Dance Innovator. Born Marie Louise Fuller in Fullersburg, Illinois, she made her stage debut in Chicago at the age of four. For more than twenty years she then toured with stock companies, burlesque shows, vaudeville, and Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. Legend has it that while rehearsing the play ‘Quack, M.D.’ in 1891, she was inspired by billowing drapes of silk. She began experimenting with varying lengths of silk and different colored lighting and gradually evolved her famous Serpentine Dance during which lengths of silk were gracefully manipulated under constantly changing colored lighting. The dance debuted in New York in February 1892. That fall she took her act to France where she debuted her Fire Dance at the Folies-Bergère during which she danced on glass illuminated from below. She became the toast of avant-garde Paris; Toulouse-Lautrec, Jules Cheret and Auguste Rodin, all eventually produced works based on her act. A Lumière film of 1896 featured the Serpentine Dance, while Pathé productions included ‘La Loïe Fuller’ filmed about 1900, a longer version ‘La Loïe Fuller’ produced in 1901, and a color film ‘Loïe Fuller’ in 1905. In 1908 she published a memoir, ‘Quinze ans de ma vie’ it was published in English as ‘Fifteen Years of a Dancer’s Life’ in 1913. She held many patents related to stage lighting used in her act, including chemical compounds for creating color gel and for stage costumes. After World War I she performed infrequently, instead she taught at her school in Paris sending her dance companies to tour Europe. In 1926 she made her last visit to the United States with her friend, Queen Marie of Romania. In 1927 she made her final stage appearance in her Shadow Ballet in London. She then retired to her Paris home where she succumbed to breast cancer little more than a year later. (bio by: Iola)  Family links:  Parents:  Ruben Fuller (1828 – 1890)