Maud Allan, part II

Since virtually the only records that remain of Maud Allan's life at the time of her debut in Vienna in 1903 and her subsequent appearances in various cities of Europe during the next five years are the reviews of her performances, the handful of surviving letters from Maud to her mother, Isabella Durrant of San Francisco are of particular interest. While they do not, either in quantity or in subject matter, provide detailed information about Maud's life, these letters do throw light upon certain aspects of her debut in Vienna, whose reception she had apparently exaggerated considerably in her letters, on her diminishing confidence in her future as a dancer, and on the reaction of her mother and others to her first pursuit of fame. Maud's debut was a source of at least as much astonishment as delight for her mother, for it fulfilled her mother's quasi-mystical faith in Maud's abilities. That joy, however, was gradually tempered by motherly concern and a growing uneasiness that she might be losing the daughter she still, and often, called her darling baby girl-Maud was thirty years old at the time of her debut in Viennato the pursuit of mere faddishness. I dislike the word 'dance,' she finally confessed in a letter of November 30, 1905; I wish your work could be called by some other name

Art · Art history · Brother · Dance · Faith · Girl · Literature · Mysticism · Sociology · Subject (documents) · Theology · Cultural History and Identity Formation · Diversity and Impact of Dance · History · Philosophy · Psychology

• New Sources and New Perspectives for Dance Research

  Open Access•Victoria Thoms•Dance Research•2025

  Add to list