[High kick of dancer], from the Actors and Actresses series (N145-8) issued by Duke Sons & Co. to promote Duke Cigarettes 1890 - 1895

This is a promotional card for Duke Cigarettes, showcasing a performer striking a pose in mid-kick. The high kick is an ancient motif, a symbol of vitality and exuberance that echoes across time. We see it in ancient fertility rituals, the vigorous gestures intended to awaken the earth, mirrored in the Dionysian rites of ancient Greece, where dance dissolved boundaries and liberated primal energies. Later, during the Medieval era, it was condemned by the Church as being too exuberant and pagan. But still, this symbolic gesture persists in cultural memory. Here, the dancer's bold pose, meant to captivate and arouse, aligns with the commercial intent of the cigarette card, a potent display of life's pleasures packaged for mass consumption. Just as those ancient dances stirred the earth, this image hopes to stir the desires of smokers. The kick, the promise of something more, cycles onward.