TPO托福阅读练习题37及参考答案（五）

　　As her technological expertise grew more sophisticated, so did the other aspects of her dances. Although she gave little thought to music in her earliest dances, she later used scores by Gluck, Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin, and Wagner, eventually graduating to Stravinsky, Fauré, Debussy, and Mussorgsky, composers who were then considered progressive. She began to address more ambitious themes in her dances such as The Sea, in which her dancers invisibly agitated a huge expanse of silk, played upon by colored lights. Always open to scientific and technological innovations, she befriended the scientists Marie and Pierre Curie upon their discovery of radium and created a Radium Dance, which simulated the phosphorescence of that element. She both appeared in films-then in an early stage of development-and made them herself; the hero of her fairy-tale film Le Lys de la Vie (1919) was played by René Clair, later a leading French film director.

　　At the Paris Exposition in 1900, she had her own theater, where, in addition to her own dances, she presented pantomimes by the Japanese actress Sada Yocco. She assembled an all-female company at this time and established a school around 1908, but neither survived her. Although she is remembered today chiefly for her innovations in stage lighting, her activities also touched Isadora Duncan and Ruth St. Denis, two other United States dancers who were experimenting with new types of dance. She sponsored Duncan's first appearance in Europe. Her theater at the Paris Exposition was visited by St. Denis, who found new ideas about stagecraft in Fuller's work and fresh sources for her art in Sada Yocco's plays. In 1924 St. Denis paid tribute to Fuller with the duet Valse à la Loie.

　　Paragraph 1: The United States dancer Loie Fuller (1862-1928) found theatrical dance in the late nineteenth century artistically unfulfilling. She considered herself an artist rather than a mere entertainer, and she, in turn, attracted the notice of other artists.

　　1. What can be inferred from paragraph 1 about theatrical dance in the late nineteenth century?

　　○It influenced many artists outside of the field of dance.

　　○It was very similar to theatrical dance of the early nineteenth century.

　　○It was more a form of entertainment than a form of serious art.

　　○It was a relatively new art form in the United States.

　　Paragraph 2: Fuller devised a type of dance that focused on the shifting play of lights and colors on the voluminous skirts or draperies she wore, which she kept in constant motion principally through movements of her arms, sometimes extended with wands concealed under her costumes. She rejected the technical virtuosity of movement in ballet, the most prestigious form of theatrical dance at that time, perhaps because her formal dance training was minimal. Although her early theatrical career had included stints as an actress, she was not primarily interested in storytelling or expressing emotions through dance; the drama of her dancing emanated from her visual effects.

　　2. According to paragraph 2, all of the following are characteristic of Fuller's type of dance EXCEPT

　　○experimentation using color

　　○large and full costumes

　　○continuous movement of her costumes

　　○ technical virtuosity of movement

　　3. The word prestigious in the passage is closest in meaning to

　　○highly regarded

　　○financially rewarding

　　○demanding

　　○serious

　　4. Which of the sentences below best expresses the essential information in the highlighted sentence in the passage? Incorrect choices change the meaning in important ways or leave out essential information.

　　○Fuller was more interested in dance's visual impact than in its narrative or emotional possibilities.

　　○Fuller used visual effects to dramatize the stories and emotions expressed in her work.

　　○Fuller believed that the drama of her dancing sprang from her emotional style of storytelling.

　　○Fuller's focus on the visual effects of dance resulted from her early theatrical training as an actress.

　　Paragraph 3: Although she discovered and introduced her art in the United States, she achieved her greatest glory in Paris, where she was engaged by the Folies Bergère in 1892 and soon became "La Loie," the darling of Parisian audiences. Many of her dances represented elements or natural objects-Fire, the Lily, the Butterfly, and so on-and thus accorded well with the fashionable Art Nouveau style, which emphasized nature imagery and fluid, sinuous lines. Her dancing also attracted the attention of French poets and painters of the period, for it appealed to their liking for mystery, their belief in art for art's sake, a nineteenth-century idea that art is valuable in itself rather than because it may have some moral or educational benefit, and their efforts to synthesize form and content.

　　5. The word engaged in the passage is closest in meaning to

　　○noticed

　　○praised

　　○hired

　　○attracted

　　6. The word synthesize in the passage is closest in meaning to

　　○improve

　　○define

　　○simplify

　　○integrate

　　7. According to paragraph 3, why was Fuller's work well received in Paris?

　　○Parisian audiences were particularly interested in artists and artistic movements from the United States.

　　○Influential poets tried to interest dancers in Fuller's work when she arrived in Paris.

　　○Fuller's work at this time borrowed directly from French artists working in other media.

　　○Fuller's dances were in harmony with the artistic values already present in Paris.

　　Paragraph 4: Fuller had scientific leanings and constantly experimented with electrical lighting (which was then in its infancy), colored gels, slide projections, and other aspects of stage technology. She invented and patented special arrangements of mirrors and concocted chemical dyes for her draperies. Her interest in color and light paralleled the research of several artists of the period, notably the painter Seurat, famed for his Pointillist technique of creating a sense of shapes and light on canvas by applying extremely small dots of color rather than by painting lines. One of Fuller's major inventions was underlighting, in which she stood on a pane of frosted glass illuminated from underneath. This was particularly effective in her Fire Dance (1895), performed to the music of Richard Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries." The dance caught the eye of artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, who depicted it in a lithograph.

　　8. According to paragraph 4, Fuller's Fire Dance was notable in part for its

　　○use of colored gels to illuminate glass

　　○use of dyes and paints to create an image of fire

　　○technique of lighting the dancer from beneath

　　○draperies with small dots resembling the Pointillist technique of Seurat