‘Like a butterfly under glass’: the cancan, Loïe Fuller and cinema

Abstract

This article discusses the relationship between early cinema and the live entertainment context from which it emerged in fin-de-siéle Paris. Previous accounts of this relationship by film, dance and visual culture theorists have often identified Loïe Fuller's choreography as a key precursor to cinema's confluence of light, movement and technology. This article argues, however, that Fuller's work differed in significant ways from the aesthetic of early cinema, labelled the ‘cinema of attractions’ by Tom Gunning (1990). Rather, it is argued that the cinema of attractions was more closely aligned with the aesthetic of the popular Parisian café-concert and dance hall, with which Fuller's work was contrasted. This aesthetic drew on the romantic discourse of the uncanny dancing machine that had been embodied by the cancan since the late 1820s. It is proposed that Fuller's most famous work preempts not early cinema, but the rise of narrative cinema around 1907. An interdisciplinary approach is employed, drawing on literature from early film studies, dance studies and research on nineteenth century French performance by English and French literature scholars. The conclusion implies a repositioning of early cinema and its aesthetic in relation to the broader contexts of fin-de-siécle entertainment, spectatorship and dance.