Category:Salome--dance (subject)

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Ballets on Salome

Overview

In the Gospel narrative the unnamed daughter of Herodias (Salome) "danced" before her uncle (and now step-father) Herod Antipas. He was so pleased to grant her any wishes, including the head of John the Baptist. Christian iconography often represented the scene. Hence, whoever performs Salome is expected to be a dancer (at least, also a dancer), even when she is primarily an actress or a singer.

In 1895 Loie Fuller was the first solo dancer to present a Salome piece and she did it in line with the "biblical" view of Salome as an innocent child. But the great success of Oscar Wilde's play (in Paris [1896] and Berlin [1902]) and Richard Strauss's opera (1905) changed radically the popular view of Salome, from innocent chid to femme fatale.

In Wilde and Strauss the dance of Salome became the epitome of her seductiveness. The "colonial" fashion and prejudice of the time made them to reimagine her dance as a lascivious "Oriental" dance--the Dance of the Seven Veils. Both classical and vaudeville dancers contributed to create the tragic character of a seductive and perverse woman that ultimately destroys herself with the object of her own desires. They offered solo performances, or substituted actresses and singers who were unable or unwilling (for reasons of decency) to perform the Dance of the Seven Veils. And when professional dancers were not involved, actresses and singers turned into dancers, offering some remarkable dancing performances on stage or on the screen.

The Salome craze, or Salomania (as it was renamed by Percival Polland in the New York Time in late August 1908), reached its peak in the years 1907-09, when the Dance of Salome attracted the attention of the most famous ballerinas, becoming for some time a fever that spread in all Europe and the United States. It started in Europe with The Vision of Salome by Canadian-American dancer Maud Allan, which premiered in Vienna in December 1906 and then appeared in some of the major European theaters, in Budapest, Berlin, Marienbad, finally to triumph at the Palace Theatre in London in March 1908. In line with the new identity of femme fatale of the character, in November 1907 Loise Fuller performed in Paris a very different Salome from her first work on the subject, on music specifically composed by Florent Schmitt.

In the meantime, Strauss's Salome had been first performed in New York on 22 January 1907. As was common practice, dancer Bianca Froelich substituted soprano Olive Fremstad during Salome's Dance of the Seven Veils. Her realistic performance contributed to the scandal and the show was cancelled within days. By public demand, Froelich immediately began performing her opera choreography at the Lincoln Square Variety Theater before wildly enthusiastic audiences. Almost overnight, all Oriental dancers in the vaudeville became "Salome dancers". The film If You Had a Wife Like This, released on 23 May 1907, included a "Salome Dance" and so did the Ziegfelt Follies of 1907, performed by Mdlle. Dazie. The show opened on 9 July 1907 at the Jardin de Paris in New York.

The scandal of the New York premiere and the success of these early performances by Bianca Froelich and Mdlle. Dazie inspired Gertrude Hoffman to offer her own interpretation of the Vision of Salome. In April 1908 she traveled to England with her husband with the specific goal of getting Allan's dance, which was enjoying a lasting success in London. On 13 July 1908 Gertude Hodffman's show opened at Hammerstein's Paradise Garden Roof Theater. It was an overnight sensation and every vaudeville theatre staged its own Salome dance. In the Summer 1908 newspapers and journals in the United States denounced an outbreak of "The Salome Epidemic": "There are no many dancers appearing as the daughter of Herodias that it is impossible to make more than a guess at their number. There is hardly a vaudeville house that cannot boast its own Salome, whether it be Hammerstein's Roof Garden, the Casino, the Alhambra, or a third or four class hall" (The Sketch 63 [1908] 345). Among the most celebrated American vaudeville dancers to specialize as "Salome dancers" were Hilde Caroll, La Syplhe, Lotta Faust, Vera Olcott (Theatre Unique), Eva Tanguay, La Belle Zola, La Petite Adelaide, and Aida Overton Walker. The cinema's contribution to "Salomania" included in 1908 lavish performances by Florence Lawrence and Stacia Napierkowska. When in 1909 Strauss's Salome returned at New York at the Manhattan Opera House, it was a triumph. Enthusiastic audiences rushed to see soprano Mary Garden performing herself a much daring version of the Dance of Seven Veils.

Even when the "epidemic" was over, Salome remained a fashionable presence on stage and on screen. New productions of Schmitt's ballet were performed in Paris in the 1910s and 1920s. In 1912 in a private performance at Palazzo Barberini before the Prince of San Faustino, Mata Hari used the Strauss music and played a topless and laughing Salome. On the screen, some of most popular actresses competed to offer the definitive portrait of Salome, including Vittoria Lepanto (1910), Theda Bara (1918), and Alla Nazimova (1922).

After some pause in the 1930s, the story of Salome once again returned to be an inspiring force for dancers and choreographers in the late 1940s.

Many famous choreographers have recreated Salomé's Dance of the Seven Veils for productions of either the Wilde play or the Strauss opera, including Maurice Bejart, Mark Morris (Seattle Opera, 1986), and Doug Varone (Metropolitan Opera, 2004). Some have created solo performances or ballets, based on the music of Strauss or other musicians who like Florent Schmitt, have composed music specifically for the Salome dance.

Following the example of Mary Garden, some sopranos have distinguished themselves not only for their vocal skill but also as celebrated performers of the Dance of the Seven Veils. Among them are Ljuba Welitsch (in the 1940s), Maria Ewing (in the 1980s), Karita Mattila and Nadja Michael (in the 2000s).

Among the most notable actresses to perform Salome as a dancer on screen are Rita Hayworth and Brigid Bazlen. Only in Pasolini's film The Gospel according to Matthew (1964), Salome, played by 12-year-old Paola Tedesco, was allowed to return an innocent child, playing an innocent, joyful dance before her parents, unaware of the consequences of her action.

While the two typologies of Salome, innocent child or perverse seductress, continue to coexist, in more recent decades a third typology has emerged in some productions that have given a homosexual understanding of the story.

In an interview published by Solomon Volkov in 1985, two years after the death of the choreographer, George Balanchine stated that he always believed that Oscar Wilde was "thinking of a pretty boy" when he wrote of Salome. The first production of Salome to play up a transvestite angle was the Italian film director Luchino Visconti's production of Strauss's opera at the Spoleto Festival in 1961, under the baton of Thomas Schippers. There the Dance of the Seven Veils was performed not by the soprano (Margaret Tynes) or a dancer, but by a group of young men. Choreographers Lyndsay Kemp in 1977 and Maurice Bejart in 1983 even more explicitly linked the character of Salome to transvestitism by adapting the role for a male dancer. Russell's film Salome's Last Dance (1987) located the representation of Wilde's work in an all-male brothel, revealing at the climax of the Dance of the Seven Veils that the "female" protagonist (Imogen Millais-Scott) was transgender.

Other versions of the story were choreographed by

Bibliography

  • Marlis Schweitzer, "The Salome Epidemic: Degeneracy, Disease, and Race Suicide," in The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Theater (Oxford 2015), pp.
  • Debra Craine, and Judith Mackrell (eds.), The Oxford Dictionary of Dance, 2010.
  • Clair Rowden (ed.), Performing Salome, Revealing Stories (Routledge, 2013)
  • Davinia Caddy, "Variations on the Dance of the Seven Veils," Cambridge Opera Journal 17.1 (2005) 37–58 [1]
  • Toni Bentley, Sisters of Salome (New Haven, 2002).
  • William Tydeman and Steven Price, Wilde: Salome (Cambridge, 1996), 136–51
  • Richard Bizot, "The Turn-of-the-Century Salome Era: High- and Pop-Culture Variations on the Dance of the Seven Veils," Choreography and Dance 2 (1992) 71–87
  • Judith Lynne Hanna, Dance, Sex, and Gender: Signs of Identity, Dominance, Defiance, and Desire, University of Chicago Press, 1988
  • "The Vulgarization of Salome," Current Literature 45 (1908) 437-440

Performing Salome

1890s Salome Ballet Notes
1895 Loie Fuller Salome (1895 Sylvestre, Pierné, Fuller), ballet

1900s Salome Ballet Notes
1906 Maud Allan The Vision of Salome (1906 Allan), ballet
1907 Bianca Froelich Salome (1907 Hertz, Fremstad / @1905 Strauss), New York (Met) premiere & Salome's Dance (1907 Froelich), ballet Bianca Froelich performed the Dance of the Seven Veils at the New York premiere of Richard Strauss's opera.
1907 Natalia Trouhanova Salome (1907 Strauss, Destinn / @1905 Strauss), Paris production (opera) Dance of the Seven Veils.
1907 Mdlle. Dazie Salome's Dance (1907 Dazie), ballet
1908 Loie Fuller La tragédie de Salomé (The Tragedy of Salome / 1907 Schmitt / Fuller), Paris premiere (ballet)
1908 Gertrude Hoffmann A Vision of Salome (1908 Hoffmann), ballet
1908 Aida Overton Walker The Vision of Salome (1908 Overton-Walker), ballet
1908 Eva Tanguay The Vision of Salome (1908 Tanguay), ballet
1908 Ida Rubinstein Salome (1908 Fokine, Glazunov), ballet Mimed performance at St. Petersburg. Music: Glazunov Set & costumes: Bakst. A single private performance in which the dancer stripped nude in the course of the Dance of the Seven Veils.
1909 Mary Garden Salomé, French ed. (Salome / 1909 Garden / @1905 Strauss), New York (Manhattan) production Manhattan Opera House
1909 Mary Garden Salomé, French ed. (Salome / 1919 Garden / @1905 Strauss), Paris production (opera) Opera (April 1910)

1910s Salome Ballet Notes
1910 Natalia Trouhanova Salomé (1910 @1908 Mariotte), Paris production (opera) Natalia Trouhanova substitued soprano Lucienne Bréval in the Dance of Seven Veils (May 1910).
1912 Mata Hari Salome's Dance (1912 Hari / @1905 Strauss), ballet
1912 Natalia Trouhanova La tragédie de Salomé (The Tragedy of Salome / 1912 @1907 Schmitt / Guerra), Paris production (ballet) Schmitt revised the score for Natalia Trouhanova in 1912 which was choreographed by Nicholas Guerra.
1913 Tamara Karsarvina La tragédie de Salomé (The Tragedy of Salome / 1913 @1907 Schmitt / Romanov), Paris production (ballet) In 1913 the Diaghilev’s company (Ballets Russes) staged a version with the choreography by Boris Romanov starring Tamara Karsarvina. Decor: Sergei Soudeikine. There was a later production by Serge Lifar.
1917 Alisa Koonen Salomé (1917 Mordkin, Gyutel), ballet Kamerny Thatre, Moscow, 9 October 1917 - Music: Jules Gyutel -- Alisa Koonen (Salome), Ivan Arkadin (Herod Antipas), Nikolai Tseretelli (John the Baptist)
1919 Ida Rubinstein La tragédie de Salomé (The Tragedy of Salome / 1919 @1907 Schmitt / Guerra), Paris production (ballet) New choreography by Nicholas Guerra.

1920s Salome Ballet Notes
1921 Aleksandra Balashova Salome's Dance (1921 Gorsky / @1905 Strauss), ballet Moscow production (January 1921). Last ballet of Balashova (1887-1979) in Russia before leaving for America.
1924 ??? Salome's Dance (1924 Goleizovsky / @1905 Strauss), ballet Kasyan Goleizovsky, choreography
1928 Olga Spessivtseva La tragédie de Salomé (The Tragedy of Salome / 1928 @1907 Schmitt), Paris production (ballet) Paris production

1930s Salome Ballet Notes
1933 Ruth Sorel Salome's Dance (1933 Sorel), ballet Ruth Sorel won the top prize in performance at Warsaw, Poland for her expressiveness in Salomé's Dance.

1940s Salome Ballet Notes
1944 ??? La tragédie de Salomé (The Tragedy of Salome / 1944 @1907 Schmitt), Paris production (ballet) Paris production
1944 Martha Graham Hérodiade (Salome / 1944 Hindemith / Graham), ballet
1946 Olga Adabache Salome (1946 Lifar / @1905 Strauss), ballet Monte Carlo
1949 Celia Franca The Dance of Salome (1949 Franca / Hartley), TV film (ballet) BBC TV

1950s Salome Ballet Notes
1953 Rita Hayworth Salome (1953 Dieterle), feature film USA Wiki Imdb
1954 Lycette Darsonval La tragédie de Salomé (The Tragedy of Salome / 1954 @1907 Schmitt / Aveline), Paris production (ballet) Paris production

1960s Salome Ballet Notes
1961 Brigid Bazlen (actress) King of Kings (1961 Ray), feature film - Based on the Gospel of Mark and the Gospel of Matthew United States
1964 Paola Tedesco (child actress) Il vangelo secondo Matteo (The Gospel According to St. Matthew / 1964 Pasolini), feature film - Based on the Gospel of Matthew Italy

1970s Salome Ballet Notes
1973 Ludmilla Tchérina (dancer) Salomé (Salome / 1973 Koralnik), TV film-play - Filmization of the 1893 Wilde play. Choreographed by Maurice Béjart Produced and broadcast in France (9 May 1969).
1973 Carla Fracci La tragédie de Salomé (The Tragedy of Salome / 1973 @1907 Schmitt / Gai), Florence production (ballet) Maggio Musicale Fiorentino. New choreography by Loris Gai. Bruce Marks (Herod Antipas), Sallie Wilson (Herodias), Carla Fracci (Salome), Francois Klaus (John the Baptist). 19, 21, 22, 23 June 1973 (4 performances) Edoardo Muller, conductor
1977 Lindsay Kemp Salome (1977 Kemp), ballet Lindsay Kemp Company, Roundhouse, London, 21 February 1977 -- All-male performance -- Lindsay Kemp (Salome), Vladek Sheybal (Herod Antipas), The Incredible Orlando (Herodias), David Haughton (John the Baptist)
1978 Vivi Flindt Salome (1978 Davies / Flindt), ballet

1980s Salome Ballet Notes
1983 Patrick Dupont Salome (1983 Bejart / Drigo), ballet Maurice Bejart]] (1983) First produced in Geneva, with recorded music by Riccardo Drigo. Salome here a male dancer, Patrick Dupont, who performs a solo in an imposing gown, unequivocally linking the character to transvestitism.

2000s Salome Ballet Notes
2002 Aída Gómez Salomé (Salome / 2002 Saura / Baños, Tomatito), film-ballet
2013 Viktoria Brilyova La tragédie de Salomé (The Tragedy of Salome / 2013 @1907 Schmitt / Faski), St. Petersburg production (ballet) Emil Faski, chor. The Mariinsky Ballet’s production premiered in Russia on 9 March 2013 at the XIII Ballet Festival MARIINSKY, followed by stagings outside the country, including May 28, 29, 30, 31, June 1, 2013 – Teatro Verdi Orchestra (Trieste); Alexei Repnikov, conductor

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