Advent Calendar: Day 12

By Circe -

One of the things I most love working with in flow arts is silk. Nothing flutters quite like 5 momme habotai. I discovered this quite on my own by buying a set of fan veils from wingedsirenny.com for no particular reason, but I've since found out that I'm not the first person to think much bigger than that.

Loïe Fuller, whose real name was Louise, was an American dancer who spent a lot of time hanging out with Toulouse Lautrec. I'm not altogether sure how she wound up in Paris -- the most anyone will say is that she was an actress and burlesque performer, so presumably she just went where being disreputable would earn her decent money -- but once she got there she made a very big splash. 

Loïe's gimmick was to dance swathed in yards and yards of China silk, lit by a lot of new-fangled electric lights. The electric part was important, because unlike flames or limelights, electric lights could be fronted with sheets of colored glass, and if you were quick and wore gloves, the glass would stay cool enough to be swapped out mid-performance. They were the forerunners to what we now know as "gels", colored plastic sheets used to tint stage lights. 

Color film was not a thing back then, so the linked clip has been hand-tinted, and was clearly not done by someone who had actually seen what lights do to white silk. But it gives you a basis for imagination, and has done wonders to help me explain to a lot of lighting director what I want them to do with their modern LEDs while I wave fans around.

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