Eugénie Fougère

Eugénie Fougère
Eugénie Fougère in 1893 (Picture by Napoleon Sarony)
Born	Marseille, April 12, 1870
Died	Unknown, but after 1934
Nationality	French
Occupation	Vaudeville performer

Eugénie Fougère (Marseille, April 12, 1870 – unknown) was a French vaudeville and music hall singer. She was often called a soubrette − a flirtatious or frivolous woman − known for her eye-catching outfits, frisky movements, suggestive demeanor, and for her rendition of the popular "cakewalk dance," which in her own style included "negro" rhythms and paces. She should not be confounded with the frequenter of the French demi-monde also named Eugénie Fougère although the two knew each other, mixed in the same circles and even lived in the same street in Paris for a while.

Fougère's first appearance was at the age of 12 in Avignon. At the age of 15 she started her career at the Café des Ambassadeurs in Paris, where she would live the rest of her life. Fougère became a popular and excentric singer (gommeuse) and dancer that performed in famous theatres, such as the Folies Bergère and L'Olympia.

Her first successes were as a chanteuse épileptique (epileptic singer), a genre that "created a style of sexual lewdness combined with clowning, corporeal contortions, and grimaces: the creation of a female grotesque." Epileptic singers, like Polaire and Fougère, were one of the biggest attractions in Parisian night-life for the last quarter of the 19th century, due to the commercial attraction of obscenity and sexual provocation.

Just like Polaire and Mistinguett, she became known for her "racially ambiguous" dancing techniques that she applied to ragtime and the popular "cake walk" dance of the time, which became a rage at the end of 1902. The ambiguous "cake walk" became very popular quickly and Fougère appeared on the 18 October 1903 cover of Paris qui Chante dancing to the song Oh ! ce cake-walk. The lyrics interconnected African and American dance, monkeys and epilepsy. A popular theorist of "negro dance," Andre Levinson, complied that it is impossible for Europeans to recreate the moves seen by African dance, and that is why the public is amazed by it.