Sisters of Salome
By: Toni Bentley
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2002
Place of publication: New Haven
Language: eng
Number of pages: 223
Subjects: Women dancers; Biography; Feminism and dance
Description: "As the nineteenth century gave way to the twentieth, a short-lived but extraordinary cultural phenomenon spread throughout Europe and the United States - "Salomania." The term was coined when biblical bad girl Salome was resurrected from the Old Testament and reborn on the modern stage in Oscar Wilde's 1893 play Salome and in Richard Strauss's 1905 opera based on it. Salome quickly came to embody the turn-of-the-century concept of the femme fatale.

She and the striptease Wilde created for her, "The Dance of the Seven Veils," soon captivated the popular imagination in performances on stages high and low, from the Metropolitan Opera to the Ziegfeld Follies.".

"This book details for the first time the Salomania craze and four remarkable women who personified Salome and performed her seductive dance: Maud Allan, a Canadian modern dancer; Mata Hari, a Dutch spy; Ida Rubinstein, a wealthy Russian theatrical diva; and French novelist Colette.

Toni Bentley masterfully weaves the stories of these women together, showing how each embraced the persona of the femme fatale and transformed the misogynist idea of a dangerously sexual woman into a form of personal liberation. Bentley explores how Salome became a pop icon in Europe and America, how the real women who played her influenced the beginnings of modern dance, and how her striptease became in the twentieth century an act of glamorous empowerment and unlikely feminism.

Sisters of Salome is a dramatic account of an ancient myth played out onstage and in real life, at the fascinating edge where sex and art, desire and decency, meet."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [207]-215) and index.
Table of contents: title: Machine generated contents note: Part I. Salome: The Daughter of Iniquity 17; title: Chapter One. The Wilde Story I9; title: Chapter Two. The Dance of the Seven Veils 27; title: Chapter Three. The Salome Craze 33; title: Part II. MaudAllan: The Cultof the Clitoris 47; title: Chapter Four. The Crime 49; title: Chapter Five. The Vibion 57; title: Chapter Six. The Trial 72; title: Part III. Mata Hari: The HorizontalAgent 85; title: Chapter Seven. Intoxication 87; title: Chapter Eight. TheLittleDutch Girl 90; title: Chapter Nine. The Hindu Hoax 95; title: Chapter Ten. The Scapegoat o09; title: Chapter Eleven. The Legendary Backlash 124; title: Part IV. Ia Rublintein: The Phallic Female I29; title: Chapter Twelve. The Queen oftheNile i31; title: Chapter Thirteen. The Russian Salome 135; title: Chapter Fourteen. Diaghilev' Dilettante 140; title: Chapter Fifteen. The Male Martyr 145; title: Chapter Sixteen. La Folie d9'da 154; title: Chapter Seventeen. Salvation 161; title: Part V. Colette: The MentalHermaphrodite 167; title: Chapter Eighteen. TheKiss 169; title: Chapter Nineteen. So d Masterpiece 172; title: Chapter Twenty. Willy's Ghost 175; title: Chapter Twenty-One. TheBarrier ofLight 182; title: Chapter Twenty-Two. The Mature Seductress Ig1; title: Notes 197; title: Bibliography 207; title: Index 217.