Jane Avril (9 June 186817 January 1943) 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. Biography She was born Jeanne Louise Beaudon on 9June 1868 in Belleville, in the 20th arrondissement of Paris (though her biographer, Jose Shercliff—whose account of the dancer's life is highly romanticised—employed the surname “Richepin” in her publication). 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 Avril 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 ball 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 would take place. Regardless, she incorporated some of the mannerisms into her dance style, but it is unclear if she was actually afflicted by the condition or if it was simply a marketing strategy, as nervous conditions such as hysteria were associated with elegance by writers of the time (or both), She was certainly known for her unusual style, which was described as "an orchid in a frenzy". The Belgian author Frantz Jourdain described her as "this exquisite creature, nervous and neurotic, the captivating flower of artistic corruption and of sickly grace". On leaving the hospital, after a failed romance with a doctor, Avril pondered committing suicide, but was taken in by Parisian prostitutes. Working at whatever day jobs were available, including as a secretary to Arsène Houssaye, as a rider or acrobat at the and as a cashier at the Exposition Universelle in 1889, at