “(She) is as once an artistic intoxication
and an industrial achievement…. She blends with the rapidly changing colors
which vary their limelit phantasmagoria of twilight and grotto, their emotional
changes, delight, mourning, anger…”
But La Loie, as the French dubbed her, was no ingenue. She had toured the Midwest with Buffalo Bill Cody at age 21, acted on Broadway and, when unemployed, had lied her way into a dance troup. “When you are starving you sometimes forget to be strictly truthful.”
Loie Fuller (1862-1928) was in images more than any other performer of her time: Toulouse-Lautrec, Koloman Moser, Jules Cheret, Joseph Paget-Fredericks (1905-1963), who became a painter, choreographer and designer, also knew Fuller as a friend from his childhood.
Fuller's parents ran a boardinghouse in Chicago. Joseph's mother, Constance Paget, was the daughter of a British journalist whose family had made a theatrical museum at their home and his father Arthur Remy von Hohenthal Fredericks was the nephew of the Russian arts minister who arranged for the Ballets-Russes to appear in Paris in 1909.
But La Loie, as the French dubbed her, was no ingenue. She had toured the Midwest with Buffalo Bill Cody at age 21, acted on Broadway and, when unemployed, had lied her way into a dance troup. “When you are starving you sometimes forget to be strictly truthful.”
Untrained in classical ballet, Fuller figured out that if she wrapped herself in cloth and waved her
arms she could create powerful visual effects. She was never comfortable being called a dancer but if the term
performance artist had been in use a century ago it would have suited
her. Her choreography made modern dance possible, her use of stage lighting was an innovation in color, she danced on a mirrored floor in London. Andre Levinsohn, the French dance critic
recognized all that.
“She is a great imaginative creator of forms. Her drapes animate and organize
space…abolish geometrical space….”
In 1905 Pathe of France filmed Fire Dance,
one of her signature pieces.
With slow motion filming, shadow casting and negative images imprinted on the film stock, a twirling figure was
transformed into a moving kaleidoscope. Riveted viewers reached for comparisons to a butterfly
or an orchid. 
An impressionable, artistic young boy absorbed it all sponge-like. Joseph presented "An Hour of
Dance Impressions by Joseph Paget-Fredericks" at Berkeley when he was only sixteen.
He attended the University of California and then in
Europe he was tutored by Leon Bakst and John Singer Sargent. Together, Bakst and Pavlova sponsored his first exhibition in Paris. He became the
art director for Pavlova's world tours in 1932 and 1933. Paget-Fredericks designed the 1941 production
of Tchaikovsky Swan Lake for the
San Francisco Opera. Had he lived longer to write the books he planned, Paget-Fredericks might be as well known as the dancers he painted.
Related article posted here April 7, 2011 - Airborne.
by: Joseph Rous Paget Fredericks, undated, from the collection of the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
1. Loie Fuller Performing Debussy's La Mer ca. 1925.
2. Loie Fuller - Fire Dance.
3. Loie Fuller - Serpentine Dance.
4. Loie Fuller.
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