Ballet of Light (new, 2007!) 13 minutes DANCERS: students at University of Wyoming MUSIC: various composers, arranged and performed by Jeffrey Middleton SCENIC DESIGN/MEDIA: Roger Hanna COSTUMES: Michelle Ferranti "Eyes had swam and fancy rioted in an orgy of luminosity." – anonymous newspaper clipping, c.1909 Loie Fuller's original Ballet of Light (1908) was a cinematic spectacle involving the projection of images—including underwater landscapes, falling stars, volcanic eruptions, and an aurora borealis—onto transparent "gauzes" hung at the front of the stage. Her company of young dancers, known as the "muses," danced barefoot and in "the flimsiest of draperies" behind and amongst the drop-screens, whirling their silk scarves to catch and reflect the projections in visually hypnotic ways. With a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts/American Masterpieces program, the University of Wyoming has commissioned Sperling to mount a creative reinterpretation of Fuller's original Ballet of Light. This new work will be set on seven students and performed at the University in March 2007 and will tour the state of Wyoming. In keeping with the mission of Jody Sperling/Time Lapse Dance, this project involves the mingling of serious scholarship with active choreographic imagination.