Featured on PDR in the collection Your Flannelette Cure: Fire Tests with Textiles (1910)

Ballerinas on fire fascinated Victorians. It was an erotic, potent image, the subject of numerous prints: dewy, ethereal virgins licked by flames. But it was also a real thing, in that actual ballerinas caught fire on stage and died of horrific burns. In one such fire, for instance, in Philadelphia in 1861, a dancer’s tutu blazed, others rushed to help, and eight ballerinas burned to death, some in view of the audience. The charred remains of French ballerina Emma Livry’s costume are held in the collection of the Musée-bibliothèque de l'Opéra in Paris; the famous dancer lifted her tutu so that the tulle wouldn’t be smushed when she sat down to rest, and the tiny whoosh of air swelled a fatal gas lamp.