One of a series of images taken by a London-based photographer of the American dancer Loie Fuller (1862-1928) in action. Using bamboo sticks to manipulate an enormous skirt comprising over a hundred yards of translucent, iridescent silk Fuller was a sensation of the late 19th-century. In her performances she would evoke such organic forms as butterflies, flowers, and flames in perpetual metamorphosis through a play of multicoloured lighting effects,The Symbolist poet Stéphane Mallarmé, who saw her perform in 1893, wrote that her dance was "the theatrical form of poetry par excellence." (Image source: The Metropolitan Museum of Art)