Viva la Dance: The Beginnings of Ciné Dance (1894 1946)

Dance and film have shared the aspiration to creatively sculpt motion and time. Some of the first films ever made featured Annabelle s skirt dance, handpainted in glowing colors. Isadora Duncan and Ruth St. Denis innovations found their way into Diana the Huntress (1916) and The Soul of the Cypress (1920). Highly cinematic renditions of dance evolved in Stella Simon s Hände (1928), Hector Hoppin s Joie de vivre (1934), and Busby Berkeley s Don t Say Goodnight from Wonder Bar (1934). In counterpoint, cinédances by Mary Ellen Bute, Douglass Crockwell, Oskar Fischinger, Norman McLaren, Ralph Steiner, and Slavko Vorkapich dispensed with actual dancers in favor of color, shape, line, and form choreographed into abstract lightplay.