“fills the stage with magic”
–the new york times
VIVE LA LOÏE! (2024)
Premiere Date November 8, 2024
Solo, 7 mins
Choreography: Jody Sperling
Music: Max Richter
Dancer: Jessica Ferretti
Lighting: David Ferri
Costume: Jody Sperling
Vive La Loïe is an homage to Loïe Fuller commissioned by the Paul Taylor Dance Company for their November 2024 Lincoln Center Season. The choreography expands upon material originally created for the French feature film La Danseuse (The Dancer) with the Loïe character performing atop a box containing lights within. The work for the Taylor company mines Fuller’s synaesthetic concept of “color harmony” in which multi-hued lights are composed like musical notes into luminous “melodies” and “chords.” Sperling collaborated closely with Bessie Award-winning lighting designer David Ferri so that each dance moment unfolds as a synthesis of motion, emotion, fabric, and light. The music, Max Richter’s revisiting of Vivaldi, brings a contemporary electricity to a classic.
PRESS QUOTES
"Sperling’s “Vive La Loïe!” brings Fuller’s legacy to life in a solo for Ferretti, who is perched on a high platform and whose arms stir a voluminous dress into motion — waterfalls, waves and curling petals — as it catches the light. Set to selections of Max Richter’s reimagining of Vivaldi, “Vive” fills the stage with magic, courtesy of David Ferri’s lighting, which casts the fabric in shades of blue, lilac, yellow and red. Ferretti is a magician, too, as she manipulates the fabric to obscure her body or to flutter majestically, just like a white-winged dove. She is Stevie Nicks, enhanced and floating on a cloud."—Gia Kourlas, The New York Times
"The shapes are ever-changing, full of poetic associations. That constant flow allows a kind of release, a sense of wonder, surprise, sometimes amazement. . . . Over the course of the piece, she becomes a flame, a flower, an ocean, the Victory of Samothrace, a moth, a bird, a flag, fireworks." —Marina Harss, Dancing Around
"pure beauty . . . a generous nod to an often unacknowledged forbearer of modern dance." —Mary Cargill, Dance View Times
"a movement poem suggesting the mystery of the universe."—Eye on Dance, Mary Seidman