Annabelle Butterfly Dance
About Annabelle Butterfly Dance
Annabelle Moore, in a butterfly costume with wings on her back, dances for the Edison camera. She lifts and turns the long skirts so the cloth makes changing shapes.
Cast & crew
More about Annabelle Butterfly Dance
William K. L. Dickson directed the 1894 Kinetoscope subject for the Edison Manufacturing Company. William Heise photographed it. Thomas Edison is the producer of record. Annabelle Moore, then still often called Annabelle Whitford, performs. Wikidata times it at 67 seconds. An English Wikipedia summary gives about 40 seconds.
Themes
Making
Dickson shot the dance in the Black Maria, the tar-paper studio at West Orange, against a plain ground so the white costume would read on the Kinetoscope.
Look
William Heise photographed Annabelle Moore in the Black Maria, full length, so the skirt and the wings stay inside the frame as she turns.
Preservation
Prints of the butterfly dance survive. Sources differ on the length: 67 seconds in Wikidata, about 40 seconds in one Wikipedia summary.
Notes
- It is one of several Edison films of Annabelle's skirt dances, not the only one.
- The wings are part of the costume. The patterns come from the skirts, not from a set.
- William Heise is the credited cameraman, working with Dickson.
- A Wikimedia file of a butterfly dance is dated 1895, a later take or a later release of the same act.
Scenes
- Annabelle turns with the wings spread and the skirt opening into a new shape at each pass.
