Body Knowledge : Performance, Intermediality, and American Entertainment at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

While female performers in the early 20th century were regularly advertised as dancers, mimics, singers, or actresses, they wove together techniques and elements drawn from a wide variety of genres and media. Onstage and onscreen, performers borrowed from musical scores and narratives, referred to contemporary shows, films, and events, and mimicked fellow performers. Behind the scenes, they experimented with cross-promotion and new advertising techniques and technologies to broadcast images and tales of their performances and lives well beyond the walls of American theaters, cabarets, and halls. The performances and conceptions of art that emerged were innovative, compelling, and deeply meaningful. Body Knowledge examines these performances and the performers behind them, highlighting the Ziegfeld Follies and The Passing Show revues, Salome dancers, Isadora Duncan's Wagner dances, Adeline Genée and Bessie Clayton's danced histories, Hazel Mackaye and Ruth St. Denis's pageants, and Anna Pavlova's opera and film projects. As a whole, it re-imagines early twentieth-century art and entertainment as both fluid and convergent. In the early twentieth century, female performers regularly appeared on the stages and screens of American cities. Though advertised as dancers, mimics, singers, or actresses, they often exceeded these categories. Instead, their performances adopted an aesthetic of intermediality, weaving together techniques and elements drawn from a wide variety of genres and media, including ballet, art music, photography, early modern dance, vaudeville traditions, silent film, and more. Onstage and on-screen, performers borrowed from existing musical scores and narratives, referred to contemporary shows, films, and events, and mimicked fellow performers, skating neatly across various media, art forms, and traditions. The performances and conceptions of art that emerged were innovative, compelling, and deeply meaningful. This book examines these performances and the performers behind them, focusing particularly on the ways in which they negotiated turn-of-the-century American social and cultural issues, including technological developments and commodification, new modes of perception, evolving understandings of the body and the self, and shifting conceptions of gender, race, and sexual identity. Tracing the various modes of intermediality at work on- and offstage, Body Knowledge re-imagines early twentieth-century art and entertainment as both fluid and convergent Cover 1 Contents 6 List of Illustrations 7 List of Musical Examples 9 Acknowledgments 10 Prologue: Staging Intermediality: Darktown, Downtown 14 1. Choreographing Salome: Re-creating the Female Body 40 2. Acting Ancient: Hellenism, Pageantry, and American Modernity 61 3. Dancing Music: Isadora Duncan and Wagnerism in the American Imagination 93 4. Dancing Pictures: Rita Sacchetto’s Tanzbilder 119 5. Moving Images: Adeline Genée and Bessie Clayton’s Danced Histories 147 6. Filming Opera: Anna Pavlova and The Dumb Girl of Portici 174 Finale: Performing Intermediality in The Passing Show of 1913 202 Endnotes 214 Bibliography 264 Index 286 A 286 B 286 C 286 D 287 E 287 F 287 G 288 H 288 I 288 J 288 K 288 L 288 M 289 N 289 O 289 P 289 R 290 S 290 T 291 U 291 V 291 W 291 X 291 Z 291 While female performers in the early 20th century were regularly advertised as dancers, mimics, singers, or actresses, they wove together techniques and elements drawn from a wide variety of genres and media. Onstage and onscreen, performers borrowed from musical scores and narratives, referred to contemporary shows, films, and events, and mimicked fellow performers. Behind the scenes, they experimented with cross-promotion and new advertising techniques and technologies to broadcast images and tales of their performances and lives well beyond the walls of American theaters, cabarets, and halls. The performances and conceptions of art that emerged were innovative, compelling, and deeply meaningful.__Body Knowledge__ Body knowledge examines these performances and the performers behind them, highlighting the Ziegfeld Follies and The Passing Show revues, Salome dancers, Isadora Duncan's Wagner dances, Adeline Genée and Bessie Clayton's danced histories, Hazel Mackaye and Ruth St. Denis's pageants, and Anna Pavlova's opera and film projects. As a whole, it re-imagines early twentieth-century art and entertainment as both fluid and convergent"--Page 4 of cover