Alex Mar

Originally posted on Tales to Tide You Over

Loïe Fuller, or La Loïe, is the inventor of modern dance as we know it. She transfixed her audience through movement embellished with light and costume design. This short history reveals the moment where she takes a small, uncredited part and creates something new. As with most novelty, it doesn't take beyond the performance. In part because of her ordinary appearance, she can find no support in the late 19th Century United States as an show more actress.

She switches her interest to dance performance and turns to Paris, France, to find a willing audience. La Loïe becomes a star so popular that she's internationally well-known and admired. This book follows both her artistic progress and her life, including her romantic relationship with a cross-dressing woman (or possibly transman). It brings to light a bit of forgotten history, pointing to her brilliance in use of illumination, choreography, and even chemistry as she continues to push the barriers of what is possible. At the same time, her singlemindedness doesn't always work in her favor, as this account shows.

History may have forgotten her beyond mis-labeled, and rare, early footage, but during her era, La Loïe is famous. She's welcomed by the elite and scientists, who let her in to see research in progress. Edison tries to convince her to be filmed with no success, but some research his company pursues ends up embellishing her dance. Copycats spring up, appearing in early films when she herself holds firm to the transient nature of performance. She's unwilling to trust scientists to preserve her performances without corrupting them.

When visiting the Curies, she tries to convince them to allow her to use some radioactive materials in her performance. They refuse to expose an unsuspecting audience to what they already suspect of being dangerous, much to her disappointment.

These are just a few of the encounters described within. It's a fascinating look at how she was perceived in her own time, and her lasting impression on many aspects of dance performance for all her name is all but lost. The book also gives a glimpse of the changing times as cinema impinges on the world of live performances. Recordings might reduce the impact of performances, but at the same time, film makes the art available to the masses instead of only the wealthy elite. Even the Edison/Tesla conflict is given some space.

This is a short, evocative, and at times, lyrical narrative of a dancer's life who created her own techniques that still influence modern dance today. I enjoyed learning her history, especially in how it comes along with a sense of the changing era. The world trembled on the edge of a technological leap forward that would make the fascination with live performances dim as cinema brought even grand operas to a stage within the budget of the average person. And yet, because of her own wish for an ethereal performance, she refuses to grace the repetitive format of film. La Loïe has faded from the public's memory until any of her filmed imposters is mistaken for her.

Two other elements added depth to this fascinating account.

She was not a beautiful, slender woman, but rather captivated audiences with her style and graceful choreography. La Loïe used light and moving fabric for a living canvas until audiences forgot her nontraditional appearance and became enamored of her art.

The second is simply this...she lived to explore new enhancements that would strengthen her next performance, becoming as much a chemist and light scientist as a performing artist. She was ahead of her time in many aspects. I'm glad to have met her through this moving account and its awareness of both the social mores and the scientific breakthroughs making her moment all that more exceptional.

P.S. This title and the Inventions-Untold Stories of the Beautiful Era collection is available for purchase, and to borrow, on Amazon. show less

This is a perplexing book. It's partially investigative journalism but partially spiritual conversion memoir, and it does neither 100% well exactly because the author doesn't know herself which category her experiences fall into. This will be of interest to those who are interested in America's religious minority communities, but likely not to others. I would be interested to see where Alex Mar lands in her religious journey in another 10 years and what her take on this book is, then.

As a show more note, there is a disturbing section of this book that goes into a very dark subset of witchcraft including necromancy and graverobbing. I have read quite a bit about American Wicca and never came across anything like this before -- it's very disturbing and I truly hope we are reading the ravings of an unstable daydreamer rather than true acts (they are technically unverified by the author). This section is not for the squeamish. show less

Through most of this book I am never certain whether I am reading journalism or spiritual memoir. The spiritual neediness of the author seems to be the major theme of the book, as she explores various options on the Neopagan spectrum without fully committing to any. Lack of such commitment, is not of course, a problem for a journalist seeking to give an objective account of the beliefs and practices of various groups. However, one cannot help but feel that the author's failure to find her show more path affects her ability to be objective. The groups she describes are the Feri tradition of Witchcraft, the Ordo Templi Orientis magical order, an unnamed group of necromancers who pray to Santa Muerte, and the Coru, a group founded by a former Feri priestess dedicated to the Celtic goddess Morrigan. The information in the book is interesting and seems accurate, but is so mixed in with personalities that it difficult to decide what is doctrine (if doctrine there be) and what is individual preference and quirk. Should probably be read by Neopagans and Wiccans, if only to be able to respond to questions about it. show less

Anyone who doubts the value of a good editor need only pick up this book.
What a jumble this is.
The first third is very good. Then comes the interminable middle where I, like many other readers, simply gave up and skipped a lot of pages. It's just boring. And finally the end, a sort-of conclusion - and readers are really in need of a strong conclusion.
A key issue is that this book has no real focus; instead, it is the story of many lives that were part of, or came to be part of, the terrible show more moment when a woman was murdered. There is the killer and her friends and her family, the dead woman and her children, a judge, attorneys, a sister, a grandson and his complicated life, priests, reporters, and the author herself. Perhaps the writer was thinking this would give readers an understanding of the complexity of this case and how it touched so many lives - but we're not interested. The story here is Paula, the killer - who she was, how she became that person, and how her life was tragically shaped by her actions. But apparently the author was just too overwhelmed by information, and too determined to assert her own views, to just write a good book that would have allowed readers to come to their own conclusions. show less