Deux Pieds

In Deux Pieds, video is used to create dance illusions, effects impossible to achieve in dance except via video technology. Video “keying” (a process of dividing areas of a black and white image into percentages of gradation) and blending of two separate images is used to enable Laurie’s legs to move independently of each other. Against a black background, she wears a black stocking on one leg, effectively “erasing” the leg to the camera’s eye, then switches the stocking to the other leg, and the two images are mixed together. The legs can spin in opposite directions or perform unlimited, lightning-fast entrechats (where the feet beat rapidly in the air). Laurie holds onto an out-of-frame rope that allows her to pirouette as many times as she wants—every dancer’s dream.

From 1975 through 1979, Laurie was a member of a ballet company in Providence, Rhode Island, that provided dancers mainly for French operas. Much of her work produced during that time incorporated dance with video.