![]() And her hypothesis becomes even stronger when we learn a striking bit of family history from Peter Steinbrueck: In the film he says his mother told him that before she and his father met, his father had a romantic relationship with Fort. ![]() Because now I see it as a beacon of women’s empowerment.”īullert’s film makes a compelling case for at least considering the possibilities. I want to invite people to reimagine the Space Needle. “You can never really get to the source of artistic expression, but the point is to look at the circumstances. Image courtesy Cornish College of the Arts Archives) Performers L-R: Merce Cunningham, Fort, Dorothy Herrmann, Bonnie Bird. Syvilla Fort performs at Cornish College in ‘Three Inventories of Casey Jones’ (1938). Did she inspire the streamlined sculpture that later inspired the anchor of the Seattle skyline? And she most certainly would’ve been known among the artistic crowd that included Lemon and Steinbrueck. Though her name has been largely overlooked, Fort was a big deal in her day. When she died of breast cancer in 1975, the New York Times called her a “pioneer in Black dance.” She was toasted by Harry Belafonte, James Baldwin and former student Alvin Ailey. She went on to pursue dance in Los Angeles, toured with “matriarch of Black dance” Katherine Dunham, and landed in New York City, where she gained acclaim for teaching movie stars how to dance for roles - including James Dean, Marlon Brando, Eartha Kitt, Jane Fonda and Chita Rivera. One of the works, “Bachannale,” inspired Cage to invent his very first “ prepared piano,” initiating his legendary innovation. In 1940 she choreographed two dance pieces for which she asked John Cage to write accompanying music. It was there, during the 1930s, that she started making work with members of Seattle’s burgeoning arts scene.įort danced with Merce Cunningham and developed her own “Afro-modern” style. ![]() Her parents secured private tutoring and, after graduating from Roosevelt High School in 1932, she enrolled at Cornish as one of the college’s first Black students. As a child, she longed to take ballet classes but was denied admission to ballet schools because she was Black. Syvilla Fort was born in Seattle in 1917. Since “The Feminine One” is clearly based on a body in motion, she says, “I started nosing around to find out who were the prominent female dancers at Cornish during that time.” That’s when she first encountered the name Syvilla Fort. She knew Steinbrueck and the sculptor Lemon were connected with the tightly knit, thriving arts community clustered around Cornish College of the Arts in the 1930s and ’40s. Thanks to a previous film she made for a Space Needle anniversary ( Space Needle at 40), Bullert had a sense of the building’s history when she began this project. In it, Bullert, who also teaches at Antioch University in Seattle, interviews Space Needle experts and Seattle historians - including Steinbrueck’s son Peter - about the inspiration behind our city’s architectural icon. The short film, Space Needle: A Hidden History, will have its world premiere at Bumbershoot this weekend as part of SIFF’s programming. ![]() Space Needle evolution: From ‘The Feminine One’ to the architectural plans to reality. Visitors can see how “The Feminine One” inspired the struts of the structure, designed to resemble three figures standing back to back, legs apart and arms raised, holding the flying saucer shape above.īut Bullert's new documentary goes further, asking whether the feminine one in question might be a specific woman - a prominent dancer from 1930s Seattle. A large-scale reproduction of the sculpture - an abstract body with arms upstretched - stands on the Space Needle grounds.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |