Annabelle Serpentine Dance (1895)

Two dancers perform in succession facing a stationary camera. The first is in a diaphanous skirt, held out by her hands with arms extended. She smiles, wearing butterfly wings on her back and the wings of Mercury in her hair. Her dance emphasizes the movement of her visible, bare legs. She kicks high, bows, and moves to her right and left. The second dancer has a voluminous, long skirt, and holds sticks in each hand attached to the skirt's outer edges, so that the emphasis is on the swirling patterns the skirt makes, often obscuring her unsmiling face. Her feet move little on the unadorned stage; changes in the color of the lens filter accent the swirling patterns.