Following in the footsteps
24 July 2005
Los Angeles Times
The past comes whirling back to life in historic works captured on camera.
By Lewis Segal
Revivals, reconstructions, evocations, fake antiques: The dance world’s attempt to turn its own history into box-office magic takes many forms.
Like some of Hollywood’s updated remakes, an iconic title might be all that remains of a landmark achievement after contemporary hacks are through with it. But even the worst adaptations often tell us what attracts us about classics and what we prefer to prune away.
Among recent dance releases on DVD, the uses of the past loom large. Indeed, quite apart from the lost choreography it reconstructs, the disc titled “Loïe Fuller’s Fire Dance” illuminates the process of researching and reanimating a forgotten dance in such detail that it becomes a kind of handbook on the subject.
Available from Ohio State University…the DVD includes studio and live performances by Jessica Lindberg of a career-defining 1896 Fuller solo set to Richard Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries.”
There’s also a documentary on Fuller (an American actress-turned-dancer who died in 1928), films of Fuller and her imitators, and answers to just about every question you might ask about how Lindberg pieced together this artifact of early modern dance. Shawn Hove’s editing is a model of tact - but you can also choose to see the solo straight through with no changes of camera angle.
Best of all, Lindberg’s scrupulous performance re-creates the sense of dance-metaphor that Fuller achieved with billowing fabric and colored lights, making us understand how this kind of dancing inspired audiences and formed a potent alternative to classical ballet (then in decline in Western Europe). Fuller didn’t just dance around a fire - she seemed enveloped in swirling flames, a volatile force of nature.