Dance fans definitely remember Loïe Fuller, even though dance experts often consider her performances as exotic gimmicks.
Born in 1862, Fuller was indeed a theatre actress and worked in burlesque and vaudeville shows. She is mainly remembered as the creator of the iconic “Serpentine Dance”, characterised by sinuous weaving and spiralling movements.
The actress came up with her extraordinary dance movements during the rehearsals for Trip to Chinatown. Somebody had given her a translucent Chinese silk skirt and she discovered while dancing in front of a mirror that the skirt produced wonderful golden reflections and effects when hit by the sun.
The first performance she did using the garment wasn’t successful, but this experiment provided her interesting inspirations for her following shows.
As the years passed, Fuller – who was also a pioneer of theatrical lighting techniques and held patents for chemical compounds to create colour gel and use chemical salts for luminescent lighting and garments – regularly performed at the Folies Bergère, mesmerising her audiences.
The dancer would indeed create different shapes - from flowers to butterflies and flames - by moving in the darkness her fantastically coloured phosphorescent swaths of silk attached to a pair of hand-held wands.
You can get a better idea of what the "Serpentine Dance" looked like from this 1896 film by Auguste and Louis Lumière.
Fuller’s style started a trend, inspiring dancers such as Annabella (1897), Crissie Sheridan (1897) and Ameta (1903) and influencing early films.
Several films shot in black and white but hand-coloured in bright and vivid shades, featured performances of "Serpentine" or "Butterfly Dances", among them also the 1907 Italian film entitled Farfalle (Butterflies – often misspelled as ‘Farfale’) and shot by an anonymous director for the Cines production house.
The film starts with a rather awkward dance inspired by the Orient and Japan (an indirect reference maybe to Fuller’s Chinese dancers who were also the subject of one section of W.B. Yeats' poem Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen, though it should be remembered that Japanese exoticism was very popular in Italy at the end of the 1800s, as it was also proved by the success of operettas such as The Geisha by Sidney Jones, staged in Turin in 1897), though reminding in the movements and exaggerated gestures the style of the Commedia dell’Arte (improvisational theatre – popular since the 16th century in Italy).
As the story develops the short experimental film turns into a marvellously multicoloured surprise with human butterflies twirling on the screen.
Though Farfalle should be taken as a divertissement rather than a proper film, it was very influential.
Italian poet Guido Gozzano dedicated two poems to butterflies L'amico delle Crisalidi (The Chrysalids' Friend, 1912) and Messaggera Marzolina (March Messenger, 1916).
Gozzano also submitted a few ideas to the Italian production house Ambrosio for a documentary on the life of butterflies.
There was actually an early documentary shot on the subject entitled La vita delle farfalle (The Life of Butterflies, 1911) that won at the time an award for best scientific documentary, though film historians deny Gozzano was involved in it.
Nino Oxilia’s Rapsodia Satanica also features a colourful butterfly scene connecting the main actress Lyda Borelli to the metamorphosis theme and to Fuller's iconic performances.
Farfalle will be screened next week during the Fashion in Film Festival, but you can also watch it online on the European Film Treasures site. I'm sure its flashes of unexpected colour combinations and movements will prove very inspirational not only for fashion collections, but also for fashion presentations and catwalk shows. Enjoy!
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