I just wanted to thank the unbelievably complete response to my
question--and the hours of fun I'm going to have tracking down the various
resources. Loie Fuller is familiar to me--I've seen the footage from
NYPL--but I think, in light of the issues brought up in this discussion (pun
intended) I'd like to take a second look. Somebody should take these
connections--Nikolais, Muybridge, Fuller--tie them into current trends, and
publish the thing...
Also, I want to make one correction. I believe in an earlier posting I
inadvertently phrased a statement in a way that sounded as if I was accusing
Johannes of being "Eurocentric" when in fact I was trying to express the
fact that the discussion seemed to be Eurocentric--in other words, we were
talking about stylized plays and combinations of words and movement (such as
the "tanztheatre" he brought up) but that we seemed to be ignoring the use
of such conventions in Eastern theatre--such as Kabuki, Chinese Opera, or
(occurring to me this weekend on a camping trip) the lighting effects and
stylized "movement" involved in the shadow-puppet theatre. How has this
technology changed the Eastern forms? Or has it? (There I go, asking these
questions again...).
Jeff