The American dancer Loïe Fuller was responsible for many innovations in costuming, production design, and even colored stage lighting. Her work spawned countless imitators at the time and has had a strong influence on modern dance. In her debut at the Folies-Bergère in 1892, her set included her signature serpentine dance, and the white dance, in which fabric whirled around her, bathed in the glow of continually shifting colored lights. Many artists attempted to capture the effect of Fuller’s magical performances, including Lautrec, who made sixty impressions of this masterful lithograph, each in a different combination of colors and some dusted with metallic pigments.
Gallery label from The Paris of Toulouse-Lautrec: Prints and Posters, July 26, 2014–March 22, 2015.
