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"The camera, it almost need not be stated, captures things that move. And in the early years of cinema, filmmakers and audiences were enamored of things that moved: trains, horses, rivers, and most of all, dancers. Unlike speeding trains and galloping horses, dancers were the right size for stages and film studios, thereby giving early filmmakers, who were limited by bulky equipment and the need for controlled lighting, the perfect subject. It was immediately evident that dance and film were unusually compatible. In 1894 Thomas Edison filmed dancer Annabelle Moore at his Black Maria studio in New Jersey. Here was the first pas de deux between dancer and camera, a performance whose premier audience was the camera lens. But thousands more saw it through the mediated experience of the moving picture: kinetoscope peep-show films made Annabelle one of the first film celebrities. Her celluloid self was also seen (along with an umbrella dance by the Leigh sisters) on April 23, 1896, in New York City at the first commercially projected film screening in the United States. Audiences cheered. From dance's pivotal role in the nascent medium of film, one can trace a line through Hollywood musicals, experimental film, MTV, YouTube and visual art." -- Excerpted from Jenelle Porter's essay, "Pas de Deux" in Dance with Camera.
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