Maud Allan (1873-1956)

Maud Allan (1873-1956)

In Press and Literature MAUD ALLAN TELLS HOW HER WILDEST DANCE OCCURRED IN STATE OF CALIFORNIA (Oakland Tribune, 9th August, 1908) MAUD ALLAN DECLINED A FORTUNE IN GEMS (Manitoba Free Press, 4th, November, 1916) BARE-FOOTED DANCER IN BAPTIST COLLEGE (Atlanta Constitution, 3rd August, 1913)

(Oakland Tribune, 9th August, 1908)
MAUD ALLAN TELLS HOW HER WILDEST DANCE OCCURRED IN STATE OF CALIFORNIA
Two Visions of Famous and Charming Dancer Who Has Captivated All London
Pretty Actresss Describes How She Was Surrounded by Hundreds of Rattlesnakes in Western Forests

By Raymond Blathway
LONDON, Aug. 8.

As Maud Allan crept from behind the arras, in some unbidden fashion there flashed into my mind a memory of a garden in Hyderabad and the wonderful motions of a cobra, as it swayed to and fro to the piping of a Hindoo Juggler. The cold, cruel eye, the exquisite poise of the flat head, the sinuous coils upon the dry, yellow sand, glimmering in the hot sunshine, the entire grace of the creature remain an indelible memory of a half-forgotten Indian morning called suddenly into life amid the thronging crowd of a great London music hall, and one wondered what was the connection between the two happenings.

I know not, but even as I looked the band glided into a joyous strain, and with an utter abandonment of joy and happiness and irrepressible life and youth, clad in the costume of a Greek maiden, with a studied archaism of attitude and movement which somehow implied or incorporated an equally studied neglect of all the modern convention and technique of the dancer's art. Maud Allan carried out before us her wonderful conception of Mendelssohn's worldfamed Spring Song: Itself as perfect a suggestion or rendering in sound of the beauty and freshness of the budding year as is Botticelli's Primavera in line and color; while she (the dancer) combined the two and gave us a third rendering in unequalled grace of movement.

NOTHING LEFT TO CHANCE

And then, after a while, twilight fell upon the stage, the music took on the note of tragedy, and down the stairs of what might once have been an Egyptian temple or a Roman palace, between the fitful flicker of the yellow torches, Maud Allan came from the darkness of an Eastern garden, and pausing a moment beneath the glare of the great light that illumined the hidden throne of that amorous monarch, Salome, with the curious formal motions and the traditional attitudes of Eastern dancers, as though indeed they were carved out of Assyrian marble, stepped slowly in to the rhythym of the measure whereby she had danced her way into a king's heart. It was an epitome in itself of Orientalism and yet with scarcely a suggestion of the sensuous, let alone the sensual. Each motion carried intelligence behind it, and every movement was in the inevitable sequence of carefully conceived ideas, with special meaning and intent to each idea. Nothing was left to chance, though as a completed whole the general effect was that of entire abandonment to the impulse and irresponsibility of the moment, characterised by the most absolute rhythym and spontaneity.

RETURNS TO DARKNESS

But all is changed, as in a moment of horror, when the head of the martyred Baptist is suddenly presented to her startled vision. Then whatever of desire to please and allure a sensual monarch may almost unconsciously have informed her dancing; is replaced by a whole-soled abandonment to the remorse and tragedy of the moment. A moment of grief, a moment of rapture, a moment of atonement and the consciousness of reconciliation, and then darrkness and the dying of the music into silence and Salome slips once more into the shades where perchance for an eternity her soul must wander alone, and the lights spring up and Twentieth Century London, with a shrug of its white shoulders, and a hurried sip of its whiskies and sodas, passes with its frivolous chatter of wonder and comment into the crush and crowd of the teeming pavements.

SECOND VISION

In and out of the flickering light and shadow of an English garden Maud Allan and I paced the wide stretching lawns and talked of her curiously fascinating art.

This is no mere dancing girl, no mere flickering, gibing spirit of mockery, the pastime of a frivolous and a jeering crowd; but here, indeed, is a woman to whom appeals, as might once have appealed to George Herbert in the rectory garden beneath the Wiltshire Downs, or to Lady Jane Grey patiently pacing beneath the grey walls of the Tower of London, all the wonderful romance and poetry of lif, with a vivid conciousness of the great ocean of light in which this little life of ours floats as a cloudlet above the far horizon.

Her dancing may pass, and even its memory, but the beauty of her mind, no less noteworthy than the grace of her movements, remains her most outstanding characteristic.

"My dancing," she told me, "is, as it were, a continuation from where the ancient Greeks left off, and by combining our modern music with their movements I attempt to put into the rhythym of the dance something of the thought of today. You see, my dances depend entirely on the music, and just as the arches and the columns of a great temple vibrate to the music of my dances. I know nothing of the technique of dancing, and the arts of the coryphee mean nothing to me. I have sought all my attitudes and movements in the art galleries of Europe, on Etruscan vases and Assyrian tablets, and I have modelled my motions on their crude perspectives.

DANCED BY INSTINCT

"And I feel somehow that Salome was as unstudied and as untaught as I. She had seen her women dance perhaps, and she must often have stopped to look at the old Assyrian tablets as I have done, and unconsciously incorporated their pictures in her dramatic interpretation of the tragedy of the moment when she danced before King Herod. She danced by instinct, for dancing, however conventional it may become, is in its essence a thing of instinct. And a tribe in savage Africa would display the same motions of fear, of joy, of sorrow, as we ourselves. Dances express emotions and these dances are either the swaying to and fro to a valse {waltz}> measure in a London drawing-room, nor the pirouetting on one toe of an Austrian ballerina. Such dancing as that is not the expression of an immortal soul stirred by all the mystery of existence,

tortured as was Salome's soul by the tragedy of her sin. Dancing is only an expression of life. People today never appear to me to possess the idea of what life really is. It, isn't, giving way to the desires of the flesh; it means being one's own controller, influenced only by the very few. And to so influence people for their good is the only true kingship. I would sooner be the power behind the throne than the king upon it."

DANCE IN CALIFORNIA

And then, as we passed into the dazzling sunshine, a lighter mood came upon this most fascinating of minds, and Maud Allan said to me: "But do you know what was the most exciting dance I ever danced? One morning, long ago, I climbed a fence, and jumped down into a little hollow beneath. I heard a loud hissing, and, looking down, I saw a huge rattler darting at me. I gave a scream, and then realized that I was standing upon its mate.

"For a moment I was paralyzed, and then I started to run; another snake, and another snake, and another snake sprang up. I realized at last that I was in their breeding place, and in another moment I saw I was surrounded by literally a hundred of them. I danced here, dodged there, and I ran the whole time with the brutes in full pursuit; but I flew faster than they, and at last a little stream crossed the wood, and I dashed across it, and they could follow me no farther. Yes, my most exciting dance was in that California forest long, long ago."

And then, with a quaint turn of her flexible mind, she added: "But not even their venom can equal that of the venom of those who wilfully misconstrue my innocent Salome dance."

(Manitoba Free Press, 4th, November, 1916)
MAUD ALLAN DECLINED A FORTUNE IN GEMS

When Maud Allan, the dramatic dancer, was appearing in India a dinner was given in her honor by no less a potentate than the punjab of Swat. As is the custom at such affairs each lady is presented with the jewels worn by her escort, for the better class of Indians, especially the princes, are noted for their valuable collections of rare gems. Maud Allen was not aware of this custom, and was greatly surprised when no less a person than the Punjab suddenly gave the signal for the presentations by stripping his fingers of a dozen, huge rings studded with rubies, emeralds and diamonds, and by taking a string of pearls from his neck and placing them before the dancer. With seeming courtesy, Maud Allan returned the jewels, but she was also in the dark regarding the fact that she had rendered her host something of an insult in so doing. "Why are

you so modest?" he asked the dancer. "See the other ladies are keeping the Jewels given them." "My mother has forbidden me to accept Jewelry from gentlemen" was the diplomatic reply of the dancer, as she naively added: "And I always obey my mother." "A very good thing to do," remarked the punjab as he replaced the gems and Maud Allan was at least ten thousand dollars poorer, in precious stones.

(Atlanta Constitution, 3rd August, 1913)
BARE-FOOTED DANCER IN BAPTIST COLLEGE
Maud Allan Has Leased a Wing of a London Religious Institution.

London, August 2. — Maud Allan, the San Francisco girl who, some four or five years ago, astonished and charmed London by her barefooted dancing at the Palace theater, recently returned from a long tour in South Africa. She has just taken a twenty-year lease of a wing of the Baptist college in Regent's park, where, in an enormous mirrored hall, she practices her art four hours everv day. There are some of course who question whether this college can at the present moment be quite the place for a minsters son, but Maud assures be that, because of the arrangement of the grounds, she seldoms sees any of the students.

When she lived In London before she rented an apartment in Ridgmount gardens, on the outskirts of the Bloomsbury district, well known to American visitors to London because of the thousands of boarding houses and hotels situated therein. Maud, however, became so popular socially that she soon found her quarters much too small for the entertaining she was called upon to do and her new home is the realization of her long cherished plans. She has filled the house with hundreds of interesting presents that have been showered upon her by society with a capital "S."

Strangely enough, though she made her first big success in London, and played for fourteen months at the Palace theater, she has not been seen here since. Many of us had hoped that on her return from South Africa she would play again in London. But the truth of the matter is there are few if any managers willing to pay the salary she now demands, despite the fact that she is a sure draw. When she first came to the Palace theater, she received, I believe, about $125 a week, and When she left she refused an offer from Klaw & Erlanger of over $1000 a week for a tour in the United States. Now she is preparing for a tour of the continent.