Salomania

Salomania was an artistic, cultural, and performance phenomenon of the early 20th century, characterized by a popular fascination with the historical figure of Salome and her imagined " Dance of the Seven Veils".

While the term "Salomania" came into common usage after appearing in ''The New York Times'' in 1908, the phenomenon is associated with dance, theatre, opera, motion pictures, and other activities dating primarily from the first three decades of the twentieth century.
Summarized at

This mania arose in the wake of Oscar Wilde's 1891 play ''Salome'', and most especially, after Richard Strauss's 1905 operatic adaptation of Wilde's text, also called ''Salome''. "'Salomania' was almost instantaneous in Western Europe, after the triumphant first performance of Strauss's opera (which received no less than thirty-eight curtain calls). Every country on the continent, indeed every city, had its own Salome-in-residence."

The character of Salome as depicted in these works was a seductive and dangerous femme fatale, whose "Dance of the Seven Veils" (Wilde's invention) was emblematic of her lethal allure. The combination of Wilde's subversive vision and Strauss's striking music propelled Salome's story—and particularly her infamous dance—into widespread public awareness. The new Salome was no longer a Biblical footnote but a cultural force of female desire and destruction.

Though briefly mentioned in ancient texts, the story of Salome underwent a dramatic transformation. The Bible ( and ) and the Roman historian Flavius Josephus describe Salome as a Jewish princess, daughter of Herodias and stepdaughter of King Herod. She danced before the king and, at her mother's insistence, demanded the severed head of John the Baptist on a silver platter as a reward. In these early accounts, Salome's original character was that of a dutiful daughter with little personal agency. By the early 20th century, however, she had been reinvented into a dangerous, sexualized figure—one that both shocked standards of good taste and helped usher in new ideas about art, personal freedom, and gender roles.

At the heart of Salomania was the dance, a moment of heightened sensuality that Salome performs before King Herod. Wilde's stage directions (as well as those of Strauss) were limited, opening the door for choreographers and dancers to interpret it in sensational ways. The most common interpretation was to represent Salome as a figure drawn from Western fantasies of the exotic "Orient", including skimpy skin-baring costumes.

Each performer brought their own spin to the dance, ranging from subtle, suggestive movements to increasingly provocative and often scandalous interpretations. Costuming, or in some cases strategic disrobing, became a defining element of these stage spectacles, ensuring that the performance was as visually arresting as it was thematically transgressive.

Among the many performers who embraced the role of Salome, Maude Allan became one of the most celebrated. Her self-styled production, often called ''The Vision of Salomé'', captured international attention. Allan's costuming and free dance movements were provocative for the time, and she quickly became synonymous with the Salome archetype. Other prominent performers, such as Loie Fuller, Eva Tanguay, Gertrude Hoffmann, Mademoiselle Dazie, and others also engaged with the broader themes of Salomania. Although not all of their works were strictly Salome dances, their fascination with the exotic, theatrical, and modern dance innovations placed them within the same cultural wave. These dancers fostered an air of mysticism and otherworldly staging that recalled the decadent aura of Wilde's ''Salome''.

Salomania performances also played a role in the suffrage movement, particularly in pre–World War I London. A group of London actresses staged a private performance of Wilde's ''Salome'' in 1911. Feminist actresses were drawn to Salome's dance because it allowed women to claim possession of their own erotic gaze, albeit a hostile and aggressive one.
The Salome figure was not just an erotic spectacle for men's pleasure. She was also an influence on women performers and audiences, a vehicle for female self-expression and sexualized assertiveness. The Salome craze encouraged women to break free from old constraints and become independent social actors.

Salomania had a major impact on motion pictures. German director Oskar Messter made the short film ''Tanz der Salome'' in 1906, starring the notorious nude dancer Adorée Villany. In 1908, Vitagraph released ''Salome or Dance of the Seven Veils'' starring Florence Lawrence. Many Salome movies followed from film-makers around the world. Among the most notable were Fox's ''Salome'' (1918), featuring the well-known "vamp" Theda Bara in the title role, and Alla Nazimova's ''Salomé'' (1923). ''Salome'' (1953) starred Rita Hayworth ''Salome'' and Al Pacino and Jessica Chastain appeared in a film adaptation of the play in 2013.

References

Further reading

* Bentley, Toni. ''Sisters of Salome''. Yale University Press, 2002.
* Bernheimer, Charles. "Fetishism and Decadence: Salome's Severed Heads". ''Fetishism as Cultural Discourse'', Cornell University Press, 1993.
* Brandstetter, Gabriele. ''Poetics of Dance: Body, Image, and Space in the Historical Avant-Gardes''. Translated by Elena Polzer, Oxford University Press, 2015.
* Caddy, Davinia. "Variations on the Dance of the Seven Veils". ''Cambridge Opera Journal'', vol. 17, no. 1, March 2005, pp. 37–58.
* Cherniavsky, Felix. "Maud Allan, Part III: Two Years of Triumph 1908–1909". ''Dance Chronicle'', vol. 7, no. 2, January 1983, pp. 119–58.
* —. "Maud Allan, Part V: The Years of Decline, 1915–1956". ''Dance Chronicle'', vol. 9, no. 2, January 1985, pp. 177–236.
* Cucullu, Lois. "Wilde and Wilder Salomés: Modernizing the Nubile Princess from Sarah Bernhardt to Norma Desmond". ''Modernism/Modernity'', vol. 18, no. 3, September 2011, pp. 495–524.
* Davis, W. Eugene. "Oscar Wilde, ''Salome'', and the German Press 1902—1905". ''English Literature in Transition, 1880–1920'', vol. 44, no. 2, 2001, pp. 149–180.
* —. "Modern Dance Before 1914: Commerce or Religion?" ''Dance Chronicle'', vol. 36, no. 3, September 2013, pp. 297–325.
* Dierkes-Thrun, Petra. ''Salome's Modernity''. 2011.
* Dijkstra, Bram. ''Idols of Perversity: Fantasies of Feminine Evil in Fin-de-Siècle Culture''. Oxford University Press, 1986.
* Dimova, Polina. "Decadent Senses: The Dissemination of Oscar Wilde's ''Salomé'' across the Arts". ''Performing Salome, Revealing Stories'', Routledge, 2016.
* Evangelista, Stefano. ''The Reception of Oscar Wilde in Europe''. Bloomsbury, 2015.
* Fernbach, Amanda. "Wilde's ''Salomé'' and the Ambiguous Fetish". ''Victorian Literature and Culture'', vol. 29, no. 1, 2001, pp. 195–218.
* Ford, Jane, et al., eds. ''Economies of Desire at the Victorian Fin de Siècle: Libidinal Lives''. Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group, 2016.
* Garafola, Lynn. Circles of Meaning: The Cultural Contexts of Ida Rubinstein's ''Le Martyre de Saint Sebastien''". ''Retooling the Discipline: Research and Teaching Strategies for the 21st Century'', Society of Dance History Scholars, 1994, pp. 27–47.
* Garelick, Rhonda K
"Loie Fuller and the Serpentine"
''The Public Domain Review'', 5 November 2019.
* Hamberlin, Larry. "Visions of Salome: The Femme Fatale in American Popular Songs before 1920". ''Journal of the American Musicological Society'', vol. 59, no. 3, December 2006, pp. 631–696.
* Kendall, Elizabeth. ''Where She Danced: The Birth of American Art-Dance''. 1st California paperback ed., University of California Press, 1984.
* Koritz, Amy. "Dancing the Orient for England: Maud Allan's ''The Vision of Salome''". ''Theatre Journal'', vol. 46, no. 1, March 1994, p. 63.
* Kramer, Lawrence. "Culture and Musical Hermeneutics: The Salome Complex". ''Cambridge Opera Journal'', vol. 2, no. 3, November 1990, pp. 269–294.
* Kultermann, Udo. "The 'Dance of the Seven Veils': Salome and Erotic Culture around 1900". ''Artibus et Historiae'', vol. 27, no. 53, January 2006, p. 187.
* Neginsky, Rosina. ''Salome: The Image of a Woman Who Never Was''. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013.
* Parker, Roger, and Carolyn Abbate. ''A History of Opera''. Penguin, 2015.
* Pendle, Karin, ed. ''Women & Music: A History''. 2nd ed., Indiana University Press, 2001.
* Rowden, Clair
''Performing Salome, Revealing Stories''
Routledge, 2016.
* Toepfer, Karl
''Empire of Ecstasy: Nudity and Movement in German Body Culture 1910–1935''
University of California Press, 1997.
* Walkowitz, Judith R. "The 'Vision of Salome': Cosmopolitanism and Erotic Dancing in Central London, 1908–1918". ''The American Historical Review'', vol. 108, no. 2, April 2003, pp. 337–376.
{{div col end

Obscenity controversies in music
Opera controversies
Cultural depictions of Salome
Cultural depictions of Herod Antipas
Cultural depictions of John the Baptist