Felix Cherniavsky - News Clippings 1910s 1

Added 18th Mar 2022 by Beth Dobson (Archives and Programming Assistant, DCD) / Last update 18th Mar 2022

Maud Allan 470 51 2008-1-30.jpg
Maud Allan 470 51 2008-1-30.jpg
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Felix Cherniavsky - News Clippings 1910s 1

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Maud Allan Research Collection
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101 Hoe 1960 Mauric Allan's Dance at Close Range 7 first of the Californians to see Maude Allan dance in London has just returned home . Charley Burbes knows a great deal more about the dips , spurs and cross cuts of a quartz mine in the Sierras than he does about terpsichorean feats , but he has picked up a bit of the atrical knowledge in knocking about cast and west , and this is what he has to say of the California girl who is now the vogue in the London music halls . “ Everybody that sees Miss Allan in the dance comes away with one of two opinions : that it's the limit ' or that it is so artistic ' There is no middle opinion . Many go to see her because they think it is the most improper act ever put upon the stage . Just as many more attend because they regard the performance as the highest expression in motion of the pure and chaste . The performance struck me as indecent but handled in a way to make it appear perfectly modest . From a certain French point of view such an achievement is high art . She dances barefooted and bare limbed . Her draperies are the thin nest of gauze . In the Salome dance she is nude to the waist , except for some strings of beads and jeweled ornaments . Below the waist -- well , she wears a single gauze skirt , and when it isn't floating in the air its trans parency doesn't interfere in the slightest degree with the eyesight . ller dancing is the personification of ex quisite grace and her naturalness is marvelous . As I have said , it all depends on the viewpoint , and perhaps the character , whether one comes away shocked or en tranced . MAUD ALLAN AND HEH ART Fora a batut TY TITRAT I was somewhat undecided whether or not to review the dance of Muud Allan in the columns of this paper or not . This indecision with inspired by the various articles and com . ments I had read and by the various remarks I had heard in connection with these events . These doubts were further strengthened by the lithographs of Maud Allan that had been distributed diligently throughout the city and that did not create much confidence in mo as to the possibility of these events making good material for & purely musical Journal The world's history is divided into a series of ages or periods . Each of these ages has its own idea of propriety and customs , and each of these ages has a right to demand of everyone who lives in it to adjust his or her public deportment to the laws of whatever proprieties may be in vogue . It is an accepted rule that those who do not conform with the customs of the age are considered of a lower state of human mind and are relegated to a class by themselves . In our present age it is the custom to appear clothed in prescribed wearing apparel in public . Upon the stage there is permitted a certain license in this direction , but , after all , the proprieties demand that the idea of covering the human body is carried out in certain respects . There was a time in the world's history when such custom of covering the body was not in vogue and when every one was scantily clothed without shocking conventionality . There are today certain races who within their territories still assume the habits of their forefathers and according to their sense of propriety they are doing the correct thing . But now comes a certain fad , whether such fad be one of artistic endeavor or not does not enter here , and says that anyone is permitted to set aside the laws of propriety and appear only partially attired upon the public stage , because the object of that fad is to appeal to the artistic and refined sensibilities and not to vulgar and coarse minds . We suffer the exhibition of statuary and paintings bearing the earmarks of impro priety under the same plea of artistic license . But the ques . tion presents itselg , would it be permissible for any man or woman to appear upon the streets or upon the stage in an attire in contrast to our laws of proprieties because his or her object was purely an artistic one or because the pose or the beauty of the body justified such exhibition for purposes of art only ? We have seen at the Orpheum Theater certain statuary exhibited by people who appeared divested of their attire and only shielded from the public gaze by a layer of bronze or other color . If these matters are permitted upon the excuse of artistic purposes , then we predict that the time is not far distant when certain people will take advantage of this view and under the excuse of art will endeavor to appeal to sensuality . I desire to emphatically aver , that I do not here publish my personal views on this subject . I am only trying to point out a danger that may be impossible to avoid and the eventual appearance of which must be sought in the present sufferance of actual breaches of propriety under the very effective excuse of artistic endeavor . yn Confession Through mutual friends from California , Mr. Forbes met Miss Allan and very frankly she gave him her ideas of the performance . " 1 know nothing about dancing , " she confessed , " so I don't dance at all . I simply inter pret music to motion . I move my limbs and body ac cording to the suggestions I get from the music . I con sider the performance to be perfectly modest , so natur ally I don't feel that sense of shame of which some of the critics speak . A nude person , you know , is not necessarily immodest any more than a nude picture or statue is . That is just what I try to present -- living art . The English people have been most kind and apprecia tive , and I have been the guest of many distinguished families from the King and Queen down . I am sure I would not have been invited to houses I have been in did my hosts consider me in the slightest degree vulgar . ' 部 How the English Regard Her According to Mr. Forbes no mention of the Durrant case is ever made abroad in connection with Miss Allan . The story current in London is simply that she was born in Canada and was taken to California by her parents when she was about six years old . The English con sider that what her brother may or may not have done cuts no figure with Miss Allan as a woman or as an artist . Miss Allan's parents have been living with her ever since they arrived from San Francisco . All three plan ake up their permanent residence in Berlin after Mis : an's engagements in England are closed . Since I have witnessed a performance of Maud Allan's I have at least been able to satisfy myself upon one point and that is that her performance is so essentially artistic and so entirely lacking in any characteristic of sensuality that I do not hesitate to write about her work in a journal that is principally read by young boys and girls . The sentiment that there is music in motion has never been demonstrated to me physically in a more striking degree than it is done by Miss Allan . Her entire personality , while under the spell of her unique art , seems to exude music . Her dancing can not be compared with the ordinary application of that term . It is something entirely individual and unique - something that appeals solely to the artistic senses . She does not only dance with her feet , but she dances with her eyes , her face , her hands , her arms and in fact with every fiber of her exceedingly graceful body . It is a pantomimic expression of music and poetry combined ; but it does not in any sense translate the meaning of the music interpreted through the orchestra . Such an idea is preposterous . To me this fact was especially revealed in Mendelssohn's " Spring Song , " which seems to receive much more importance through Miss Allan's terpsy . chorean interpretation than we are in the habit of according it , but to say that the dance translated the music would be ridiculous . There is a certain subtle abandonment into the artistic atmosphere of her work that makes Miss Allan's art inexpressibly attractive . That it requires genius to accomplish such a feat can not be disputed . Every muscle in the body seems to have been trained for a certain purpose . Miss Allan controls these muscles in a most astoundingly facile degree . When she expresses sorrow everything about her breathes the air of sadness . When she expresses joy every nerve seems to tingle with gladness . When , in the * over then permanent All 3 plan to Palle ap rendence in Belen afhen handon