Video and computers have, since the end of the 20th century, become partners of choice for contemporary dance that is more attentive to the spirit of the times. And today it happens that the dancers' bodies become their own phantom of pure, immaterial light through the 'capture' of movement directly from the joints of the dancer in motion. Sensors applied to the muscles register the body's impulses and transform them into lines of force drawn in the air, with no more weight or flesh. "Merce Cunningham's 'Biped' and Bill T. Jones's 'Ghostcatching', created with the contribution of digital artists Paul Kaiser and Shelley Eskhar, are an excellent - and above all poetic, in the sense that the 'machine' does not prevail over man and art, but on the contrary 'serves' them with a new tool - demonstration of the power of creative imagination that new technologies, in the hands of 'humanists', can develop. But the most illustrious precedent of these forms of real-virtual choreography is undoubtedly in the daring imagination of a woman, Loie Fuller, pioneer of a new concept of the body in performance, a mutant body made of light, form, colour, with the invention not only of movement, but also of the lighting devices to become a whole flora, fauna, human phantasmagoria. Loie Fuller (Fullersberg 1862-Paris 1928), an American, became famous for her kaleidoscopic performances, devised with the aid of enormous veils supported by long rods and illuminated-transformed with surprising colour effects so essential to her art that they were patented in France. She made her debut in America as a child-actress prodigy, winning a waltz competition in the process, and then joined Buffalo Bill's circus, while nurturing her dream of becoming an opera star. She then performed in New York and London in the theatre, in male roles or in particular roles, such as that of a hypnotised widow - hypnosis was the fashionable phenomenon, as in the case of the unconscious dances of the famous Madeleine G. - until great success finally came to her by inventing an illusionistic lighting for the 'skirt dance', which was very much in vogue at the time. And here she tried her luck in Paris, the 'stage of the world', hoping for a contract at the Opéra. But it was at the Folies Bergère, where she had already been preceded by female imitators, that she made her debut with the 'Serpentine Dance' in the 1891/1892 season, immediately conquering Mallarmé, Rodin, Toulouse Lautrec, who portrayed her, and Debussy, in short, the entire intellectual world of the Ville Lumière, among whom the Symbolists and Futurists were in first place. The daring Fuller said she was inspired by the stained glass windows of the Notre Dame church, where she performed, and her best-known pieces made her a symbol of floral Art Nouveau, 'Fire Dance' to Wagner's 'Ride of the Valkyries', "The Butterfly" to the music of Grieg, and then the "Danse du Lys", "Danse des nuages", "Danse du miroir" and "La danse phosphorescente", "La danse ultraviolette" and "La danse du radium", inspired by the Curie couple's research into radioactivity. As well as impresario of herself, with her own pavilion at the Universal Exhibition in Paris in 1900, and of Rodin himself overseas, Loie made a number of proto-films, including 'Le lys de la vie', of 1919/1920, in which René Clair collaborated, 'Visions de Rêves, 'Coppelius et l'homme de sable'. Can one strictly speak of dance and choreography in the case of Loie Fuller? Certainly not in the sense of architectures of movement and precise technique and style, but in the sense of body art, certainly. Space and the vibrations of the body in space were the raw material of her synaesthetic dance. Light filtered through veils and transparent glass, coming not only from above, but also from below and from the sides, was the ideal partner of her mutant and iridescent choreographic texture.
