Jane Avril
Jane Avril (nee Jeanne Richepin; born May 31, 1868 in Paris, † January 16, 1943 ibid ), also Mélinite called, was a French dancer.
Life
Like its predecessor, the Moulin Rouge, La Goulue, Jane Avril was only about sixteen years old when she began her career. This was preceded by a heavily loaded childhood and adolescence: her father, the Italian Marchese Luigi de Font, had left the family and of her mother, she was beaten. Finally, Jane Avril was sent to the mental hospital Hôpital de la Salpêtrière, where Jean -Martin Charcot conducted some of her experiments. For this mental hospital she was finally dismissed only because the nurses were impressed by her dancing talent.
Jane Avril began her dancing career as an autodidact, because she had never sound dancing lessons. With dance improvisations to waltz music in Bal Bullier and 1889 as " riding the end of Beauty " at the Hippodrome, she began to earn money with their performances. At the opening of the Moulin Rouge on October 6, 1889 Jane Avril stepped (also called Mélinite ) with a solo and was next to La Goulue to stardom.
Jane Avril never danced without a hat, usually without a partner and participated only rarely in the quadrille naturaliste. On many works by Henri de Toulouse -Lautrec because it acts also lonely and unhappy, on the other hand here is a special aura as well as their sophisticated wardrobe detained. Henri de Toulouse- Lautrec met her for the first time at the Moulin de la Galette and portrayed them in the years 1892-1893 several times. It created several posters that they were commissioned to him, such as for their appearances in 1893 at the Jardin de Paris on the Champs- Elysées.
Artists and writers like Arsène Houssaye, Alphonse Allais, Pierre- Auguste Renoir and Teodor de Wyzewa were among her friends and admirers; the latter her even devoted a chapter in his novel Altenvalbert ou d'un Jeune Homme Les Récits.
Jane Avril dancing at the famous cabaret Le Chat Noir, the first theater of its kind in Paris, at the Casino de Paris and appeared at the Folies Bergère as Pierrot in a ballet - pantomime. 1897 she gave a successful stint at the Palace Theatre in London, a guest performance led them to Madrid. 1910, she gave birth to a son; later she married the painter Maurice Biais, who after a miserable life outside the capital leaving in 1926 as a penniless widow.
During the First World War re- appearances followed in numerous charity events. In August 1933, her memoirs in " Paris Midi " were published. On the occasion of a Toulouse- Lautrec Balls she appeared on 31 May 1935, once at the Moulin de la Galette. On June 22, 1939 charity event was organized for them.
Only once, in 1941, at the age of 73 years, she returned for a " grand finale " to Paris. Jane Avril died at the age of almost 75 years on 16 January 1943 at the Pavillon des Vieilles in the Rue de la Saida in Paris and found their final resting place in Père Lachaise.
Jane Avril is a ' central supporting character ' in the documentary novel "The Book of Blanche and Marie" by Per Olov Enquist, the author is the life of Marie Curie and Blanche Wittman.
Works
- Paris midi. Memoires, Fayard, Paris, 1933.