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Stage Name |
Birth Name | | Maude Allan(Misspellings) |
Ulah Maude Allen Durrant | | Maude Allen |
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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. |
