Jane Avril. Jane Avril was a French can-can dancer made famous by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec through his paintings.
Extremely thin, given to jerky movements and sudden contortions, she was nicknamed La Mélinite, after an explosive. She was born Jeanne Louise Beaudon on 9June 1868 in Belleville, located in the 20th arrondissement of Paris.
Her mother Léontine Clarisse Beaudon was a prostitute who was known as La Belle Élise, and her father was an Italian aristocrat named Luigi de Font who separated from her mother when she was two years old. Avril was raised by her grandparents in the countryside until her mother took her back with the intent of turning her into a prostitute.
Living in poverty and abused by her alcoholic mother, she ran away from home as a teenager, and was eventually admitted to the Salpêtrière Hospital in December 1882, with the movement disorder known as St Vitus' Dance, with symptoms that included nervous tics, thrashing of limbs, and rhythmic swaying. Under the care of Dr. Jean-Martin Charcot, the expert on female hysteria, she received various kinds of treatment, and claimed in her biography that, when she discovered dance at a social dance for employees and patients at the hospital celebrating Mardi Gras, she was cured, although a modern biography of her argues that this story is unlikely, as she was discharged in June 1884, months before any Mardi Gras celebration wo
Extremely thin, given to jerky movements and sudden contortions, she was nicknamed La Mélinite, after an explosive. She was born Jeanne Louise Beaudon on 9June 1868 in Belleville, located in the 20th arrondissement of Paris.
Her mother Léontine Clarisse Beaudon was a prostitute who was known as La Belle Élise, and her father was an Italian aristocrat named Luigi de Font who separated from her mother when she was two years old. Avril was raised by her grandparents in the countryside until her mother took her back with the intent of turning her into a prostitute.
Living in poverty and abused by her alcoholic mother, she ran away from home as a teenager, and was eventually admitted to the Salpêtrière Hospital in December 1882, with the movement disorder known as St Vitus' Dance, with symptoms that included nervous tics, thrashing of limbs, and rhythmic swaying. Under the care of Dr. Jean-Martin Charcot, the expert on female hysteria, she received various kinds of treatment, and claimed in her biography that, when she discovered dance at a social dance for employees and patients at the hospital celebrating Mardi Gras, she was cured, although a modern biography of her argues that this story is unlikely, as she was discharged in June 1884, months before any Mardi Gras celebration wo
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