Maud Allan
Maud Allan was a Canadian dancer, chiefly noted for her Dance of the Seven Veils. Though not perceived as an accomplished dancer, she performed in Oscar Wilde's play Salome, dancing the title role topless, which garnered great attention. During World War I, she sued the British MP Noel Pemberton Billing for libel against allegations that she was a lesbian and that German agents were using her sexual orientation as grounds to blackmail her into spying for them on the British government. She was unsuccessful. The trial resurrected public disapproval of Oscar Wilde, whose own failed libel trial had initiated his arrest, conviction and imprisonment for gross indecency two decades earlier.
Early life
Maud Allan was born Ulla Maude Durrant in Toronto, Ontario, Canada in 1873 to William Allan Durrant and Isabella Durrant. Allan was the second of two children, after her older brother, Theodore Durrant. As a young person, Allan loved piano and was very musically gifted. Her teacher was Miss Lichenstein, a well-known piano teacher in Toronto and Montreal at the time.In 1887, she and her mother and brother moved to San Francisco, California, to meet their father who had lived there for three years before, establishing a life for the family. Theo and Maud attended Lincoln High School and then the Cogswell Technical Institute where she took courses in wood carving and sculpture. During this time Allan was still practicing and teaching piano. She also gave concerts in the homes of affluent people living in San Francisco including Adolph Sutro. Sutro was rumored to be her grandfather and her mother's biological father; there is sufficient evidence to assume this to be true as the family had little money, yet they were able to send Theo to private boarding school and afford a home in an affluent neighbourhood in San Francisco owned by Sutro.
Her family was actively engaged in the Emmanuel Baptist Church; specifically her brother Theo was the Assistant Superintendent of the church's Sunday school. Her brother was also enrolled in medical school at Cooper Medical College. Allan's piano teacher, Eugene S. Bonelli, founder and director of the San Francisco Grand Conservatory of Music, recommended that she continue her studies in Berlin, Germany at the Hochschule fur Musik.
Even though her family was financially strained, her mother pushed for her to go to Europe to continue her education. Isabella and Theo also planned on meeting her in Germany and travelling around Europe with her after Theo's graduation from medical school. Theo planned to pursue postgraduate medical studies while in Europe.
Only six weeks after Allan went to pursue her career in Germany, her brother committed what was known as the crime of the century. Theodore was charged and convicted of the murders of two young women at Emmanuel Baptist Church. Allan was unable to say a final farewell to her brother, because he was hanged on 7 January 1898, at San Quentin Prison while she was still living in Berlin. Allan blamed herself for her brother's death because she believed if she hadn't left him, he wouldn't have committed the murders. She always maintained that her brother was innocent, and he died unnecessarily. His death stayed with Allan for many years after, and she and her mother Isabella scattered his ashes around Europe to mourn his loss. There is speculation that her last name was changed to Allan to distance herself from her brother's actions and allow her to have a successful career.
Stage and dance career
Allan began her dance career after meeting Ferruccio Busoni, the director of the Meister-schüle in Weimar, Germany where she studied piano after she finished studying in Berlin. Allegedly, the first time Allan danced was in front of Busoni and he became enthralled with her performance requesting that she stop pursuing piano and pursue dance instead. One of Busoni's contemporaries was Marcel Remy who became her agent, manager, and composer.She made her stage debut in Vienna, Austria on 24 November 1903, at the age of 30. She danced to Mendelssohn, Beethoven, Bach, Schumann, Chopin, Schubert, and Debussy. Allan toured this performance throughout Europe and travelled to cities like Liège, Brussels, Berlin, Leipzig, and Cologne over the next 5 years. These five years were crucial for solidifying Allan's career change from pianist to dancer and legitimating her talents among the ranks of Isadora Duncan and Ruth St. Denis.
The piece that placed Allan at the pinnacle of dance in Europe was The Vision of Salome, which premiered in Vienna in December 1906. This show was inspired by Oscar Wilde's play Salome, which she first saw with Marcel Remy in 1904. The play is centered around Salome, King Herod's stepdaughter, and her attraction to Jokanaan who has been imprisoned by her stepfather. After Jokanaan rejects her advances because she is a "daughter of Sodom", she dances the Dance of the Seven Veils in exchange for anything she wants from her stepfather. After dancing, she asks for Jokanaan's head. Despite her father's resistance, she gets what she wants and Jokanaan dies. Allan thought that the lead role could have been better expressed through a different medium, and this is how she got her idea for The Vision of Salome. Remy also created the score for the performance.
Reviews were generally critical of her dancing, saying not much of it adds to the existing culture that Isadora Duncan had created. It was evident that Allan was not a formally trained dancer from reading the reviews of The Vision of Salome. However, the part of the twenty-minute performance that really intrigued viewers was the shock value. Allan danced topless; her body was only covered by intricate jewellery. She made the decision to dance topless because she believed that her body was her instrument, and no other artists cover their instruments while they created. Also, a realistic wax sculpted head of John the Baptist sat at the corner of the stage for much of the performance, often terrifying viewers. Allan also used the severed head as a prop towards the end of the performance, and it received a lot of attention in the media for being gruesome and absurd. This media attention allowed the news of Allan's performance of the Dance of the Seven Veils to travel across Europe and for her to tour places across Europe including Paris, Prague, Budapest, Munich, and Leipzig.
File:Dance of Anitra by Edith Maryon - Dreweatts 1.jpg|thumb|alt=Colour photograph of Edith Maryon's sculpture The Dance of Anitra|Edith Maryon's February 1909 work The Dance of Anitra, depicting Allan
Allan's next significant career move came when she performed The Vision of Salome in London in 1908 where the depiction of biblical characters on stage was illegal. She began this "conquest of London" by performing a two-week residency at the Palace Theatre where her performance ended with The Vision of Salome. These performances made her an overnight sensation in the region and pushed her into the upper echelon of society in England. She continued performing in London for 18 months and performed The Vision of Salome 250 times.
In 1909, Allan decided that Moscow and St. Petersburg, Russia were her next targets. Many reviews compared her to Isadora Duncan and criticized her lack of poise in comparison to Duncan's work. The reviews highlighted her passion and efforts, but the Russian audience craved more professionalism and cleanness in movement. Some of her most notable guests were the Czar and Czarina of Russia.
The following year, Allan began touring the United States in Boston. A dancer by the name of Gertrude Hoffman had been sent to study Allan's show in London and perform it in New York six weeks before Allan arrived to tour in the states. Many theatres had banned Allan's Vision of Salome performance before she travelled to the United States because of Hoffman's performance of the dance. This ended up working in favour of Allan because it made people wonder why a performance was being banned, which caused more people to attend her shows where she was allowed to perform. The New York Times dubbed this national intrigue,"Salomania", which propelled Allan into international stardom. Her tour travelled to New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington, Milwaukee, Cincinnati, Kansas City, San Francisco, Oakland, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Sacramento, Stockton, San Jose, Rochester, and San Diego.
After Allan returned to London from her tour in the States, she commissioned Debussy to make the music for a new show she had created called Khamma to replace The Vision of Salome in her act. The story focuses on an Egyptian dancing girl, Khamma, who gave herself as a sacrifice to the god Amun-Re. Khamma was much more ambitious than The Vision of Salome because Allan included other dancers all choreographed by her, a full symphony, and possibly singers. She began working in collaboration with Debussy in 1911 while continuing to perform in London.
Between 1912 and 1915 she travelled to South Africa, India, the Far East, and Australasia performing numbers in her existing repertoire. Her performances were generally well received by audiences and critics, but the stark cultural differences and religious intolerance for indecency caused some outroar in the press.
At the end of 1915 she returned to the United States to stay with her parents who were living in Los Angeles. It was here that she appeared in the silent movie The Rug Maker's Daughter, where she performed excerpts of The Vision of Salome on screen. She began another North American tour in 1916 which led to a disaster. She appointed her friend and manager Charles Macmillen as the head of the Maud Allan Concert Agency in New York to manage the second North American tour. She hired her own orchestra and a group of dancers to make this tour much more elaborate than the previous one. Allan began this tour on 28 September 1916, in Albany and then made her way up into Canada. Despite this, the tour collapsed due to lack of funds. She completed her second tour in North America in April 1917 by travelling to New York and performing at the Palace Theatre for two weeks. The second week featured the Vision of Salome which was critically dismissed and never performed again.