If Isadora Duncan propounded the gospel of the classical dance, Maud Allan promulgated it with the greatest popular success. She won the ear of England for the new word. Not that she was by any means a mere copyist—her talent was too original for that. Coming after her great predecessor, she nevertheless found her own inspiration in herself. With a certain assurance in the strength of her own individuality, she treated the classical dance with some freedom and boldness. She added the personal touch that gained the applause of the crowd.
Miss Maud Allan is Canadian born, but she spent the best part of her childhood and youth in the state of California. There she lived a breezy out-of-door life, romping, riding, swimming, mountain climbing, drinking in health with the virgin air—all unconsciously, no doubt, acquiring the strength and suppleness of body that were to be invaluable to her in later years. Very early she began the serious study of music, but even in those early days she seems to have been conscious of the possibilities of the expression of emotion through the medium of gesture. When Sarah Bernhardt visited San Francisco, the art of the great actress left a deep impression upon her. Shortly afterwards, when she was playing at the piano, her mind still attentive to the rhythm of the French artist’s gestures, her mother asked her of what she was thinking. “Of Sarah Bernhardt’s wonderful talent, of the beautiful movements of her body,” she replied. “She seems to express more with it than with her lips.”
It was decided that Maud Allan should go to Berlin to continue her musical studies at the Royal High School of Music. The next five and a half years of her life were spent in an atmosphere of music, literature and art. Her work was varied by travel in Italy and elsewhere. Her visit to Italy was a turning-point in her artistic career. Already at times she had experienced a feeling of being a prisoner while at the piano; music was still an intense delight to her, but it was no longer all-sufficing. A new idea took shape in her mind as she stood before Botticelli’s “Primavera” in Florence, an idea that she too might render her body eloquent to speak of the joy of spring and of the scented woods and of emotions yet more various and profound. She returned to Berlin, where she developed her idea, concentrating her interest on physical culture, studying in museums and libraries the poses of classical art, seeking to discover the relation between music and gesture. The new interest so engrossed her that it allowed no time for any other pursuit. She no longer had any doubt as to her true vocation. She left the Royal High School of Music and began her career as a dancer. She gave her first public performance in Vienna in 1903. Three years had elapsed since the idea had crystallised before Botticelli’s picture in Florence—three years of continuous training and preparation.
It is interesting to note that when Joachim saw the dance-programme of his young friend, he called her aside and said: “Little girl, you may dance anything you like, but, dear child, please don’t dance my Beethoven!” It was another musician, however, Marcel Remy, the Belgian composer, who gave her the greatest encouragement and assistance in the prosecution of her studies.
The success of the new dancer in Vienna was immediate, and in the following years she appeared in most of the larger cities of Germany, Switzerland, Austria and Hungary. It was in 1907 that she received the command to appear before King Edward VII. at Marienbad. “I remember that it was with fear and trembling that I began my work,” so she tells the story, “although when in the midst of any of my dances I am seldom cognisant of any personality near. But I think I should be forgiven if, that once, the thought of England’s King watching me gravely influenced me and, afterwards I realised, favourably. I think it was the happiest moment of my life when he took my hand with his calm, great dignity and told me he considered my art a beautiful one, and my dances worthy of the word classical.”
In the spring of 1908 Maud Allan first appeared before an English audience at the Palace Theatre, London. Since that date much water has flowed under the bridge, and it is not without interest now to recall the notice that appeared in The Times newspaper the following morning: “There is little doubt that Miss Maud Allan will make a great success. If so she will be the first to rouse London to enthusiasm with a kind of dancing to which it has never yet taken very kindly—the dancing of gesture and posture. As Miss Allan represents it, it is a thing of such interest and beauty that it may even drive high kicking off the stage.”
The programme informed us in magniloquent phrase that the new dancer had “ransacked the shrines of plastic beauty and worshipped humbly and prayerfully before the Art of the Universe.” Little wonder, therefore, that there was a hush of expectancy when the violin bows glided softly into the opening strains of Chopin’s valse in A minor and, preceded by a sinuous arm, the dancer slipped through the velvet hangings, drawn forward apparently by the magnetism of the music. Her limbs and feet were bare, her form lightly clothed in a loose classic drapery. A ripple ran along her arms from the shoulder to the finger-tips, undulating like a wave of the sea. When the music changed from the minor to the major key, her body passed into the corresponding mood, suddenly becoming brilliant with hope and delight. Then as quickly the joy faded out of her face and limbs, and she relapsed with the music into a passive despair. When the music ceased, her heart too seemed to have ceased beating. Silently she glided back through the curtain. Already London had capitulated.
Mendelssohn’s “Spring Song” was an allegretto grazioso chase of
Maud Allan