A black and white gif of a woman wearing an ankle-length, puffed out dress. She is dancing and showing her ankles.

A a gif made from the 1894 film Carmencita, featuring the first woman in front of an Edison motion picture camera.

Carmencia was the stage name for Carmen Dauset Moreno (1868–1910), a Spanish-style dancer in American pre-vaudeville variety and music hall ballet and a native of Andalusia, Spain. The film showed the routine of a performance she had been presenting at Koster and Bial's Music Hall in New York city since February 1890.

Carmencita had made a name for herself in America in the 1980s performing flamenco. Thomas Edison was looking for film subjects, he needed something to attract consumers to the kinetoscope. An obvious choice was to capture well-known stage performers doing what they were best known for.

'Carmencita' was filmed in Black Maria studio in mid-March of 1894, dancing the flamenco for Edison’s kinetograph. 'Carmencita' also became the first film to be censored, to our knowledge, due to her ankles being on display. You can see the film here via the Library of Congress.