Sisters of Salome

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant, fascinating book
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: My kind of history
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: My kind of history
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: In a Different Voice
Review: Okay, I'm not sure ANY text from this century deserves five stars, but I really do like this book. It is a must for anyone interested in female sexuality. It is well researched, well written, culturally literate . . . and it artfully dances the fine line between the scholarly and the saucy.

The theme is controversial: The male gaze as a source of empowerment, emancipation, and female fantasy. We've heard this before, but now it is given more concrete and historical articulation. In the voice of Madonna, the theme sounds tinny and sophomoric. In the voice of Paglia, it sounds laden with muddled Freudianism. In Bentley's voice, the point rings sincere, grounded, and seductive. It is dressed in four historical figures, all of whom come across as genuine heroes ' and genuine women ' and not as the pitiful victims or the cartoon deviants we would like to find behind the striptease.

The research is both historical, literary, and biographical of course. But it is the small spark of autobiography that really lights a fire under the whole thing. It's not a piece of erotica; the goal is not to arouse, but rather to describe, contextualize, and ultimately to justify a certain kind of erotic power. But neither is this Sir Kenneth Clark lecturing on the topic. This project would be a failure if it didn't end up stirring the loins just a bit.

Yes, very good stuff. I'm not sure what to conclude from all of this, to be honest. I'm curious to hear the reactions of women.

GJ

Rating:
Summary: Trollops and Harlots
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: The Strange Origins of Striptease
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Trollops and Harlots
Review: Sorry to dissent, but Toni Bentley's ode to undressing leaves me, well, chilly. Her opening chapter is risque, but don't be misled. All you will read in the following chapters is a very scholarly history of a particular type of dancer, the striptease artiste. The only nudity you will see is one undraped mammelle. The book is dull, the opening chapter a tasteless come on. Ms. Bentley's investigation into nudity, both first hand and vicarious, is by her own admission an attempt to overcome a lifetime's inhibitions and her own innate modesty. It is a mistaken attempt. Ms. Bentley has gone downhill since her days as a Balanchine dancer, and has lowered her artistic standards considerably.

Rating:
Summary: An interesting slice of history
Review: This is not really a book about dance. It's an informal work of history that focusses on 4 women who were prominent erotic dancers in the early 20th century, but the book sets out to describe the lives of these women in all their various aspects instead of just their dance careers. The common background for all 4 of these women is a peculiar cultural phenomenon, a widespread popular obsession (triggered by Wilde's play "Salome") with the dance of Salome. All 4 of these women exploited this Salome craze for their own advantage and self-aggrandizement, but in quite different ways (and often with tragic results). The book has a refreshingly informal style and the prose is direct and clear.

Rating:
Summary: If only I could give negative stars...
Review: While I agree with the other one-star review here that this book is not worth reading, what astonishes me is that the reviewer considers Bentley's book "a very scholarly history" when there is nothing scholarly about it. Bentley's narcissistic introduction and glamour shot on the book jacket reveal this to be little more than a vanity project. While the book has some usefulness in terms of providing details that aren't often found in dance histories about these women's lives, Bentley's purple prose makes it difficult to discern which details are accurate and which fell victim to her embellishment. A pastiche of factual but sensational details and farfetched comparisons and conclusions regarding the psychological and cultural implications of Salome, this book bears little resemblance to real contemporary dance scholarship. If it did, she would have engaged in the ongoing discussion of gaze theory and its advantages and disadvantages when applied to dance. OR, she would have discussed more deftly the role of exotic imagery in the age of late imperialism by way of Said's concept of orientalism and other subsequent postcolonial theory. OR, she would have utilized poststructuralist theory and considered how such acts of exhibitionism as striptease actually maintained dominant power structures. Instead, she falls victim to free associations that to some readers may appear like a kind of truth, but really are not. In one passage, Bentley ruminates on the significance of the veil, jumping from one culture and religion to another as if the symbolic and social meanings of "the veil" are universal: "In Eastern harems, women are veiled like nuns, while their bodies are receptacles for male desire. Veils conceal but are penetrable. Opaque, translucent, and diaphanous, they allow light to be filtered through the threads, building illusion while implying truth. They allow for fantasy and mystery and suggest the ultimate veiling-a naked woman still conceals the darkness where life begins. The hymen veils the womb, the womb veils the origin of life itself." The conflation of the veil and the woman below it with the hymen and the womb deploys the same kind of rhetoric 1970s feminist theory was guilty of, which essentialized "woman" as an archetype of fertility and sensuality. And sure, why not jump from Salome to nun to harem girl? Yeah, that's all the same thing. By the way, I thought we all learned in fifth grade science class that materials were either opaque, transparent, OR translucent. Something cannot be both opaque AND translucent. There's either light filtering through, or there's not, Ms. Bentley. So, yes, as you can see, Bentley's book has put me in a very cranky mood, precisely because on both a scholarly AND a writerly level, IT'S JUST PLAIN BAD.

By the way, one of the reviewers seemed impressed that Bentley's book was published by such a prestigious press as Yale U P. Look, if you want to read good and cutting edge dance scholarship, Yale is not the way to go. Check out the presses at Indiana U, Wesleyan, Routledge, or the University of California.

Also, a good general hint for discerning whether a text is "scholarly" or not--if the author continually refers to her subjects by their first names (i.e. "Maud" instead of "Allen"), chances are, it's not all that scholarly.

Rating:
Summary: Toni Bentley triumphs again
Review: With an intimate knowledge of dance, keen eye for historical detail, enticing premise, and droll prose (many turns of phrase made me grin), Toni Bentley has taken what could have been a bone-dry, pedantic topic and infused it with wit, humor, and rigorous scholarship. The result: one smart, sexy book about four sexual rebels. Here's hoping the success of "Sisters of Salome" brings "Winter Season," Ms. Bentley's haunting memoir of her Balanchine dancer days, back in print.