![\"Maud](\"http:\/\/www.gildedserpent.com\/art48\/graphics48\/allan-Portrait.jpg\")
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The art critic, Sir Herbert Read<\/span>, remarked about the dancer: \u201cMaud Allan was the Marilyn Monroe of my youth.\u201d Now, that intrigued me!\u00a0 Here was a woman enormously famous in her time, yet, unlike Monroe, Maud Allan has been almost entirely forgotten today, outside of dance circles. Indeed, so forgotten is she that, when I decided to write a book based\ton her life, most publishers I approached wrote back with the comment that nobody had heard of her, and nobody would be interested in her story. <\/p>\n While researching her life, I grew more and more intrigued by this dancer who effortlessly attracted one dramatic event after another. She had been attacked with ferocity, and I began to glimpse the possible creative triggers behind her enactment of the most feared female archetype of her age: namely, \u201cLa Femme Fatale\u201d. <\/p>\n Allan was a contemporary of the famous Isadora Duncan<\/span>. They both performed as soloists and achieved extraordinary celebrity in the opening years of the 20th century. Canadian by birth, Allan grew up in San Francisco, and found fame in Europe\u2014much like Duncan. At the height of her career, picture postcards and little statuettes of Maud Allan sold by the thousand. Both dancers performed in filmy costumes, and whereas many reviews of Allan\u2019s work praised her, some lampooned her as being \u201ckitsch and tasteless\u201d. Duncan disliked Allan intensely and claimed Allan copied her. Unlike Duncan, Allan\u2019s fame may have owed more to her notoriety than her artistry, yet there is no doubt that she was a serious artist, and a film fragment of her performing in India with her troupe reveals Allan as a graceful\u2014and surprisingly modern\u2014dancer. <\/p>\n Allan owed her fame almost entirely to her \u201cVision of Salome\u201d. At the time of her greatest fame, the first decade of the 20th century, both the amateur and professional stages in Europe and America were in the grip of Salome-mania.<\/p>\n On makeshift platforms, and in the drawing rooms of society, women hostesses played out the fantasy of the Bible\u2019s best-known dancing temptress, Salome, largely for the entertainment of other women.\u00a0 Who knows whether they were using this archetypal figure to express their frustration at the limitations imposed on them by society? At the same time, Can-can dancers in Paris had their own gesture of defiance; they were kicking the hats off the heads of wealthy men who went to ogle them in the dancehalls of Paris. However, the Salomes went one better: they demanded not just men\u2019s hats but their heads\u2014on a plate! <\/p>\n In those days, dance was not yet a respectable profession for women. Yet, female entertainers in the West were staking out a place for themselves on the public stage as never before, and there was considerable fear of these bold women and what was regarded as their emasculating power among the men of the era. Taking on the role of Salome played into such fears and, as Allan\u2019s contemporary, Mata Hari<\/span>, was to discover, it could be a dangerous role to play!<\/p>\n Figuratively speaking, Allan was knocked to the ground many times in her career\u2014either because of her unconventional private life\u2014or because of her dancing. Every time, though, she got back on her feet, put up her fists, and came out fighting. Over the years, she endured criticism and slanderous comments in the press, and she learned that suing her detractors for libel was an effective method of disarming her opponents. Only once did she become unglued, and that was in the notorious libel case, which she bought against a right-wing member of the English Parliament (a trial that forms the centrepiece of my book about her, which I titled "Midnight Rose\u201d). <\/p>\n It happened in 1918, long after the furore\tover her \u201cVision of Salome\u201d had died down, and Allan was appearing in Oscar Wilde<\/span>\u2019s play on the same theme. Under the guise of advertising the performance, the MP (member of parliament), Noel Billing<\/span> made a thinly veiled attack on Allan in his private newspaper. He hinted that she was lesbian, and Allan sued for libel. Unlike male homosexuality, lesbianism was not against the law in England. Nevertheless, it was discreetly practised, rather than flaunted. <\/p>\n Men overtly abhorred Lesbianism, and viewed it as a threat to the human race. If enough women came to prefer their own sex, they reasoned, then the race would die out altogether! Given that Allan was bisexual, it was foolish of her to sue, but sue she did\u2014only this time with disastrous consequences. <\/p>\n By then, Allan was long past the days of her greatest fame, but the case (dubbed \u201cthe Libel Trial of the Century\u201d) was covered extensively in the popular press and attracted crowds of onlookers from all sections of society. It threw a searchlight on the social hypocrisies and sexual ignorance of the age, as self-confessed guardians of public morality came forward to attack Allan. To modern ears, some of the court exchanges are, frankly, hilarious. When the word \u201corgasm\u201d was uttered, the Judge asked, \u201cIs this some unnatural vice?\u201d Then, discussing the term \u201cclitoris\u201d\u2014whose meaning no respectable woman was thought to understand, although, indeed, few of either sex did understand the word at the time\u2014a prosecution witness declared that this part of the body, when unduly excited, could have the most dreadful effect on a woman. \u201cAn exaggerated clitoris might even drive a woman to have sexual congress with an elephant,\u201d the witness claimed.\u00a0 Even if the court exchanges make us smile, something darker lay behind them. <\/p>\n For, as the trial progressed, in effect, it became a trial of female sexuality. No respectable woman, it was claimed, could possibly take on the sadistic role of Salome unless she was a sadist in real life, and sadism was regarded at the time as a practice verging on the criminal.<\/p>\n Worse was to come for Allan. During the court case, a highly damaging skeleton in her family cupboard was dragged out to shame the dancer even further. Her brother, Theo, had been hanged for the murder and violation of a young woman in what was described as San Francisco\u2019s most sensational murder trial. \tIn those days, criminality was thought to be hereditary; hence, Allan was thought by some to be capable of crimes, which, at the time, were compared to those of Jack the Ripper. After Theo\u2019s execution, Allan\u2019s mother was reported to kiss his lifeless lips; it was a telling precursor to Maud\u2019s kissing the papier mach\u00e9 mouth of the dead John the Baptist, in what was considered the most tasteless and shocking aspect of her Salome.<\/p>\n Her brother\u2019s crime haunted the dancer all her life. Indeed, she changed her name, in order not to be associated with Theo. She was known as being secretive; her memoirs tell us little about her, and it\u2019s true Allan had a lot to hide. It is interesting to speculate on her subconscious motives for taking on the role of the vengeful Salome. Of course, one can only speculate, but the more one researches her life, the more intriguing Allan becomes. She may not have been as outstanding a dancer as Isadora Duncan, but she was a true fighter, and I think her story deserves to be brought out into the light.<\/p>\n The few books about Allan\u2019s life are, I think, somewhat dismissive and superior in their attitude toward the dancer\u2019s behaviour and artistic ambitions. Like many, she was a complex character, and perhaps not always likeable, but I liked her bravery, determination and boldness, and ended up writing a work of fiction that is based on her life. No one can know what were her real thoughts, dreams and nightmares, nor what she felt about her fame and the problems it brought with it. However, I hope that my book recreates the flavour of this feisty dancer, and that it will help bring her back from obscurity.<\/p>\n Autographed copies of Wendy Buonaventura\u2019s book \u201cMidnight Rose\u201d are available from www.cinnabarbooks.co.uk<\/a><\/em><\/strong>
\n\t\t\tEd note–A review of this book will also appear shortly on Gilded Serpent<\/em>.<\/p>\n![\"Maud](\"http:\/\/www.gildedserpent.com\/art48\/graphics48\/maudallan-Baptist.jpg\")
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\n \n \nWendy’s Books through Amazon are not autographed. Autographed copies of Midnight Rose can be obtained through Cinnabar Books<\/a> for around $15<\/h5>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
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