Annabelle's Butterfly Dance - The Doors, 1967

The Doors were really hitting their stride when they came back to Avalon in May, 1967. They were busy in the studio recording their second album, Strange Days and were playing a heavy concert schedule on the West Coast with a few forays out to New York. These shows were the 3rd of 4 monthly appearances at the Avalon in the Spring of 1967. Light My Fire was getting considerable airplay in San Francisco and the song would be #1 nationally for 3 weeks in midsummer.

Annabelle Butterfly Dance was an 1894 short film, one of the several silent films produced by the Edison Manufacturing Company starring Annabelle Moore. In the film, Annabelle performs one of her popular dances while wearing a butterfly costume. For this performance, her costume has a pair of wings attached to her back, to suggest a butterfly. As she dances, she uses her long, flowing skirts to create visual patterns. Moscoso explains how the poster came about,

“If you shine red light on it and then you shine blue light on it the lady moves,” Moscoso said.  “That’s Annabelle from a film called, “Annabelle’s Butterfly Dance” done by Thomas Edison.  It was reproduced in a silent movie book and it was reproduced very small.  So when I blew it up you could see the half-tone dots.  See, that’s why it looks like that, and then I just put one on top of the other just for the hell of it.   A friend of mine said, “Hey, you know, that poster of yours flies.”  He had his posters in a hallway with blinking Christmas tree lights.  So when he said it moved… Ooh… I think I knew what I did.  So I went home and I made a light box which flashed first red, then blue on it, and sure enough, the lady flew.”