Felix Cherniavsky - Response to "The Salome Dancer"

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

Maud Allan 1297 51 2008-2-72.jpg
Maud Allan 1297 51 2008-2-72.jpg
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Felix Cherniavsky - Response to "The Salome Dancer"

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Maud Allan Research Collection
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51.2008-2-72
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9 emhardt voice , " a voice voice of gold . " ange , equally at omedy . She wel . verse as Hamlet ut " the glamor of Wilde captured ed to - her hyp inicate emotion , er gestures , the nts - in sum , the r presence . More 3 quick study and fright . An astute director , she never office sales which to lavish spending , ber pampered son . ean talents spilled of books - a tidied rs and a treatise on e of acting . She was ulptor , always wear . ser suit designed for era that considered ar , she revelled in her not above coaxing it ay Gold and Fizdale , pf publicity is written , placed high on the list e had a leading Paris pictures of her " sleep e pictures were sold in are still available to aity was legendary , for yays found iove - making to friendship . Ave her name and her is she believed in . Dur . Prussian War , she con Theatre into a hospital , or food and supplies and anded herself . She was ad vocally pro - Dreyfus Dreyfus affair . While ited States in 1916 , she upon Americans to join e war effort . At 72 , frail from the amputation of he Divine Sarah joined a rs entertaining troops at ang actress of the day re norable portrait : ed on Bernhardt I was her white boudoir . She n the depths of a large the old acuts . Though Maud Allan's fame has been less enduring , she caused a sensation in pre - World War One Europe , famous for the haunting power of her dance , The Vi . sion Of Salome . The book's jacket claims her as “ Canada's Isadora Duncan " – the dancer spent the first three years of her life in Canada . Felex Cherniavsky , however , is not tempted to make such slender connections . He recognizes that he is supplying a curious footnote to dance history and does so ably and with considerable aplomb . Maud Allen's career reached its apex in 1908 when , at the age of 35 , she made her London debut , becoming in one stroke the darling of London society , the idol of critics . One titillated writer of the day described her appeal : " Swaying like a white witch with yearning arms and hands that please , Miss Allan is such a de licious embodiment of lust that she might win forgiveness with sins of her wonder ful flesh . " Another critic referred to the " piquant lack of costume . " For the next two decades Allan toured the world in search of recognition as the great dancer she believed herself to be . Her quest was doomed , says Mr. Cherni avsky , “ perhaps because she mistook her indisputable uniqueness for greatness . " Increasingly reviews ranged from pa tronizing to rude : she was labelled a slav ish imitator of Isadora Duncan and dis missed as a mere belly dancer . Mr. Cherniavsky freely admits that Allan's succes de scandale was a fluke , and that The Vision , however sensational and extravagant , " was an inferior prod uct of fin de siecle decadence . " " So much of what she offered , ” he says , “ was fortui . tously attuned to the prevailing social and artistic ethos . " She was , in short , in the right place at the right time . Though the embodiment of seductive life force onstage , Allan was in reality a brittle , embittered woman . Unlike Bernhardt , she was intensely guarded about her private life , desperate as she was to conceal the family scandal she had left behind in America . In an appar . ently motiveless crime , her brother , a promising young medical student , had murdered two young women in the local church . Though undoubtedly mentally unstable , he went to the gallows . It was the sublimation of this shameful secret , argues Mr. Cherniavsky , that gave Allan's art its distinctive intensity . Allan spent the last years of her life in New York , " a modern - day Miss Ha visham grieving for the past . " She never complained openly about her " fall from affluence ... to a small ugly room , ” keep ing instead the resolve she had made as a young woman : " no one knows my feel . ings and no one ever shall . " Mary Pearson is a Kingston freelance writer . Keringston Wing Standard Now 9/91 .

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