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Maud Allan

Maud Allan
MaudeAllanSalomeHead.jpg
Maud Allan as Salome with the head of John the Baptist, c. 1906–10.
Born Beulah Maude Durrant
(1873-08-27)27 August 1873
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Died 7 October 1956(1956-10-07) (aged 83)
Los Angeles
Nationality Canadian
Known for Dance and choreography
Movement Modern/contemporary dance

Maud Allan (27 August 1873 – 7 October 1956) was a pianist-turned-actress, dancer and choreographer who is remembered for her "famously impressionistic mood settings".

She was born as Beulah Maude Durrant in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Sources give contradictory dates for her year of birth, ranging from 1873 through 1880. She spent her early years in San Francisco, moving to Germany in 1895 to study piano at the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin. She later changed her name, prompted in part by the scandal surrounding her brother Theodore Durrant, who was hanged in 1898 for the sensational murder of two women in San Francisco. Allan never recuperated from the trauma of this event which had an effect on her for the rest of her life. The execution was immediately followed by her abandonment of piano-playing and the development of a new means of self-expression in dance.

In 1900, in need of money, Allan is said to have illustrated an encyclopaedia for women titled Illustriertes Konversations-Lexikon der Frau. Shortly thereafter, she began dancing professionally. Although athletic, and having great imagination, she had little formal dance training. She was once compared to professional dancer and legend Isadora Duncan, which greatly enraged her, as she disliked Duncan.

She designed and often sewed her own costumes, which were creative. In 1906 her production Vision of Salomé opened in Vienna. Based loosely on Oscar Wilde's play, Salomé, her version of the Dance of the Seven Veils became famous (and to some notorious) and she was billed as "The Salomé Dancer". Her book My Life and Dancing was published in 1908 and that year she toured England, with 250 performances in less than one year.

In 1910, she left Europe to travel. Over the next five years she visited the United States, Australia, Africa, and Asia. In 1915 she starred as "Demetra" in the silent film, The Rug Maker's Daughter.

In 1918 the British MP Noel Pemberton Billing, in his own journal, Vigilante, published an article, "The Cult of the Clitoris" which implied that Allan, then appearing in her Vision of Salome, was a lesbian associate of German wartime conspirators.


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