Although, she has been called “Jeanne La Folle” (Crazy Jeanne), also “La Mélinite” for being extremely audacious in her Can Can performance, Jane Avril had a lot of class and an enormous entrepreneurial talent.   Jane, despite being a dancer who performed completely nude, was a refined, sweet, generous, fun, audacious, liberal, elegant lady with finesse and savoir-faire. French used to refer to her as a lady with “ Une personnalité distinguée”, meaning a lady of a distinguished personality. She was well read and evolved in literary circles and milieux.  She was born to a wealthy family. Much better, she was “noble”, an aristocrat, a Marquise. Her father was an Italian Marquis. Why did  she become an exotic Can Can dancer? Why did she dance naked in public places and cabarets? Why did she pose nude? Wait and see.  Jane spend her time, telling jokes, reading, perfecting her dance techniques, visiting painters studios, conversing with the most illustrious writers, authors and poets of the era and of course, regularly frequenting the famous and infamous “Le Chat Noire”. Her father was loving and caring. Her mother au contraire. She used the beat the hell out of her. So Jane, decided to run away but she was caught by her mother. At 16, she became an intern at the office of professor Charcot at “La Salpêtrière”. All the nurses at Charcot’s clinic became fond of her and tried to organize a “Bal Masqué” in her honor. In reality, she was not an apprentice nor an intern. Her mother committed her to the hospital as  “Une Folle“, meaning “Crazy”. The physicians at the hospital began to have doubts about her insanity.

Photos: Jane Avril, era posters by Toulouse-Lautrec.

They conducted further tests and psychiatric evaluations and found her to be completely sane, so, they sent her free. Instead of returning home as her mother wanted, Jane managed to  escape. Homeless and without a dime, she took refuge at “Les Filles Publiques”, not so good! Short after, she began to visit “Le Bal Bullier” on Boulevard Saint Michel where a new nickname was given to her “Fil de Soie” meaning thread of silk, because she was extremely thin. New friends at “Le Bal Bullier” invited her to go dancing at “La Closerie des Lilas”. There, by pure stroke of luck, she encountered some of the era’s most brilliant figures of literature and humanities, celebrities like  Oscar Wilde, Arsène Houssaye, Moreas, Paul Fort, France’s great Mallarmé and the illustrious French poet of a world fame, Verlaine. CONTINUES NEXT