These writings are copyright by Jody Sperling and may not be reproduced, in part or whole, without express permission.
“Cosmic Voyages in Advance of Cinema: La Loïe Skirts the Universe” in Birds of Paradise: Costume as Cinematic Spectacle, 2014. (click to buy on Amazon)
Loie Fuller (1862-1928)
Biographical tribute essay as well as capsule biography for Dance Heritage Coalition’s site America’s Irreplaceable Dance Treasures.
http://www.danceheritage.org/fuller.html
Loie Fuller Book Review Essay
Read Jody Sperling on Rhonda Garelick’s Electric Salome & Ann Cooper Albright’s Traces of Light. Dance Films Association, Annual Review, 2008. Download PDF
Technology’s Ghosts: Loie Fuller and the Magic Lantern
Jody Sperling’s article on Loie Fuller in the Technology Issue of Dance Magazine, December 2007. Download PDF
“Loie Fuller’s Ballet of Light: Re-imagining a 1908 Media Spectacle in the Digital Age.”
Paper delivered at the Thirtieth Annual Conference of the Society of Dance History Scholars, held jointly with Centre National de la dance and Congress on Research in Dance. Published in conference proceedings, 2007.
“Sublime or Ridiculous?: Some Thoughts on Marie Leyton’s Electrical Serpentine Dance of the 1890s”
Paper delivered at the Twenty-Ninth Annual Conference of the Society of Dance History Scholars, The Banff Centre, Alberta, Canada, June, 2006. Published in conference proceedings. Download PDF
“Loie Fuller and the Magic-Lantern”
Delivered at the Dancing in the Millennium Conference, Washington, DC, 2000. Download PDF
“Skirting the Image: The Origins of Loie Fuller’s Serpentine Dance”
This is a slightly-edited version of a paper delivered at the Twenty-Second Annual Conference of the Society of Dance History Scholars, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, June 1999, and published in conference proceedings. This text was translated into Italian and appears in Danza di luce, a collection of essays about Loie Fuller published by Skira in conjuction with the Museo di Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto. Download PDF
Additional Conference Presentations/Publications:
- “A Sensational Turn: Charmion in the Pages of the World,” delivered at the Twenty-Sixth Annual Conference of the Society of Dance History Scholars, University of Limerick, Ireland, 2003.
- “Works Choreographed and Staged by Jerome Robbins,” (with Lynn Garafola) inDance for a City: Fifty Years of the New York City Ballet (ed. Lynn Garafola), Columbia University Press, New York, 1999.
- “Film and Video: Choreography for Camera ” (with Nancy Becker Schwartz) in The International Encyclopedia of Dance, Oxford University Press, New York, 1998.
Sperling has also written many articles appearing in Dance Magazine and The Village Voice.
