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  • Two visionaries: Marie Curie forged a friendship with dancer Loïe Fuller | Ars Technica
    https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/02/when-physics-met-dance-marie-curie-and-loie-fuller-in-belle-epoque-pari

    Pierre and Marie Curie attended one of Fuller’s performances at the Folies Bergère and were greatly impressed. The admiration was mutual: Fuller was so captivated by the Curies’ radium experiments that she wrote to them in 1905, asking about the possibility of making a costume out of radium (she was unaware of just how limited a supply was in existence). Marie politely advised against it, although she herself liked to carry around vials of radium and enjoyed visiting the lab at night because “the glowing tubes looked like fairy lights.” Undeterred, Fuller worked fluorescent salts into a black gauze dress that she wore to perform her “Radium Dance,” creating the illusion of twinkling stars or ghostly lights surrounding her as she swirled on a darkened stage.

    • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZcbntA4bVY

      Almost every important movie pioneer seems to have chosen the Serpentine Dance as an interesting subject for one or more films: the Skladanowsky brothers (1895), Dickson for Edison Manifacturing Company (1895+1896+1897), Lumiere brothers (1896), Demeny (1897), Alice Guy (1899+1900+1902), Melies (1899), G.A. Smith (1902), De Chomon (1908) and many others.
      Unfortunately none of the surviving films seem to contain a performance by the original dancer / choreographer Loie Fuller (despite some of them carrying her name in the title or otherwise crediting her as the dancer).
      Loie Fuller was a pioneer of modern dance and of theatrical lightning effects. She developed this dance in 1891 and combined her choreography with silk costumes illuminated by multi-colored lighting of her own design. In several of the Serpentine Dance movies her special colored lighting effects have been translated into fascinating hand-colored effects. Fuller also had a successful Fire Dance of which elements are often incorporated in Serpentine Dance performances, which were also often referred to as Butterfly Dance.