"The biblical princess Salome is possibly the most notorious dancer in history. Her "Dance of the Seven Veils" has mesmerized us for the last 2000 years, but never was her wickedness more entrancing than during the divinely decadent years around the turn of the 20th century. Beginning with Oscar Wilde's symbolist play about her in 1892, banned in England because the law forbade biblical figures being portrayed on stage,"
"Maud Allan. Born Ulla Maude Durrant in Toronto, Canada, on August 27, 1873, she and her family moved to San Francisco soon after, and she grew up here. The children attended Lincoln High School before Maude transferred to Cogswell Technical School in the Mission and brother Theo went off to a private boarding academy, then enrolled at Cooper Medical College on Sacramento Street, which became part of Stanford University's School of Medicine in 1908."
Salome became an influential cultural icon whose Dance of the Seven Veils captivated audiences and inspired a broad Salomania at the fin de siècle. Oscar Wilde's 1892 symbolist play, banned in England for depicting biblical figures on stage, helped ignite enthusiasm that spread into theater, music, visual art, merchandising, fashion, and early film. Maud Allan, born Ulla Maude Durrant in 1873 and raised in San Francisco, trained in piano under Eugene Bonelli and later embraced dance after meeting Ferruccio Busoni in Weimar, who urged her to make her body an instrument. Allan went to Europe to study; shortly after her departure news arrived of her brother Theo's arrest for murder in San Francisco.
Read at San Francisco Bay Times
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