In the darkness, a skeleton emerges on the screen and then jolts into a series of poses, lifting a leg, arms thrown out to one side, squatting, and popping off its head in both bony hands. The skeleton is dancing. I feel an unease from the audience around me. There is a burst of jeers. It is 1869, and I am attending a programme of lectures, ghost stories and entertainments at the Royal Polytechnic Institution in London, and I am wafting away pipe smoke puffed out by various disapproving Victorians. The presenter, Professor Pepper, removes the dancing skeletons. The audience settles. And in a flash of light from the magic lantern projector, we are onto the next display (see figure 1). A review in the Daily Telegraph (1869) would later question the moral effect of the performance and note that the skeleton, with its hideous outlines, indulging in terpsichorean gyrations, was received with audible dissatisfaction.

However, I am left wondering, why did this dancing skeleton cause such a stir? It is the reason why I imagine myself there amid the audience. It was described in the Illustrated London News (1869) as “one of the most wonderful optical illusions ever witnessed” and in the London Daily News (1869) as a most “curious and ingenious optical effect.” It was detailed in the excellent book The Magic Lantern Dancer (2023), edited by Jeremy Brooker, Richard Crangle and Martin Gilbert, and published by The Magic Lantern Society. The authors describe the function, development, and legacy of the choreutoscope, a mechanical device used in a magic lantern that quickly changes between images to project a primitive illusion of movement.

Figure 1. Imagining a Magic Lantern Choreutoscope Performance. Image created by the author, 2024.

It seems strange that the audience at the Royal Polytechnic were so unaccepting of what they saw. The show was advertised as an event where spectres and skeletons appear, half a century after London had experienced phantasmagoria shows with equally chilling promise. Was it the action, the movement enabled by the new technology of the choreutoscope, that made this skeleton so disturbing? was the skeleton, particularly the dancing skeleton, the ideal or most audacious test for new innovations in animation?

It is an image that has resonated throughout moving image history and it has shaped my personal experience of animation. As a child I remember the dancing skeleton from the Scotch Video (1985) adverts on UK TV, the Mystery Tour episode of Welsh cartoon Funnybones (1992) where the skeleton family end up at a house party, and I remember Jack Skellington mid song and dance entranced by a snowflake, in A Nightmare Before Christmas (1993). The horror of the dancing skeleton is softened in these images.  

Disney’s 1929 The Skeleton Dance from the Silly Symphony series was a kind of shock. A shockwave at the time, announcing what was possible with animation and sound. A display of impressive hand-drawn choreography. And a shock to myself when I first saw it as a teenage animation student, thinking to myself – this was how great these animators were, that they could make these skeletons come to life with such ingenuity.

It is 1999 and I am skipping through the music video channels in time to catch the beginning of ‘Hey Boy Hey Girl’ by The Chemical Brothers. The music video was directed by Dom & Nic and opens with the same grim British-realism aesthetic that was popular in music videos of the time, reaches a crescendo with the image of a dancefloor filled with dancing skeletons, flashing in the pulse of strobe lighting (see figure 2). And although the skeletons perform amusing actions, breakdancing and DJing, there is a grittier, more sinister edge to these skeletons brought by the hyper realism of CGI. The music video was released at the tail-end of a decade of innovative 3D effects and motion capture development that remains a technology searching for ways to navigate the ravines of the uncanny valley.

Figure 2. Screenshot from the ‘Hey Boy Hey Girl’ music video for the Chemical Brothers (Freestyle Dust/Virgin Records), directed by Dom&Nic, 1999.

A year later, Robbie Williams is ripping off chunks of his own flesh in the music video for ‘Rock DJ’ (2000). The camera rotates around him as he performs on a podium, dancing, and undressing, first his clothes, then his skin, stripping himself literally to the bone. Eventually, when it is a CG skeleton dancing in his place, it feels like a relief. The most shocking part is over, there is nothing left to strip away. The music video was often censored or cut short when televised. 

How would the audience at the Royal Polytechnic Institution respond to the Rock DJ music video? Or to any of the skeleton dances?

When I was researching modern uses of magic lantern imagery, I came across Harshini Karunaratne’s (2018) bachelor thesis titled “The Phantoms of Projection: Magic Lantern Shows as a Predecessor to Contemporary VJing and AV Performance”. The thesis explores the use of animated phantasmagoria imagery by ‘Video Jockeys’ in nightclubs and the way that clubbers, dancing in a state of euphoria, might experience the imagery of death brought to life. That the ghosts, skulls, and skeletons, are dancing with us because they are us. I can imagine myself there, in between flashes from strobe lights, casting off mortal inhibitions, shaking my bones.

References

Brooker, J., Crangle, R. and Gilbert, M. (2023) The Magic Lantern Dancer. Exeter: The Magic Lantern Society.

Daily Telegraph and Courier (London) 23 November 1869, 3d. Cited in Brooker, J., Crangle, R. and Gilbert, M. (2023) The Magic Lantern Dancer. Exeter: The Magic Lantern Society.

Illustrated London News 27 November 1869, 18c. Cited in Brooker, J., Crangle, R. and Gilbert, M. (2023) The Magic Lantern Dancer. Exeter: The Magic Lantern Society.

Karunaratne, H. (2018) The Phantoms of Projection: Magic Lantern Shows as a Predecessor to Contemporary VJing and AV Performance. Bachelor thesis, New York University Abu Dhabi.

London Daily News 24 November 1869, 3b. Cited in Brooker, J., Crangle, R. and Gilbert, M. (2023) The Magic Lantern Dancer. Exeter: The Magic Lantern Society.

Mannoni, L. (2000) The Great Art of Light and Shadow: Archaeology of the Cinema. Exeter: University of Exeter Press.

Mystery Tour (1992). Directed by Gary Hurst. Funnybones Episode 7. United Kingdom: Cartwn Cymru.

Robbie Williams (2000). Rock DJ, music video directed by Vaughan Arnell, Chrysalis/Capitol. YouTube.

Scotch (1985) Video Tape advert, directed by Bill Mather, Aardman. UK

The Chemical Brothers (1999). Hey Boy Hey Girl, music video directed by Dom&Nic, Freestyle Dust/Virgin Records. YouTube.

The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993). Directed by Henry Selick. USA: Touchstone Pictures/Skellington Productions.

The Skelton Dance (1929). Directed by Walt Disney. Silly Symphony series. USA: Walt Disney Studios.

Joe Evans is a freelance 2D Animator and Illustrator teaching Animation at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK. He graduated from the University of Brighton’s Sequential Design/Illustration Master’s Course in 2015 and his MA project titled ‘The Animators of Pre-Cinema & Their Demons,’ comprised three graphic novel histories of animation, exploring the development of Victorian optical toys, chronophotography and magic lantern projection. The project also resulted in the production of several looping animations presented through phenakistoscopes and a praxinoscope – exhibited as part of a Fabula Collective exhibition at Hove Museum.