White Womanhood, Property Rights, and the Campaign for Choreographic Copyright: Loïe Fuller's Serpentine Dance

Abstract

In 1892 Loïe Fuller, often figured as one of the “mothers” of modern dance, brought an infringement suit in New York against a chorus girl named Minnie Renwood Bemis in an attempt to enjoin Bemis from performing a version of the Serpentine Dance, which Fuller claimed to have invented. The dance, distinctive for its use of yards of illuminated silk fabric, made the American-born Fuller famous in Europe and spawned a host of imitators on both sides of the Atlantic.Intent on staking her proprietary claim on the dance, Fuller took the precaution of submitting a written description of it to the U. S. Copyright Office. Ultimately, however, the judge for the U.S. Circuit Court denied Fuller's request for an injunction on the grounds that the Serpentine Dance told no story and was therefore not eligible for copyright protection. Although Fuller clearly regarded her expressive output as intellectual property, dance at the time lacked legal recognition as a copyrightable category in its own right and merited protection only if it qualified as a “dramatic” or “dramatico-musical composition.”