Dance of the seven veils

The "Dance of the Seven Veils" is Salome's dance performed before Herod Antipas. It is an elaboration on the biblical story of the execution of John the Baptist, which refers to Salome dancing before the king, but does not give the dance a name.

The name "Dance of the Seven Veils" originates with the 1893 English translation of Oscar Wilde's 1891 French play Salome in the stage direction "[Salome dances the dance of the seven veils.]". The dance was also incorporated into Richard Strauss's opera Salome. Wilde's choice of title for the dance has been linked to the popularity of orientalist "veil dances" in the period and to the emergence of striptease acts.

According to ten verses of Matthew 14, John was imprisoned for criticizing King Herod Antipas's marriage to Herodias, the former wife of Antipas's half-brother Herod II. Herod offered his niece a reward of her choice for performing a dance for his guests on his birthday. Herodias persuaded her daughter to ask for John the Baptist's head on a platter. Against his better judgment, Herod reluctantly acceded to her request.

The Romano-Jewish historian Josephus lists Antipas' stepdaughter's name as Salome, but makes no mentions of a dance nor makes any connection between Salome and John the Baptist.

The idea that Salome's dance involves "seven veils" originates with Wilde's 1891 play Salomé. Wilde was influenced by earlier French writers who had transformed the image of Salome into an incarnation of female lust. Rachel Shteir writes that,

To the French, Salome was not a woman at all, but a brute, insensible force: Huysmans refers to her as "the symbolic incarnation of undying Lust … the monstrous Beast, indifferent, irresponsible, insensible"; and Mallarmé describes her as being inscrutable: "the veil always remains." Huysmans' hero Des Esseintes characterizes her as a "weird and superhuman figure he had dreamed of. … [I]n her quivering breasts, … heaving belly, … tossing thighs … she was now revealed as the symbol incarnate of old world vice."

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