Related Features
IMPRESSIONS: Paul Taylor Dance Company's Fall Season at Lincoln Center
DAY IN THE LIFE OF DANCE: Jody Sperling Brings La Loie to The Paul Taylor Season
IMPRESSIONS: "OBSESSED WITH LIGHT" a Documentary on Loie Fuller at the Quad Cinema
By Deirdre Towers/Follow @deirdre.towers on Instagram
View Profile |
More From This Author
Published on December 17, 2024
Loie Fuller, a Picture from the Film "Obsessed with Light"
Directors: Zeva Oelbaum, Sabine Krayenbühl
Executive producers: Susan Margolin, Ruedi Gerber, Denise Benmosche, Elizabeth Rodriguez Chandler
Editor: Sabine Krayenbühl
Cinematography: Claudia Raschke, Robert Richman
Cast: Erin Anderson
December 13, 2024
Zeva Oelbaum and Sabine Krayenbuhl, the directors of the fascinating documentary OBSESSED WITH LIGHT, convince us of Loie Fuller’s legacy as a muse. A midwestern vaudeville performer who performed with Buffalo Bill before becoming a sensation in Paris, Fuller (1862-1928) continues to influence artists and producers of spectacles. Fuller widened the habitual focus of western dance on narratives and the physical body, with all its literal limitations. Her manager, also her life-time companion, said that Fuller was not so much a dancer, as a scientist who used theatre as a scientist uses his lab.
The film combines archival footage, a voice-over by Cherry Jones, and commentary by a wide range of artists, bouncing back and forth across a century to demonstrate just how prescient were Fuller's mastery of light and color design, as well as how avant-garde were her erotic abstractions. We hear the following artists sing their praises of Fuller: Moses Pendleton, the founder of Pilobolus; choreographer Bill T. Jones, designers Iris Van Herpen and Maria Grazia Chiuri; theatre director Robert Wilson; puppeteer Basil Twist. Wilson says, she was “a painter of light.” Ola Maciejewska, a choreographer presented by Alliance Francaise in NYC a year ago, explains how she owes everything to Fuller, yet departs from her by stripping color from the equation, opting for black cloth.
Immersed in a kinetic cocoon of fabric manipulated by hand-held rods, Fuller meditated on theatrical essentials: illusion, dynamics, rhythm, color, energy, and light. This queer artist had neither beauty nor connections. She had neither a target audience, nor any means to promote her work. Her art had to sell itself. Her drive, stamina, and curiosity about the unknown made her a force, not only in dance coupled with technology and lighting design, but also in women’s liberation. Fuller's viewers had to expand their expectations of how a woman might express herself.
The film reminds us that "it was all she could do to stay ahead of her imitators." Fuller was the first choreographer to copyright her dances and sued to protect her work as early as 1893. She befriended Thomas Edison and Marie Curie to learn from them the secrets of electricity and radium and how to incorporate her findings into her spectacles. She lost part of one hand in one of the process, but dismissed the injury. Endless hours were spent exploring ways to understand where and how to place her lights, what colors to cross. Continually experimenting with ideas to improve her Serpentine Dance, she says in the film after a gruesome surgery to combat cancer, “I have still so much to do.”
The documentary continually returns to rehearsals of NYC based artist Jody Sperling, who has carried the torch for Fuller for decades. For the fall 2024 season, The Paul Taylor Dance Company included “Vive La Loïe!” and “Clair de Lune,” two revivals of Sperling’s Fuller inspired choreographies. Sperling also choreographed the Fuller biopic THE DANCER.
After its theatrical run at The Quad, OBSESSED WITH LIGHT opens in Los Angeles at Nuart on December 20th, 2024
