Danse Serpentine (In a Lion's Cage)
About Danse Serpentine (In a Lion's Cage)
A lion tamer enters a cage with big cats and works them. A woman billed as Madame Ondine then comes into the cage and dances a serpentine dance in a swirling costume. Surviving copies of the dance are hand-tinted. The act lasts about two minutes and has no story beyond the entrance, the animals, and the dance.
Cast & crew
More about Danse Serpentine (In a Lion's Cage)
Wikidata and IMDb credit Alice Guy as director and Madame Ondine as the dancer. The catalog also names Auguste Laurent, and descriptions of the surviving print call the tamer Laurent. Some lists give the French title La Loïe Fuller dans la cage aux lions. A festival note cites a 35mm element of 14 meters, about 42 seconds at 16 frames a second, so running times differ by print.
Themes
Making
The film records a fairground or stage turn: animals first, then a hand-colored dance in the same cage. Authorship is credited to Guy in the main databases and left blank in some early-cinema programmes.
Look
The camera holds one view of the cage. Color is added by hand on the dancer's cloth, not by a color process in the camera.
Preservation
A hand-colored print survives. IMDb records its inclusion on the Flicker Alley set Saved from the Flames.
Notes
- The serpentine dance, with silk waved under colored light, comes from Loie Fuller's stage act of the 1890s.
- IMDb lists the short on Flicker Alley's DVD Saved from the Flames: 54 Rare and Restored Films 1896–1944.
- Guy's Gaumont catalogues of 1900 also list other serpentine dances, including one by Mme Bob-Walter, which are not this cage act.
Scenes
- The tamer works the cats inside the cage.
- Ondine enters and the hand-tinted cloth of the serpentine dance fills the same frame.
Influenced by
- Loie Fuller's serpentine dance
Also available
- Internet Archive (silent-danse-serpentine)
- Flicker Alley DVD: Saved from the Flames: 54 Rare and Restored Films 1896–1944