Felix Cherniavsky - Correspondence with Dance Collection Danse 2

Added 19th Mar 2022 by Beth Dobson (Archives and Programming Assistant, DCD) / Last update 19th Mar 2022

Maud Allan 1244b 51 2008-2-71.jpg
Maud Allan 1244b 51 2008-2-71.jpg
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Felix Cherniavsky - Correspondence with Dance Collection Danse 2

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Maud Allan Research Collection
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51.2008-2-71
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a describes her art as " the disembodied spirit of poetry , the essence of poetry expressed through the medium of per fect grace in motion , in poise , in re pose " ( p . 238 ) . A more pragmatic critic , the English writer who used the pseudonym Chris topher St. John , compares Allan's work to that of a revivalist preacher who makes many converts : There is very little art in Miss Allan's performance . She her self admits this when she says she has never learned to dance . Perhaps this is one of the se crets of her success . The En glish people dearly love a Lord . The English Lord ( and the class he represents ) dearly loves the amateur . ( p . 171 ) product of a tainted heredity , an issue introduced by the defense at the start of the trial . In discussing Allan's love affair with his uncle Leo , Cherniavsky tells that the dancer , nearly twice the musician's age , enjoyed romantic attachments with young people of both sexes ; yet up to this point in the narrative he offers no substantiation for this claim . Later in his account of Allan's relationship at age fifty - five with her secretary - com panion Verna Aldrich — a woman twenty years her junior - he presents evidence of Aldrich's deep devotion and Allan's apparent pleasure in dominating and manipulating her young charge : yet little is presented beyond gossip among the Cherniavsky clan to indicate that the Allan - Aldrich association was the sexual one he proposes . At several points in his study Cher niavsky stresses Allan's tendency to distort truth in her writings and public statements . My Life and Dancing , pub lished in 1908 at the height of her fame , is a self - promotional autobiography in which the facts of her origins and early life in California are substantially fic tional . The author observes that a lurid second autobiography in twenty - four installments which she sold to the San Francisco press in 1921 , in which she boasts of sexual propositions from so cially prominent Europeans and mem bers of royalty , contains comparable flights of her lively fancy . So much for Allan the chameleon , the manipulator , the victim of circum stances and of public opinion , the sex ual dilettante , and the deceiver . Of Allan the dancer we're told relatively little . Cherniavsky , who relied on ver bal and written descriptions by those who saw her dance , vacillates between awe and ridicule . He notes that Allan , being entirely self - taught , achieved no identifiable dance technique , and in drawing upon his family's memory of her performances , he reports their praise of her supreme musicality and her natural skills as an actress and mime — the former acquired through years of piano study , the latter acknowledged by " lifelong friends . " At one point he defends her art , suggesting that her presentations were too sophisticated for popular tastes . Conversely , he takes apparent delight in telling of her shortcomings ( unhappy New Zealand audiences referred to her as Fraud Allan ) and sharing anecdotes which his uncles had recalled to her discredit . One of these involved her tendency to improvise steps of her own dance creation during performances in India when Allan was overweight and dancing with an injury - surely a bug bear to anyone obliged to accompany her . Reports from several European crit ics who were smitten by her Salome dance give the reader a fairly good idea of what the performance looked like . Cherniavsky believes that the intensity of her presentation was achieved through her association of John the Baptist's decapitation with the execution of her unfortunate brother . Most accounts reprinted in the text suggest that the piece was primarily a mime creation , one in which potent emotions were expressed through her face and arms . Critics who witnessed her compelling performance in various European the atres offer ample descriptions of both her movements and their effect on view ers . Only two of the twenty black and white photos in this volume depict Allan as Salome : one in repose and the other in motion . A third shows Artur Bock's stylized sculpture of Allan as a crouch ing , nearly naked Salome about to kiss the severed head . In selecting illustrations from his own collection and archival sources , Cherniavsky has chosen only one other performance photograph of Allan ; the balance are formal and candid shots of the dancer in her social milieu and views of her London home . Few de scriptions of the other creations in Al lan's small repertory are to be found in the reportage of an era in which critics were more concerned with their rheto ric than with reporting what they saw . Her dances to short melodic pieces by composers such as Grieg , Mendelssohn , Rubinstein , and Chopin are described contemporary critics for their effect with stock phrases such as " sculpture brought to life ” or “ music turned into moving sculpture " ( 2 ) . J.E. Crawford Flitch , a dance historian of her era , marvels at Allan's strong affinity to music in her dancing , her “ ability to pass with the music from the major to the minor key or vice versa ” ( p . 170 ) . S. Morgan Powell , a Canadian critic , Most of the responses which Cher niavsky has gathered from viewers of Allan's performances substantiate this valuation of Allan for her accom plishment as an amateur . This reader finished the story of Allan's troubled life with fascination for her struggle as a victim of a repressed society , but with the conclusion that her place in twenti eth - century dance has been given little confirmation in this book and is thus perhaps as tenuous as her identity as a Canadian . Leland Windreich Vancouver , British Collumbia NOTES 1. Cherniavsky received funding from the Canadian Federation of the Human ities , the Social Sciences and Humani ties Research Council , Canada Coun cil , and the Alberta Foundation for the Literary Arts . 2. Review Editor's note -- References to sculpture may reflect critics ' famil iarity with Delsartean statue posing popularized in the United States in the 1880s and 1890s . Dance Research Journal 25/1 ( Spring 1993 ) 45

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