Memories of Egypt: Choreography by Jody Sperling

from Emily MT

Recently returned home from a two-week, three-city tour of Egypt with the Hakawy International Arts Festival, Jody Sperling and her Time Lapse Dance ensemble are performing a FREE concert in partnership with The New York Society for Ethical Culture, the site of their ongoing Eco-Artist-Residency on March 21, 2025. The company was following in the footsteps of Loïe Fuller who toured Egypt with her dancers in 1905! The program Memories of Egypt features a world premiere in Fuller style, repertory favorites, and a souvenir from the journey abroad. The company’s seven luminous dancers are joined by Emmy Award-winning composer Matthew Burtner for a transporting evening of live music and dance.
“The tour almost didn’t happen! A day before the company was to leave for Egypt, the US State Department cancelled an award that was partially-funding the tour. You can read about our company’s story in Mediumand Dance Magazine!” - Jody Sperling.
The evening’s highlight is the world premiere of Fractal Memories, created for and featured in the Loïe Fuller documentary film Obsessed with Light (Directed by Sabine Krayehbuhl and Zeva Oelbaum). The dance, choreographed by Jody Sperling, is a contemporary homage to Fuller that illuminates the entanglement of bodies through time. The culminating moment is a reimagining of Fuller’s famous Fire Dance, in which she appeared to self-immolate. Conceived at the dawn of the fossil fuel era, Fuller’s Fire Dance, as strikingly recontextualized by Sperling, is eerily resonant in these combustible times.
In Serpentine Swells, the company riffs on a spiralling melodic line, evoking the crest and fall of ocean currents. This ensemble improvisation was presented in Egypt with musical collaboration between Butner and Egyptian oud player Aly Eissa.
The evening also reprises Arbor, dwelling on the intimacy of trees, and Sperling’s hypnotic solo Piece for Northern Sky, a meditation on planetary motion, both with music composed and performed by Burtner.
All of these works feature transformative costumes that abstract human movement into elemental and organic forces, with the dancers appearing to conjure a growing forest or a swirling inferno. The company's unique style of movement draws inspiration from and furthers the art form created by dance icon Loie Fuller (1862-1928) a century ago.
Time Lapse Dance
Jody Sperling, Choreographer/Soloist
Matthew Burtner, Composer/Musician
Andrea Trager, Rehearsal Director/Dramaturge
Frances Barker, Dancer
Anika Hunter, Dancer
Maki Kitahara, Dancer
Nicole Lemelin, Dancer
Sarah Tracy, Dancer
Rathi Varma. Dancer
About Jody Sperling
Jody Sperling (Choreographer), Founder/Artistic Director of Time Lapse Dance, has created 50+ works. The leading exponent of performance technology innovator Loie Fuller (1862-1928), she has expanded the genre into contemporary and environmental forms. The Paul Taylor Dance Company performed two of Sperling’s Fuller tributes in their 2024 Lincoln Center Season. Sperling’s work is featured in the Fuller documentary Obsessed with Light (Dirs. Sabine Krayenbuhl and Zeva Oelbaum) and she earned a World Choreography Award nomination for the Fuller biopic The Dancer ( (Dir. Stephanie Digiusto). In 2014, Sperling participated in a polar science mission and danced on Arctic sea ice. Following, her work has focused on creatively engaging with climate change. Since 2022, Sperling and company are Eco-Artists-in-Residence at the New York Society of Ethical Culture, where they are advancing the mission of dancing toward a more embodied, sustainable, and equitable future.
About Matthew Burtner
Matthew Burtner (Composer) (matthewburtner.com) is an Alaskan-born composer and sound artist who creates music from materials and data of climate change, particularly related to the Arctic. Burtner spent his childhood in the far north of Alaska and this profoundly shaped his musical language. He is a pioneer in the field of eco-acoustics and has worked extensively with systems of climatology applied to music. His work has recently been featured by NASA, National Geographic, the US State Department, Earther, and the Ringling Museum. First Prize Winner of the Musica Nova International competition, and an NEA Art Works and IDEA Award winner, Burtner's music has received honors and prizes from Bourges (France), Gaudeamus (Netherlands), Darmstadt (Germany) and The Russolo (Italy) international competitions. He teaches composition and computer music at the University of Virginia, and directs the environmental arts non-profit organization, EcoSono (ecosono.org).
About Time Lapse Dance
Time Lapse Dance (TLD) is an all-women 501(c)3 dance company founded by Sperling in 2000. TLD envisions dance as a powerful force that can help move us toward a more embodied, sustainable and equitable future. The work aims to investigate the relationship of the moving body to the ecologies we inhabit through performance, media, education, and activism.
About The New York Society for Ethical Culture
The New York Society for Ethical Culture is a Humanist community dedicated to ethical relationships, social justice, and democracy since 1876. The Society's members put deed before creed and ethics in action to educate, advocate, organize, and build coalitions to end racism, poverty, and war; abolish the death penalty and mass incarceration; guarantee reproductive freedom; welcome refugees and immigrants; fight climate change and pollution, and more. Visit the Society online at ethical.nyc.
About Loïe Fuller (1862-1928) was a visionary artist with an expansive legacy. She forged an innovative dance form by crafting mesmerizing, multimedia spectacles out of fabric, motion, lighting, and projections. An American by birth, Fuller catapulted to international celebrity with her Paris debut at Folies Bergère in 1892. For decades following, her multifaceted dances captivated the public, as well as the cultural, intellectual, and social elites. Depicted by dozens of artists across media, Fuller became both a subject of, and influential in, such artistic movements as Art Nouveau, Symbolism, Cubism, and Futurism. Importantly, she is considered the first modern dancer, with her success helping to pave the way for Isadora Duncan and Ruth St. Denis. Fuller’s innovative stagecraft also anticipated the birth of cinema and today’s digital and interactive performance technologies.
Connect on Instagram
@jody_sperling
@time_lapse_dance
@EthicalNYC
@matthewburtner
Dancers:
@maki_k_01
@anikahunter
@wannabee8
@sarahtracy
@nicole_lemelin
@rathivarma
This program is made possible in part by an ongoing eco-artist-residency at The New York Society for Ethical Culture and with public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.
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