Performing obscene modernism: Theatrical censorship and the making of modern drama

Abstract

In December of 1893, at New York City’s Grand Central Palace, the theatrical manager Adolphe Delacroix was offering an exhibit of the ‘Streets of Cairo’, modelled on that at the Chicago World’s Fair, and featuring teenage Oriental dancers performing a ‘ danse du ventre ’ (see Figure 1).1 After the performance opened, with four musicians costumed as Turks seated on a divan on ‘the rickety stage’, the dancers emerged: Zuleika, ‘arrayed in red silk Turkish trousers, a blue Eton jacket trimmed with gold, and a white gauze [sash], tight at the waist’, Stella, ‘a tall shapely blonde, with a face that might . . . captivate a soothsayer or a potentate’, Zora, ‘a little plump, black-eyed thing’, Ferida, ‘the wife of an Eastern medicine man, a dancer of renown in the Orient’, and Fatma, whose name (the New York Times reporter commented acidly) ‘is particularly well-suited to her figure’. While Ferida was ‘holding her audience spell-bound’, ‘flouncing [her] clothing’, ‘wriggl[ing] and twist[ing], turn[ing], cavort[ing], and kick[ing]’, one Inspector Williams advanced toward the footlights and said: ‘ “Stop that!” ’ Defiantly continuing, the dancers were arrested and charged with ‘performing a dance contrary to good morals’. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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