Sisters of Salome [Hardcover]

Ms. Toni Bentley (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 28, 2002

As the 19th century gave way to the 20th, 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 text 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 Russian heiress; and French novelist Colette. Toni Bentley 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 20th century an act of glamorous empowerment and unlikely feminism.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Former NYC ballerina and independent scholar Toni Bentley offers a study of four famous women who created versions of the legendary femme fatale Salome (popularized by Oscar Wilde) in Sisters of Salome, a cultural study and the story of an obsession. Bentley explores the experiences of women who have tapped into the power of the nude female body, particularly four who found fame by portraying Salome: Maud Allen, Mata Hari, Ida Rubenstein and Colette. Bentley gives a sketch of each woman's life and what compelled them to dance their own versions of Salome, showing how she was "not only a misogynist, masochistic male fantasy, but a heterosexual, sadistic female fantasy as well." (Yale Univ., $27.95 288p ISBN 0-300-09039-0; May)
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Bentley examines the cult of Salome that flourished in Europe and in North America during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Dubbed "Salomania," this craze had its roots in the Oscar Wilde play and the subsequent Richard Strauss opera based on the life of Salome, the biblical temptress. Popularized by Maud Allen, the progressive Canadian dancer; Mata Hari, the notorious Dutch spy; Ida Rubinstein, a Russian proponent of the modern dance movement; and Colette, the intoxicating French novelist, the daring Dance of the Seven Veils became an exotic symbol of female self-determination and liberation. In order to calculate the startling impact this cultural phenomenon had on Victorian sensibilities, the author recounts the personal stories of the four extraordinary women who embodied and embraced the freedom represented by Salome and her uniquely empowering striptease. This fascinating slice of popular culture will appeal to both social and dance historians. Margaret Flanagan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 223 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press; First Edition edition (May 28, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300090390
• ISBN-13: 978-0300090390
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,976,888 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Strange Origins of Striptease, July 26, 2002

By 

R. Hardy "Rob Hardy" (Columbus, Mississippi USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Sisters of Salome (Hardcover)

Oscar Wilde is responsible for striptease. Well, not directly, perhaps, but there is a surprising connection drawn in _Sisters of Salome_ (Yale University Press) by Toni Bentley, an examination of four women who interpreted Salome around the turn of the last century. Wilde took his story from legend (not the Bible story), and invented the famous "Dance of the Seven Veils" for his French play _Salome_. It initiated the craze for "Salomania" and there was even a school for Salomes that churned out dancers to go into the variety halls. Bentley's introduction inserts herself into the history of striptease, and she gives a good account of ending her career as a ballerina and going onto the stage (just once?) as a stripper. She felt power; "... there was no victimization on either side of these footlights." It was a revelatory experience: "I was unmasked and, for a miraculous minute, thrilled in my body, unafraid of my life. I was in - for me - Paradise."

Her research into how striptease originated centered on four women who had initially interpreted to the theatrical Salome. Maudie Durant was the sister of a serial killer, and escaped to Europe and to the stage as Maud Allan as a way to free herself from disgrace. She became "the least dressed dancer of our time," and she then portrayed Salome in 1906. She became involved in a ridiculous trial which she lost in large part because it was shown that she knew what a clitoris was. Ida Rubenstein was the child of Russian aristocrats, and the only Salome here who had few worries about money. She liked expensive, self-aggrandizing shows and ended up derided for her vanity. She did, however, sponsor artists of real ability; Ravel composed _Bolero_ for her. Everyone knows the name of the spy Mata Hari, but everyone knows wrong. She performed all over Europe, and took lovers; she had a special weakness for those in uniform. As a result, she did take money for spying, but didn't do any. She was framed and executed in France in 1917. With Colette, perhaps Bentley is guilty of over-application of her theme, because Colette never played Salome, although she did once perform on the same billing as Mata Hari. Unlike the other three women profiled here, Colette had a genuinely happy and long life. She graduated from virgin bride to lesbian, to happily married housewife, although she did seduce a former husband's son. She used her success in scandals, including her stage nakedness, to become an author whose fiction and memoirs have inspired far more readers than just Bentley.

This is a book of a peculiar history, not only of four dancers, but of one period of the dance itself. None of them were very good dancers, but nakedness and scandal made up for that. All four reinvented themselves and used the Salome role for gains in power and money, although such gains were mostly temporary. None had a conventional life or marriage, and perhaps there is some sort of lesson in the sad ends most of them experienced. Bentley has not forced any didacticism from the four stories and her own. Her research and bibliography are good, and she has a light and amused way of telling the stories, full of detail. "Why did these women dance naked?" she asks, and the answers she gives, far from simple, but satisfying while undoubtedly incomplete, are wise and fun to read.

14 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant, fascinating book, May 11, 2002

By 

Mick McAllister - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Sisters of Salome (Hardcover)

A former Balanchine dancer becomes a writer, gets interested in the bizarre Victorian/Edwardian phenomena of "Salomania," and finds a willing publisher in one of the most prestigious presses in the world. Talk about dreamland. And the book is perfect. After you read the first ten pages, you will have trouble putting it down.

Bentley moves swiftly from her own personal connections to her subject matter: dance, a poignant photograph of Colette, Balanchine's curious interest in Crazy Horse strippers, her own experiment in confrontational nudity. She writes a brief chapter on the historical and literary Salome that is, among other things, the most intelligent essay I've ever read on Wilde's play.

She devotes a chapter each to the four centers of the fixation on Salome--Maud Allen, Mata Hari, Ida Rubenstein, and Colette--while providing a wealth of information on the changes in the history of dance between 1890 and 1920. And she finds in women's fascination with Salome a psychological core that is compelling and persuasive.

This is an excellent book. Beautifully conceived, intelligently realized, well written, amusing and informative, it is a joy to read and recommend.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars My kind of history, March 11, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Sisters of Salome (Hardcover)

As a painter I've always loved the image of Salome, so emblematic of the fuzzy line between manipulation and exploitation (the line we walk so proficiently these days.)
I'd had a vague notion of these women who danced the part of Salome at the turn of the century (Maud Allen, Mata Hari, Ida Rubenstein and Colette) but I had no idea how fabulous and frankly whacked, they were. None of our Madonna's or Paris Hilton's has anything on these girls.
But the thing I loved most about this book is that though it is literate and historically informative, it still manages to be personal in a way unlikely for any historian. It's a story that pretty much had to be written by a woman not only with dance credentials (Toni Bentley danced for Balanchine for ten years and wrote what is considered to be the definitive book on what it's like to be a young dancer (Winter Season) but someone who understands the particular mix of art and exhibitionism that was called upon by these strange and remarkable women. A lovely book written with a light touch and a unique perspective. I look forward to Ms Bentley's next book.