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 1302b 51 2008-2-72.jpg
Maud Allan 1302b 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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C vi - emhardt voice , " a voice voice of gold . " ange , equally at omedy . She wel . perse as Hamlet ut “ the glamor of Wilde captured ed to ber hyp nicate emotion , er gestures , the nts in sum , the I presence . More a quick study and fright . An astute director , she never office sales which to lavish spending , her pampered son . can talents spilled of books - a tidied os and a treatise on e of acting . She was alptor , always wear ser suit designed for era that considered ar , she revelled in her Dot above coaxing it ay Gold and Fizdale , of 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 uity was legendary , for ways found love - making to friendship . Ave ber name and her s she believed in . Dur . Prussian War , she con Theatre into a hospital , for food and supplies and anded herself . She was d vocally pro - Dreyfus Dreyfus affair . While ated States in 1916 , sbe cupon Americans to join war effort . At 72 , frail from the amputation of be Divine Sarab joined a ers entertaining troops at ang actress of the day re morable portrait : d on Bernhardt I was her white boudoir . She in the depths of a large 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 ber 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 . Kingston Wing Standard Nos 9/1