Dance Serpentine

Loïe Fuller danced herself away. With hundreds of metres of silk on long sticks, operated by her arms, her body disappeared entirely into the moving fabric: only undulation, colour and light remained. The Lumière brothers recorded her serpentine dances around 1896 in grainy, early cinema. Fuller’s hands are not visible; they have been absorbed into the movement they drive, with knowledge that lives in the whole body.