Lola Montez and the Spider Dance

Lola Montez (1821-1861) lived a short but interesting life. Born Eliza Gilbert in Ireland, she reinvented herself as 'Lola the Spanish Dancer' on the London stage in 1843 before spending time in Paris, Munich, Switzerland, San Francisco, Australia and New York - attracting lovers and scandalous stories along the way. She became particularly known for her Spider Dance, which involved her shaking imaginary tarantulas out of her clothes and stamping on them. It was evidently loosely based on an Italian dance (perhaps linked to tarantism). This short description of her is taken from The Gentle Tamers: Women of the Old West by Dee Brown (1958):

'No western stage performer ever equaled the glamorous Lola Montez in creating an aura of seductive mystery and exquisite scandal around her personality. Whether or not Lola was an actress is debatable - she was more in the class of modern burlesque queens - but the dubious legends of deli­cious sinfulness which she deliberately spread abroad and carefully nourished have spun down through the years until they are a part of the fabric of western history.

With her sensational spider dance, Lola burst upon San Francisco like a bombshell, making excellent copy for the newspapers with stories of her many marriages and her claim that she was the illegitimate daughter of Lord Byron. Offstage she dressed in the Byronic mode, wearing black jackets and wide rolling collars. Bronze-skinned, blue-eyed, she made a striking appearance strolling along the San Francisco streets, with two greyhounds on a leash and an enormous parrot upon her shoulder. She constantly smoked small cigars, forced her way into gambling saloons forbidden to women, and played tenpins with any male daring enough to take her on.

"A tigress," said one newspaper writer, "the very comet of her sex." Lola's celebrated spider dance shocked and titillated her audiences; the spiders were ingenious contraptions made of rubber, cork, and whalebone. She gave a spectacular bene­fit for an audience of San Francisco firemen, and they show­ered the stage with their fancy helmets and almost smothered her with enormous bouquets of flowers'.

Dancing and Xhosa Resistance

The revolt of the Xhosa against the British colonial forces in early 19th century South Africa was marked by dancing. Like the Native American Ghost Dancers, and similarly faced with overwhelming military force, some hoped that dancing would summon the ancestors to aid them in their struggle. The Xhosa did not rely on dancing alone though, and waged a long campaign of armed resistance. Today an area of the Eastern Cape is named after Makana (sometimes splet Makanda or Makanna) the leader of this campaign.

A close association of millennialist prophecy and warfare against intruders occurred in South Africa during the unsettled period of European conquest in the first half of the nineteenth century. European misconceptions of the tribal system of the Bantu and, even more, the misapprehension of the missionaries concerning native religion, were important factors in the wars between the Xhosa and the British forces in the Cape in the carly nineteenth century.

... Ndlambe [leader of many of the Xhosa groups], who had been a persistent enemy of the British... was pushed over the Fish River by British forces in the Fourth Kaffir War in 1812. A prophet, Makanna, arose as Ndlambe's adviser, and he persuaded Ndlambe's following, and the warriors of the Gcaleka, that with his aid the bullets of the English would turn to water, and the English themselves would be pushed into the sea. The numbers involved on the two sides were so utterly disproportionate that, once bullets were neutralized, such a result appeared a certainty. He would release lightning against them, and ensure victory for Ndlambe's warriors...

He taught that he was the emissary of Thlanga, creator of the Xhosa, who would raise ancestor spirits to assist them in battle. The god of black men, Dalidipu, was greater than the white god, Tixo, and Dalidipu's wife was a raingiver, while his son was Tayhi, the Xhosa name for Christ. Dalidipu sanctioned the Xhosa way of life, including the customs of polygamy and brideprice, which the missionaries said were sins. Makanna taught that black men had no sins except witchcraft, since adultery and fornication were not sins: on the other hand, the white men were, on their own admissions full of sins. Dalidipu would punish Tixo, and the white men would be destroyed. If the Xhosa danced, they could bring back the ancestors, who would come armed and with herds of cattle.

The British were allied with Gaika [leader of another group of Xhosa], who was the first object of attack by Ndlambe and Makanna. His defeat led the British into the Fifth Kaffir War of 1818-19, but their first success against Ndlambe's men beyond the Fish River did not prevent further hostilities between Gaika and Ndlambe, and Makanna's army crossed the Fish River singing that they would chase the white men from the earth. On 23 April 1819 ten thousand warriors, led by Ndlambe's son, Dushane, and Makanna attacked Grahamstown, which they failed to take and where they suffered heavy losses. This failure did not, however, bring about Makanna's downfall, and the war continued with the British driving the Xhosa back as far as the Kei River. In August Makanna gave himself up because his people were starving, and, so he declared, to see whether this would restore the country to peace. He was drowned some months later in attempting to escape, after his fellow prisoners on Robbell Island had overwhelmed the guard and made a bid for the mainland. That he was dead was not believed by the Xhosa, who for years expected his return to help them.

Source: Bryan Wilson, Magic and the Millennium (London: Heinemann, 1973).

Dancing and Class Formation

How do social classes come about? From a Marxist point of view, class is defined by people's relationship to the means of production - there are those who own (or who own substantial share holdings in) banks, factories, land and various large companies, the 'independently' wealthy who don't rely on a wage to survive. Then there are the mass of the population without reserves, who can only make a living by selling their labour. In this perspective, the middle class doesn't really exist - as most middle class people are also only a couple of pay cheques away from the same destitution as the rest of the proletariat.

But I digress. The point I want to make is that the objective economic conditions for classes are only part of the story - as the radical historian E.P. Thompson argued in his The Making of the English Working Class, for classes to become social actors with a particular world view, acting in their perceived interests, a cultural process has to happen in which people develop common ways of socialising, thinking and acting. For Thompson, class is not just about "so many men who stand in a certain relation to the means of production" and class formation "is a fact of political and cultural, as much as of economic, history".

So where does dancing fit in with this? With a nod to Jurgen Habermas, Geoff Eley extended Thompson's idea to talk of "a working class public sphere", a self-conscious independent culture with its own publications and diverse organisational forms. He argued that in addition to formal political meetings, there emerged in the nineteenth century "new forms of collective sociability" that created "a distinct public space of independent working-class activity". Dancing was part of this, with Eley identifying the tea parties and balls of the Chartist movement as examples of this collective sociability.

But dance aspects of the public sphere are not specific to the working class. Anyone who has read Jane Austen knows how important balls were in the early industrial period as a means for the wealthier members of society to meet, interact and ultimately marry and reproduce. Over time they were one mechanism by which landed aristocrats and new money bourgeoisie came to form a new dominant class (or rather for an existing dominant class to accommodate newcomers).

Something similar happened in the 1960s, as the doors of the ruling class opened to admit new moneyed stars from the media and entertainment industries. Once again dancing - this time in 'Swinging London' nightclubs - facilitated this. Terence Stamp (left) a working class boy turned actor who benefited from this recalled: 'In the sixties, amongst ourselves, our age group, there was an absolute coming together. And what made the coming to­gether was basically music and dancing. In a way it was a new aristoc­racy. But the main thing was that there was suddenly access between the classes. Had the sixties not happened, I would never have been able to spend the night with a young countess because I would never have met her. And as the great Mike Caine once said to me, 'You can't shag any­one you don't meet.'"

Of course social mobility between classes is not to be confused with classlessness - the former implies the continued existence of classes, just with the potential for a few to move up and down the ladder. As Shawn Levy has written of that era: ''As the sixties emerged, proponents of the the­ory of classlessness could point to the likes of Quant and Stamp and the Beatles and a dozen other exceptions- people who'd broken into a new class where talent and the wealth that followed success mattered more than who your parents were. But it was inarguably the case that this mer­itocracy- with its members-only restaurants and nightclubs -was just as exclusive as the old upper class of money and birthright; you may no longer have needed to be born to position but earning it was, arguably, a harder and rarer feat. And, too, entrance to the new world only lasted as long as the traditional elite chose to allow it. "The rich people let us play in their back garden for a few years," said tailor Doug Hayward, "and then they said, 'Right, lads, very nice, you've all had a good time, now let's get back to it".'

Sources: E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, 1963; Geoff Eley, ;Edward Thompson, Social History and Political Culture: the. Making of a Working-Class Public, 1780-1850', in H. J. Kaye and K. McClelland (eds.), E.P. Thompson: critical perspectives, Cambridge, Polity, 1990; Shawn Levy, Ready Steady Go! The Smashing Rise and Giddy Fall of Swinging London, 2002.

Mardi Gras in New Orleans

This weekend there has been a 'festival of New Orleans' in London, with Dr John playing for free at the O2 arena in Greenwich. Unfortunately I haven't managed to get down there, but I have been reading up on the history of New Orleans, and specifically the Mardi Gras carnival.

The Mardi Gras carnival in its modern form is the result of ‘a process of creolization, a melding of cultural identities as strands of cultural material fused into a synthesis of something new’. In the eighteenth century, ‘Carnival began more as a closed operation than as a public festival’ with masqued balls in the houses of the wealthy preceding Lent. These later developed into formal processions under the auspices of the aristocracy.

Alongside this was another tradition of public dancing amongst enslaved Africans from the early days of 18th century New Orleans: ‘The plantation economy soon faltered, and land­owners could not generate enough food to feed the enslaved Africans who worked their holdings. The rulers allowed slaves to trade food they grew, hides or meat they hunted, and vegetables and fruit they cultivated at a makeshift Sunday marketplace on the grassy public commons behind the ramparts of the town. The place became known as Place du Congo, or the Congo plains. Today, a portion of the area is contained in Louis Armstrong Park along Rampart Street, just outside the French Quarter… on Sunday afternoons at the Place du Congo market a tradition of public dancing mushroomed. As many as five hundred dancers at a time formed concentric rings, moving in counterclockwise circles, their hand­clapping and feet-shuffling forming cross rhythms to music made on conga drums, tom-toms, panpipes, and calabashes… Costuming was fundamental to African ritual. Mask making as a specific tribal custom was lost in the Middle Passage, but the idea of mask-and-dance in a spiritual continuum lived on in a city where gentry flocked to see the exotic spectacles. Nowhere else in the South were slaves given such freedom of expres­sion in music and dance. The Africans sometimes dressed as Indians, "ornamented with a number of tails of the smaller wild beasts," wearing "fringes, ribbons, little bells, and shells and balls, jingling and flirt­ing about the performers' legs and arms."'

'The patrician love of masked balls and the high place of costumery in the danced religions of the Afri­can ritual psyche spilled into the streets as Carnival traditions unfolded. "Men and boys, women and girls, bond and free, black and white, exert themselves to invent and appear in grotesque, quizzical, diabolical, horrible, strange masks and disguises," reflected a visi­tor at the 1835 celebration. "Human bodies are seen with heads of beasts and birds, beasts and birds with human heads; demi-beasts, demi-fishes, snakes' heads and bodies with arms of apes; man-bats from the moon; mermaids; satyrs, beggars, monks and robbers parade and march on foot, on horseback, in wagons, carts, coaches ... in rich profusion up and down the streets, wildly shouting, singing, laughing, drumming, fiddling, fifeing ... as they wend their reckless way."'

In the 1850s, carnival began to become more formalised: ‘The Mistick Krewe of Comus, formed in 1857, gave Mardi Gras its formal patina. People wearing costumes and parading in streets had been around for years when along came Comus, a group of elite young white men…This was the first group to form an elite and secretive men's society, which came to be known as a krewe. "Their lavish balls could be attended only by those fortunate enough to have received invitations, but their proces­sions of floats, lights, and music could be viewed by anyone who cared to, and vast crowds lined the city's streets," observes the artist and Mardi Gras chronicler Henri Schindler… Float designs were steeped in themes of antiquity and Renaissance drama. With the artistry of early Carnival rose the aspirations of a former slaveholding class that wedded its eco­nomic recovery to an idea of neoclassical glory. Mardi Gras became a time when "deities of forgotten pan­theons and the splendors of long-vanished courts are restored for a season, summoned into being from the gilded vaults of the old city's memory”’.

Black Krewes

Later other parts of New Orleans society began to form their own krewes: ‘The Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club, the leading black krewe, was formed in 1909 (its parade began seven years later). Zulu today is the longest and most imaginatively designed black parade, a rudder of Carnival. Black men in blackface, wearing grass skirts, hand out gilded coconuts from floats that roll down St. Charles Avenue on Mardi Gras morning, preceding the Krewe of Rex . But where the Rex ball is a pinnacle in the calendar of the white elite, with invitations difficult to come by even for those with personal ties to members, the Zulu ball is a sprawling affair with upwards of ten thousand people, many of them bringing food to be laid out on a vast array of tables. Zulu is where privilege melds with the masses: just about anyone can go to the ball for the price of a ticket'.

'Zulu began as a double satire. A group of black longshoremen engaged in a parody of the Zulu tribe in South Africa and used their African costumes in a further burlesque of Rex and the would-be royalty of white folk. If Rex had a royal robe and scepter, King Zulu wore a grass skirt and waved a ham bone. Out of this smirking parody evolved an organization rooted in the working and middle classes. Louis Armstrong rode as an exultant king of Zulu in 1949. Today the city's leading politicians, including several dozen whites, are members of Zulu… The Zulu parade has been and still is one of Mardi Gras's most loved traditions'.

'The Zulu krewe consists of a non traditional hierarchy of characters. It has a king but no nobles per se, and one character, the "Big Shot of Africa: outshines the king (the term outshine was used in earlier days and meant to look better than someone else in competition). A Zulu member created the Big Shot character in the 1930s. He is the man behind the throne; no one can see the king without seeing the Big Shot first. Among the other Zulu characters, the Witch Doctor was one of the first. He prayed to the gods for good health for the members and the king, as well as for good weather and safety. The Ambassador, Governor, and Mayor were characters created in the 1970s, representing heads of government… Also in the 1970s, James I. Russell and Sonny Jim Poole created the "Mr. Big Stuff" char­acter, who tries to outshine the Big Shot. The idea came from the 1970 recording "Mr. Big Stuff" by Jean Knight'.

'Another side to black Carnival is a symbolic revolt against the overlords of history. In 1883 or there­abouts, a group of black day laborers began masking as Indians. This tradition harked back to the slave dances at Congo Square, where Indians watched Africans who sometimes dressed as Indians. Indians had harbored runaway slaves in Louisiana territory. Unlike Natives in many other parts of the South, where Indians were driven out by force, the Choctaws in New Orleans melted into the local popu­lation, many of them marrying blacks. Traveling Wild West shows of the 1880s had a hold on the black population. But with sinuous street dances and improvisational rhythms pounded out on hand percussion instruments, the Mardi Gras Indians cast a spiritual searchlight onto the African past. Embracing the persona of the Indian, the black tribes paid the supreme compliment to another race by adapting their trappings as spirit figures. The black Indians used the ritual stage of Carnival to parade as rebellious warriors for a day, stopping in bars, sometimes fighting, releas­ing passions otherwise bottled up by the dally grind of poverty and race’

'The trancelike possessions of African Americans in the vernacular churches found an analogue in the dancing of the black Indians, according to the late Big Chief Donald Harrison Sr., founder of Guardians of the Flame. "Trance: remarked the chief, a folk philosopher who worked for many years as a waiter and enjoyed the works of Albert Camus, "I can see winos, anybody, you can get to a certain point and go into a trance. To the casual observer they look like they're just jumping up and down, but in reality they're in a world by them­selves, rhythmically." Some call it a trance; others say "with the spirit." The term "possessed" is another way of saying "fugue state." The sudden force of energy rushes into the body, throwing it out of control, into gyrations, while the mind - or spirit- spins into another zone.’

Gay Krewes

'The French Quarter is the Babylonian essence of New Orleans, a riot of erotica during the big day, with many people walking around semi-nude, nearly nude, or nude-but-painted…The high point of Mardi Gras in the Quarter is the midday drag-queen beauty contest on a stage at the corner of Bourbon and St. Ann Streets. The dazzling costumes, many with rainbow feathers, dripping light, bespeak a tradition of the day without ­closets stretching back well before the rise of gay lib­eration in the 1970s. Gay Mardi Gras grew more formal in the 1950s with the Krewe of Yuga, which sati­rized the traditional Mardi Gras balls. The police raided Yuga's first ball in 1958, and ninety-six members had their names printed in the newspaper in an arrest sweep'.

'Undeterred, the Krewe of Petronius formed in 1961, marking a move by gay men into the Carnival mainstream. By the early 1980s some fifteen gay krewes were holding balls with elab­orate floor shows. The AIDS epidemic, however, cut deeply into the community, and by 1999 only five krewes were active, including the Lords of Leather and the first black gay krewe, Mwindo'.

Source: Mardi Gras in New Orleans, USA: Annals of a Queen by Jason Berry in Carnival, ed. by Barbara Mauldin, 2004, Thames & Hudson. Pictures: top: a 19th century Mardi Gras scene, sourced from a history of the Rex parade; bottom, Mardi Gras 2007 by 'Sir: Poseyal Squire Poet'

Voilà notre nuit!

Au Petit Rocher (also known as Chez Dinocheau after its owner) was a popular tavern/restaurant frequented by Parisian 'bohemians' such as Charles Baudelaire in the 1850s and 1860s. It was situated in a cellar at the corner of rues de Navarin and de Breda.

Among the drinkers was the writer Fernand Desnoyers who would regularly sing there, his songs being published in his 1865 collection Chansons parisiennes('Parisian Songs'). One of his songs, 'Les rôdeurs de nuit' ('The prowlers of the night') is a celebration of staying up all night:

Quand le bourgeois dort,
Il fait soif encore,
Passon la nuit a boire!
La rue est toute noire;
Mais les vitraux des boulevards
Sont en feu, comme des regards.
Atmosphere enflammée,
Filles dans la fumée,
Eau-de-vie et bruit,
Voilà notre nuit!

(When the bourgeois sleeps,
We are thirsty, still;
Let's drink the night through!
It's quite dark outside;
But the windows on the streets are
Ablaze like people's glances.
Burning atmosphere,
Girls in the smoke,
Brandy and noise,
This is our night!)

Source: Paris: The Secret History - Andrew Hussey (London: Viking, 2006)

Dancing by The Docks

London's decline as a port city in the second half of the twentieth century also saw the end of a transnational nightlife near to the docks of East and South London, with clubs and dance-halls frequented by sailors on leave as well as the migrants from all corners of the globe who settled nearby. There is a fascinating account from 1872 (published in The Metropolitan) of one such dance hall near Ratcliff Highway in East London:

"Not far from Wellclose-square is a large tavern known by the Teutonic sign of the "Preussischer Adler," and into this palace of dazzling light our custodian led us... We could hear the strains of music and the rushing of many feet coming from the floor above, and turning to a staircase on our left, we prepared to ascend. But a placard posted at the foot of the steps attracts our attention, and we pause to read it - this is the substance in brief:- "All persons are requested, before entering the dancing saloon, to leave at the bar their pistols and knives, or any other weapon they may have about them." Fancy such a regulation being necessary in civilised London! At any rate, it was very reassuring to us, and with renewed confidence we mounted to the domains of Terpsichore.

It was a long room, with tables and seats aligning the walls, the centre being given up entirely to a crowd of dancers, who were waltzing to the by no means bad music of half-a-dozen German players, who piped away in a raised orchestra close by the stair-head. But what an assembly! There were French, Spanish, Italian, German, and Dutch seamen; there were Greeks from the Aegean Sea; there were Malays, Lascars, and even the "heathen Chinese," disguised in European costume, with his pigtail rolled up under a navy cap. There were mariners in fezes and serge capotes; there were Mediterranean dandies, girt with broad crimson scarves, and with massive gold earrings glistening as they twirled about. No wonder it had been found necessary to collect the knives and pistols from the hot-blooded cosmopolitan crowd. A blow is soon given, and with weapons at hand, who can tell where a quarrel might end? Yet I must say that, while we were present, everything was conducted in the most orderly manner, though the animated impassioned talk in a dozen different languages led one to imagine that a breach of the peace was imminent at any moment.

The waltz, which all alike danced admirably, had something of the heroic about it. Each couple made three or four sharp turns, and then came to a pause with a smart stamp and heads thrown back defiantly. Catching the time to a nicety, they would repeat the movement; and when I mention that there were considerably more than a hundred dancers on the floor, the staccato effect of the stamp, coming almost simultaneously, may be imagined. Of the female portion of the assemblage, I need not say more than that they were, in nearly every instance, foreign, the German and Flemish nationality mostly predominating. Short "Dolly Vardens," scrupulously clean, embroidered petticoats, and neatly-fitting high-heeled Hungarian boots, was apparently the favourite costume. To come suddenly upon the "Preussicher Adler's dancing saloon" out of the crowded streets of the English metropolis has a most startling effect upon the casual visitor, who is unprepared for any thing of the kind. It is absolutely as though one had been transferred, magically, to a casino in the neighbourhood of the docks of Marseilles or Genoa, or to the halls of "Tutti Nazioni" (all nations) on the Marina of Messina.

Another account appears in Twice Round the London Clock by Stephen Graham, published in 1933, with a chapter entitled Dancing Sailors describing a visit to a North Woolwich dance hall: "The interior of California in North Woolwich is something like part of a ship...perhaps that is why an otherwise ordinary public house has become one of the gay spots in Dockland...The sailors ashore looks for something like a boat, and they are almost all sailors who dance there."

There is dancing to "the shabbiest piano, with its top partly removed to let out more noise, and then to a one-man jazz band of the kind that used to be the wonder of children in the streets" and "The barmaids are buxom, well-cared for and independent. Sailors treat them respectfully. But the dancing girls, in their smart stockings and shabby everything else would really be kept out of the public houses except that they bring more custom". However, not everyone is interested in dancing with women - "the men did not get off with the girls at all" but "danced together in the funniest burlesque style...when there is shore leave one may see hundreds of couples of sailors dancing together". The author blames this on jazz, which has "infected ships by way of radio and, as, except on passenger ships, there are no women the 'nancy boys' dance together."

Thanks to Greenwich Phantom for the Stephen Graham quotes and image - I must try and get hold of this book.

Loie Fuller (Joseph Rous Paget-Fredericks Dance Collection)

The Joseph Rous Paget-Fredericks Dance Collection at the University of California consists of 'approximately 2,000 original drawings, paintings and photographs, as well as scrapbooks and other dance memorabilia', collected from around 1913 to 1945.

There are some fantastic images online of dancers from this period, such as paintings of Anna Pavlova and photos of Chicago-born Loie Fuller (1862-1928). The latter was not only a pioneer of free dance, but of the lightshow - as early as the 1890s she was experimenting with different coloured gas lighting on silk in her dance performances. She 'held many patents for stage lighting, including the first chemical mixes for gels and slides and the first use of luminescent salts to create lighting effects' (source).

After seeing Fuller perform at the Folies-Berigere in Paris in 1893, the symbolist poet Stéphane Mallarmé wrote:

‘Her performance, sui generis, is at once an artisitic intoxication and an industrial achievement, In that terrible bath of materials swoons the radiant, cold dancer, illustrating countless themes of gyration. From her proceeds an expanding web – giant butterflies and petals, unfoldings – everything of a pure and elemental order. She blends with the rapidly changing colours which vary their limelit phantasmagoria of twilight and grotto, their rapid emotional changes – delight, mourning, anger; and to set these off, prismatic, either violent or dilute as they are, there must be the dizziness of soul made visible by an artifice' (quoted in What is Dance?: Readings in Theory and Criticism By Roger Copeland, Marshall Cohen, Oxford University Press 1983).

(thank to Fed by Birds for pointing me in the direction of this archive)

O Ecstasies, O world, O music!

'O Douceurs, ô monde, ô musique ! Et là, les formes, les sueurs, les chevelures et les yeux, flottant. Et les larmes blanches, bouillantes, - ô douceurs ! - et la voix féminine arrivée au fond des volcans et des grottes arctiques'.

‘O Ecstasies, O world, O music! And here, shapes, sweats, heads of hair and eyes, floating. And white tears, boiling – O ecstasies! – and the female voice reaching to the bottom of the volcanoes and the arctic caverns’

from Arthur Rimbaud, Barbare, published in Illuminations (1874).

Photo taken in Space, Ibiza, 1995 - a year I was there too. I found the photo at Faithfanzine.com but couldn't find photocredit -

if you took this and would like to be credited let me know.

Ghost Dance

‘All Indians must dance, everywhere, keep on dancing. Pretty soon in next spring Great Spirit come… All dead Indians come back and live again. They all be strong just like young men, be young again. Old blind Indian see again and get young and have fine time. When Great Spirit comes this way, then all the Indians go to mountains, high up away from whites. Whites can't hurt Indians then. Then while Indians way up high, big flood comes like water and all white people die, get drowned. After that. water go way and then nobody but Indians everywhere and game all kinds thick. Then medicine man tell Indians to send word to all Indians to keep up dancing and the good time will come’ (Wovoka, the ‘Paiute Messiah’).

In the wake of military defeats and conquest, millenarian hopes of divine intervention spread among the desperate Native American survivors of the West in the 19th century. The most widespread movement was the Ghost Dance, at the heart of which was the hope that a better world could be brought into being through dance. In 1870, a prophet called Wodziwob amongst the Northern Paiute people (who lived on the California/Nevada border) told of a vision that the ancestors would return on a train, the whites would disappear and heaven would be created on earth. ‘These miracles were to be hastened by ceremonial dancing around a pole and by singing the songs that Wodziwob had learned during a vision’ (Farb). Although the movement faded away, it was revived twenty years later by Wovoka the prophet, son of an assistant of Wodziwob. In his vision he was told by God ‘about a dance that the people must perform to bring the dead Indians back to life again, for the dance generated energy that had the power to move the dead’ (Farb).

The dance spread quickly to the Cheyenne, the Sioux and many other tribes. Some wore ‘ghost shirts – dance shirts fancifully decorated with designs of arrows, stars, birds, and so forth’ believing that they could ward off bullets. In 1890 Kicking Bear and his brother Short Bull brought news of the movement to Sitting Bull of the Sioux. Kicking Bear told of a vision he had of Christ: ‘Kicking Bear had always thought that Christ was a white man like the missionaries, but this man looked· like an Indian. After a while he rose and spoke to the waiting crowd. ..”I will teach you how to dance a dance, and I want you to dance it. Get ready for your dance and when the dance is over I will talk to you”… They danced the Dance of the Ghosts until late at night, when the Messiah told them they had danced enough.’ (Brown)

“By mid-November Ghost Dancing was so prevalent on the Sioux re­servations that almost all other activities came to a halt. No pupils appeared at the schoolhouses. The trading stores were empty, no work was done on the little farms. At Pine Ridge the frightened agent tele­graphed Washington: 'Indians are dancing in the snow and are wild and crazy ... We need protection and we need it now. The leaders should be arrested and confined at some military post until tbe matter is quieted and this should be done at once’.'' (Brown)

Orders were given to arrest leaders of the movement, and on December 15 1890, Sitting Bull was killed during an attempted arrest. Two weeks later at Wounded Knee Creek a group of Ghost Dance believers – 120 men and 230 women and children – were surrounded by the US military. They opened fire indiscriminately, killing between 150 and 250 people. It was the last stand of the Ghost Dance.

Sources: Man’s Rise to Civilisation – Peter Farb (1969); Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee – Dee Brown (1970). See also: Comanche Sun Dance.

Kill the Spirit of Gravity: Nietzsche on Dance

The 19th century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche clearly appreciated dance, and in his imagining of the “the glowing life of the Dionysian revellers” he seems to be not only looking back to Ancient Greece but anticipating future raves. I would be interested in finding out more about his own experiences of dancing, as opposed to writing about it, so if anybody has any knowledge of this, let me know.

“Under the charm of the Dionysian not only is the union between man and man reaffirmed, but Nature which has become estranged, hostile, or subjugated, celebrates once more her reconciliation with her prodigal son, man.... Now the slave is free; now all the stubborn, hostile barriers, which necessity, caprice or ‘shameless fashion’ have erected between man and man, are broken down... Each one feels himself not only united, reconciled, blended with his neighbour, but all as one with him... In song and in dance man expresses himself as a member of a higher community; he has forgotten how to walk and speak; he is about to take a dancing flight into the air... He feels himself a god, he himself now walks about enchanted, in ecstasy... He is no loner an artist, he has become a work of art: in these paroxysms of intoxication the artistic power of all nature reveals itself to the highest gratification of the Primordial Unity” (The Birth of Tragedy, 1872)

"I should believe only in a God who understood how to dance. And when I beheld my devil, I found him serious, thorough, profound, solemn: it was the Spirit of Gravity - through him all things are ruined. One does not kill by anger but by laughter. Come let us kill the Spirit of Gravity!" (Of reading and writing, Thus spake Zarathustra, 1883)

"Do not cease your dance, sweet girls! No spoil sport has come to you with an evil eye, no enemy of girls... How could I be enemy of divine dancing, you nimble creatures... A dance-song and a mocking-song on the Spirit of Gravity, my supreme, most powerful devil" (The Dance Song, Thus spake Zarathustra, 1883)

"And once I wanted to dance as I had never yet danced: I wanted to dance beyond all heavens. Then you lured away my favourite singer. And then he struck up a gruesome, gloomy melody: alas, he trumpeted into my ears like a mournful horn! Murderous singer, instrument of malice, most innocent man! I stood prepared for the finest dance: then you murdered by ecstasy with your tones! I know how to speak the parable of the highest things in the dance - and now my greatest parable has remained in my limbs unspoken!" (The Funeral Song, Thus spake Zarathustra, 1883).

Photos via Flickr from Tel Aviv, Israel - top by Orenziv of a rave, October 2007; bottom from Love Parade 2004 by Ehud

Dancing with Emma Goldman

The anarchist Emma Goldman (1869-1940) is perhaps best known today for one quote attributed to her: 'If I can't dance I don't want to be in your revolution'. It seems that she never actually said these words, but in her autobiography Living My Life her joy in dancing is obvious.

At one point she recalls her first ball in St. Petersburg, aged 15: "At the German Club everything was bright and gay... I was asked for every dance, and I danced in frantic excitement and abandon. It was getting late and many people were already leaving when Kadison invited me for another dance. Helena insisted that I was too exhausted, but I would not have it so. "I will dance!" I declared; "I will dance myself to death!" My flesh felt hot, my heart beat violently as my cavalier swung me round the ball-room, holding me tightly. To dance to death - what more glorious end! It was towards five in the morning when we arrived home".

After moving to the United States, she was involved in supporting a strike by Jewish women cloakmakers in New York's East Side in the 1890s, including dances for the strikers: 'At the dances I was one of the most untiring and gayest. One evening a cousin of Sasha [Alexander Berkman], a young boy, took me aside. With a grave face, as if he were about to announce the death of a dear comrade, he whispered to me that it did not behove an agitator to dance. Certainly not with such reckless abandon, anyway. I grew furious at the impudent interference of the boy. I told him to mind his own business, I was tired of having the Cause constantly thrown into my face. I did not believe that a Cause which stood for, a beautiful ideal, for anarchism, for release and freedom from conventions and prejudice, should demand the denial of life and joy. I insisted that our Cause could not expect me to became a nun and that the movement should not be turned into a cloister. If it meant that, I did not want it. "I want freedom, the right to self-expression, everybody's right to beautiful, radiant things." Anarchism meant that to me, and I would live it in spite of the whole world - prisons, persecution, everything. Yes, even in spite of the condemnation of my own closest comrades I would live my beautiful ideal'.

Later in New York, Goldman met the veteran Russian revolutionary Catherine Breshkovskaya known as Babushka: 'At the Russian New Year's ball we greeted the advent of 1905 standing in a circle, Babushka dancing the kazatchokwith one of the boys. It was a feast for the eyes to see the woman of sixty-two, her spirit young, cheeks ruddy, and eyes flashing, whirling about in the popular Russian dance.'

So even if 'Red Emma' didn't say the exact words put into her mouth on posters and t-shirts, it would seem that they were a fair enough representation of her stance.

The picture of Emma Goldman was taken in around 1886 shortly after she left Russia in the wake of anti-semitic pogroms.

Comanche Sun Dance

In desparate times, millennarian movements have arisen in which people hoped to be liberated from their oppression by a sudden magical transformation, perhaps sparked by the return of the ancestors or divine intervention. In many of these movements communal dancing and festivities have played a key role, what Bryan Wilson in his study Magic and the Millennium called 'efforts to dance into being the new dispensation' - a party to bring on the end of the world, or at least turn it upside down. One such episode arose on the South Plains of the United States in the 1870s:

'the Comanches... way of life was under severe threat in the 1870s, when the buffalo herds were fast diminishing, when Ishatai ('Coyote Droppings'), a young warrior medicine-man, who had 'proved' his own immunity to bullets and had 'raised the dead", arose in 1873. The Comanches had resisted confinement in the reserva­tion at Fort Sill...

Ishatai claimed to have communed with the Great Spirit, and he successfully predicted the appearance of a comet, to be followed by a long summer drought. He succeeded in gathering all the Comanches together—a feat which the great chiefs had never been able to do in the past—to perform the Sun Dance, in which all but one band, the Swift Stingers, joined. This was a wholly new venture for the Comanches, although they had watched the Kiowa sun dances and those of the Cheyenne for many years. A buffalo herd was captured, and a buffalo was killed, stuffed, and mounted on a pole. Mud-men clowns (imitated from clowns seen among the Pueblos) provided 'a light hearted gesture in an act of desperation—the inauguration of the Sun Dance for the earthly salvation of the Comanche way of life'.

A mock battle was fought, and the people danced in bands for five days before the sun dancers themselves danced, drummed, and sang for three further days, doing without food and water for the duration of the dance. Ishatai had promised that he would share his immunity with others, and that they should drive the whites from the land and restore the old way of life. But in the action they mounted against a post at Adobe Wells, soon afterwards, nine Comanches were killed. Ishatai lost his power, and the Comanches, their spirit broken, entered the reservation in 1875.

Source: Bryan Wilson, Magic and the Millennium (London: Heinemann, 1973). Picture is of a Sun Dance amongst the Ponca people

When the Waltz was Banned

The Waltz was the focus of outrage as the dance spread from Austria and Germany to France and England in the late 18th and early 19th century:

'[The Waltz] had a swing that demanded a new style of dancing, a close hold (to maintain balance), and a breathless turn of speed that was itself intoxicating. Naturally, the pleasure it gave to the couples who lost themselves in each other's arms, who pressed breast against chest and who, as the music whirled on, embraced each other more and more tightly, itself attracted strong criticism. In parts of Germany and Switzerland, the waltz was banned altogether. A German book proving that "the waltz is a main source of the weakness of body and mind of our generation" proved popular as late as 1799...

Byron himself displayed an extraordinary hostility to the dance. He objected to the "lewd grasp and lawless contact warm," especially between strangers; to the foreign origins of the dance and its adoption by the lower classes; and to the fact that "thin clad daughters" leaping around the floor would not "leave much mystery for the nupital night."

An article in The Times in 1816 about 'the indecent foreign dance called the "waltz"' fumed:

'National morals depend on national habits: and it is quite sufficient to cast one's eyes on the voluptuous intertwining of the limbs, and close compressure of the bodies, in their dance, to see that it is indeed far removed from the modest reserve which has hitherto been considered distinctive of English females. So long as this obscene display was confined to prostitutes and adultresses we did not think it deserving of notice; but now that it is attempted to be forced upon the respectable classes of society by the evil example of their superiors, we feel it a duty to warn every parent against exposing his daughter to so fatal a contagion'.

Source: Peter Buckman, Let’s Dance: Social, Ballroon and Folk Dancing (Paddington Press, London, 1978), p.124-7

Indian Rave Bust

Last week in India, near the city of Pune, police arrested 271 at a rave at a rural farmhouse. Seven people accused of organising the party and various drugs offences were remanded in custody at Yervada jail. They face charges under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act.

The arrested party goers have garnered some sympathy. In a leader, the Times of India (7 March 2006) noted that 'The list of seizures from the Pune rave party doesn't look particularly incriminating — beer cans, marijuana, cigarettes, music systems, motorbikes, mobile phones and the like', particulary as at this time of year the majority of the population of north India 'was having a party where controlled substances were dispensed'. The latter is a reference to the spring festival of Holi when many partake of a drink containing bhang (derived from the cannabis plant)). The article concludes 'we don't really need a replica of Taliban's moral police — it's a cop-out to reduce policing to hanging out undercover at bars and parties in an attempt to safeguard public morality'.

Many Western travellers have taken part in raves in Goa, but fewer are aware that there is a growing indigenous rave scene in India. Those arrested included students, air hostesses and call centre employees, part of a new globalised workforce plugged into an international dance culture circuit. Indian press reports noted that the details of the party were posted on www.isratrance.com (an Israel-based trance party site), while amongst those arrested were 12 foriegn nationals including a German DJ, two Palestinians and an Iranian. An Irish woman party organiser called Shaina was said to be on the run. Music and dance cultures break down national and other artificial social boundaries in sometimes surprizing ways...

Photo: disconsolate party goers the morning after.

Trinidad Carnival

The Trinidad Carnival this week has commemorated a key point in the Carnival's history - the Canboulay riots of 1881-1884 (the picture on the left, from Illustrated London News is of the 1888 carnival). According to one account:

"The year is 1881 — the Canboulay riots — when a 'major armed clash between the Trinidad colonial police and the 'local' population occurred/ following a decision to clamp down on the Carnival celebrations of that year. The barrack-yards of Port of Spain, where the 'Diametres' ruled, presided over neighbourhoods, nurtured loyalties, honed and hoarded the weapons of survival for confrontations such as these, gathered their bands of revellers turned warriors and went forth to defy and try the governor. If Canboulay was a fight between bands where individual 'stickmen' resolved their inter-personal rivalries and waged regional warfare against other bands, in 1881, 'it took on the character of a historical underclass in united action against the police.' In 1882, Trinidad again — riot this time in San Fernando when the state tried to limit 'Playing' till 9.00 p.m" (Behind the Masquerade: The Story of Notting Hill Carnival – Kwesi Owusu and Jacob Ross, London: Arts Media Group, 1988).

In 1884 in 'In Princes Town, the masqueaders attacked the police station after magistrate Hobson decided to confine the police to barracks because the crowd was too large. After Hobson was felled with a stone, the police opened fire on the rioters killing a youth and seriously wounding two others'.

Picture right: Trinidad carnival 2006

No spitting on the dancefloor

Extracts from 19th century ballroom manuals:

From a New York publication 1864:

"Loud conversation, profanity, stamping the feet, writing on the wall, smoking tobacco, spitting or throwing anything on the floor, are strictly forbidden."
"The practice of chewing tobacco and spitting on the floor, is not only nauseous to ladies, but is injurious to their dresses."
"A gentleman should not address a lady unless he has been properly introduced."
"No persons engaged in a dance that requires their assistance to complete the set should leave the room or sit down before the dance is finished."

From a Boston publication 1858:

"Persons who have no ear for music, that is to say, a false one, ought to refrain from dancing."
"Married or young ladies cannot leave a ballroom, or any other party, alone. The former should be accompanied by one or two other married ladies, and the latter by their mother, or by a lady to represent her."
"Ladies should avoid talking too much; it will occasion re­marks. It has also a bad appearance to whisper continually in the ear of your partner."
"In giving the hand for ladies' chain or any other figures, those dancing should wear a smile, and accompany it with a polite inclination of the head, in the manner of a salutation."
"In public balls, a gentleman offers his partner refreshments, but which she very seldom accepts, unless she is well ac­quainted with him."

From a Dundee publication 1890:

"Change partners often during the evening, in order that all may enjoy themselves. When requiring to use a handkerchief, put it in your pocket immediately when finished with it. Avoid all vulgar practices, such as biting your nails, making noise with the feet etc."

From a London publication 1817:

"No person during a Country Dance, should hiss, clap, or make any other noise, to interrupt the good order of the company."
"Snapping the fingers, in Country Dancing and Reels, and the sudden howl or yell (introduced in some Scotch parties as partly national with them) ought particularly to be avoided, as partaking too much of the customs of barbarous nations."
"Gentlemen are not allowed to enter the ballroom in boots, spurs, gaiters, trowsers, or with canes or sticks; nor are loose pantaloons considered proper for a Full Dress Ball."

Source for all the above: Scotland through her country dances - George S. Emmerson (London: Johnson Publications, 1967, pp. 23-24). Unfortunately the author does not include detailed references to sources.

Drag Ball in London, 1879

Under the headline “An extraordinary ball — men dressed as women,” the cutting [from a local East End newspaper of 1879] tells of a dance held in the Zetland Hall in Mansell Street on the evening of Friday 25 April. Three detectives attended the event and witnessed “some sixty or seventy per­sons dancing… Although quite half of the dancers were in female attire, the officers soon discovered that there were not half-a-dozen women in the place, the supposed females being merely men dressed up in women’s clothes.” It continued: “These, how­ever, danced together, kissed each other and behaved in any­thing but an orderly manner.” Needless to say, the dance organiser, Adolph Voizanger, was fined £20 and costs or, in default, threatened with two months’ hard labour. However, the newspaper was keen to point out that the police were sticklers for thor­ough research: “The officers stayed at the hall from about ten pm on the Friday night until four the next morning”

Source: Pink Paper, 6th February 1998