Film’s highest calling is to capture dancing on roller skates. Cinema is an artform defined by motion, and dance is the apotheosis of human motion, exalted all the more by the camera, which moves as another partner in the dance. And dancing on roller skates is all that, but on roller skates. Is it mere coincidence that roller skating was achieving mass popularity across Europe and the Americas between 1880 and 1910, the same period in which the Lumière Brothers et al. were inventing the moving picture? Yes, obviously. Yet both reflect a similar impulse: towards mechanical invention that engages, extends and transforms natural human capacities. The film camera allows our eyes to see beyond what our eyes can see. The roller skate allows our feet to move in ways beyond how our feet can move. And where the crude logic of the motorcar is utilitarian – get where you’re already going but faster – motion pictures and roller skates create new vectors for beauty, grace, and momentum.