Traces of Light: Absence and Presence in the Work of Loie Fuller

by Ann Cooper Albright

Overview

One of the most famous dancers of the early 1900s, Loïe Fuller created an extraordinary sensation in Paris with her manipulations of hundreds of yards of silk, swirling high above her and lit dramatically from below. Her work inspired artists such as Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Auguste Rodin, and Stéphane Mallarmé, and she embodied many of the decorative themes of Art Nouveau. Because her work highlights important issues in dance such as the role of technology in defining a dancing signature, the emergence of a modern movement sensibility, and the role of popular entertainment in early modern dance, Fuller is a critical figure through whom to study the changing representations of women dancers in the early twentieth century. Author Ann Cooper Albright places Fuller in the context of fin-de-siècle culture and offers a compelling analysis of Fuller's innovations in lighting and movement that includes full-color reproductions of original posters, archival photos, and magazine and newspaper clippings. Traces of Light adds significantly to the literature on twentieth-century dance, illuminating a pioneer who helped to shape modern performance and stagecraft. There is a digital web companion to this book at http://learningobjects.wesleyan.edu/wespress/traces/.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780819568427
Publisher:	Wesleyan University Press
Publication date:	09/04/2007
Pages:	248
Product dimensions:	7.10(w) x 10.20(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

ANN COOPER ALBRIGHT teaches dance at Oberlin College, where she is also chair of the gender and women’s studies program. She is the head of the editorial board of the Society of Dance History Scholars, which produces the series Studies in Dance History.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Author's Note
Tracing the Light
Serpentine Signatures: Inscription and Representation in Loïe Fuller’s Early Dances
Becoming Light: Engaging the Dynamics of Color and Space
Born in America, Made in Paris: Loïe Fuller and the Exposition Universelle of 1900
Femininity with a Vengeance: Strategies of Veiling and Unveiling in Loïe Fuller’s Performances of Salomé
Staging the Self: Expressive Bodies and Autobiographical Acts
Resurrecting the Future: Body, Image, and Technology
Notes
Bibliography
Index

What People are Saying About This

Deborah Jowitt

“Onstage, Loïe Fuller's dancing body metamorphosed into lilies and flames. Albright's words—forged both through extensive research and by physically experiencing Fuller's movement—bring the artist captured in the book’s many illustrations to powerful, three-dimensional life.”

Susan Leigh Foster

“Rich in meticulous scholarship, Albright’s biography provides a feast of insights into Loïe Fuller’s life and times, and an exciting new model for dance scholarship.”