|
|
Stage Name |
Birth Name |
| Maude
Allan (Misspellings) |
Ulah
Maude Allen Durrant |
| Maude
Allen |
|
Maude Allen studied music at an early age with
Miss Lichenstein in Toronto. Moving to San Francisco in 1877 and
attended Lincoln High School in San Francisco. By the age of nineteen,
Maude was teaching piano as a private music teacher. In 1895 Maude
went to Berlin and studied music even more and made a name for
herself. In the Summer of 1902 Maude takes up her new love...painting.
Maude was an avid classic Greek dancer, who often danced barefoot
in a loose Greek Gown.
Maude Allen's Brother Theodore was arrested for murder and found
guilty in November 1895 for a gruesome double murder. It was billed
as the Crime of The Century, her brother was hanged at San Quentin
on 1/7/1898.
In 1906 Maude sees Oscar Wilde's play 'Salome' and is enchanted
by the play to the extent that she designs her own very successful
theatrical version called 'The Vision Of Salome' which had it's
debut in Vienna on December 29, 1906. The play went on the road
and was banned in Munich by a local group. Allen's
|
"Vision of Salome" was a rave success and made her a
star. It has been said that 'she did not dance to music, she danced
music'. She became internationally known as 'The
Salome Dancer.'
She would travel extensively and start her own Concert Agency,
plus the Maude Allen Symphony Orchestra (with dancers).
While staring in (Wilde's) Salome, Allen sues Noel Pimberton
Billing in a liable case for slander, thus starting her 'Black
Book Case' which Billing would later end up ruining her career,
as she could not break the chains of being a sister to a murderer
and (wicked) Salome dancer. Her case failed and she would
be billed as a lewd, unchaste and an immoral woman by the press
(which she was not).
In 1930-1942, Allen opened the West Wing School of Dance for slum
children to learn dance in N.Y. And in 1937 opens the West Wing
School of Art in London for underprivileged kids. |
