Ruva-Fuller’s serpentine dance as inspiration to assert rhythmic control

Filmmakers would use Fuller’s serpentine dance as inspiration writes Andrew. How do filmmakers employ this form of movement to assert "exterior rhythmic control"? 

The viewers' perception of the dance was one of the essential factors in the development of film and cinema (65). In serpentine dance, Fuller moved her arms in various patterns, which created "limpid ripples, swelling waves and hypnotizing figures that were carefully choreographed to music so that her fabrics would move around an otherwise" (61). The visual effects created in the serpentine dance motion captivated viewers. It was a new experience of vision. Therefore, the kind of viewing required by her dance explains why films repeatedly imitated the serpentine dance rhythm to capture similar temporal visual effects. 

Filmmakers assert "exterior rhythmic control" though slowing down movement. In the case of the serpentine films, the fleeting dance is embedded within the film, thereby revealing and slowing the "interior movements of the dancer and imposing exterior rhythmic control upon them" (67). Through controlling the flow of abstract qualities of rhythm, films transform the dance art into time and space. The time and space dynamics of the real objects (dances) is contained in flat film surfaces.   

Fuller’s motion and the effect of her drapes were an ideal demonstration of the controlled temporality that characterized the film as a new medium of art. In dance, "the unstable seems held, and the instant feels longer" (66). When the serpentine dances are projected in a film image, the fabric swirls spread from edge to edge, enclosed within a frame, Fuller’s choreography is, therefore "removed from its temporary performance and set within a plastic visual art where there is control of movement in time and space." (66)  

 Film has the ability to physically harness vision better than painting or dance. Film and dance collaboration intervene in the traditional art-historical account of abstraction (74). The avant-garde experimentation with the moving image is an example of collaboration between art and dance extend captivating vision (68). Today platforms like video editing and photoshopping give creators so much power to control the image or film projected. How collaborative and original do film, dance and art continue to be with the advancement of digital and virtual space platforms where there are so many ways art can be manipulated? 

By Ruva