BIOGRAPHY

Born: 1873, Toronto, Ontario
Died: 1956, Los Angeles, California
Birth Name: Ulah Maud Allan Durrant
Stage Name: Maud Allan

Maud Allan was an early-twentieth-century dancer and choreographer who performed what she called "musically impressionistic mood settings". Born in Toronto and raised in San Francisco, Allan was studying piano in Germany when she abandoned the instrument to develop her very personal way of moving -- a form of art that she did not directly associate with dance. This abrupt change in her artistic pursuits immediately followed the hanging of her brother Theo Durrant for the murder of two young women. Allan never recovered from the trauma of this event and it affected her psychologically for the rest of her life. She made her dance debut in Vienna in 1903 dancing interpretations of Mendelssohn's Spring Song, Chopin's Funeral March and Rubinstein's Valse Caprice. She became a sensation with the performance of her controversial Vision of Salome (1906), which triggered a series of imitators and the "Salomania" phenomenon. Although she danced briefly with Loie Fuller's company in France, she primarily performed as a soloist and enjoyed tremendous success in London after her debut at the Palace Theatre in 1908. Subsequent tours included Russia, the United States, Canada (Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto), South Africa, India, the Far East and Australasia, Chile, Peru and Argentina. She gave her last performance in 1936 in Los Angeles. She eventually settled in the Los Angeles during World War II and worked as a draughtswoman at Macdonald Aircraft. Allan died in Los Angeles in 1956 penniless and forgotten. While she did operate her own dance school briefly in London in the 1940s, she did not mentor any dancers who could continue to perform her very personal choreographic aesthetic and thus her dance works are lost.
 

If you scroll to the bottom of this Page in History, you will find a slide show of DCD's Maud Allan Memorabilia Collection including items such as postcards, corn plasters, cigarettes and a bisque nodder.

CONTENTS

• costumes and clothing, shoes, journals, correspondence, photographs, postcards, books, house programmes, newspaper clippings, memorabilia, documents from Felix Cherniavsky's extensive research

Notable:

• two original costumes with head piece for The Vision of Salome
• original souvenir edition of My Life and Dancing by Maud Allan
• Edwardian shawls and shoes
• personal journals, 1895-1897
• postcard collection
• Salome Memorabilia to include a bisque nodder, cigarettes, corn plasters
• Maud Allan felt pennant

Cross References

• Books: Cherniavsky, Felix. 1999. Maud Allan and Her Art. Toronto: Dance Collection Danse Press/es.
  ISBN: 929003-35-7
  Macpherson, Susan, ed. 2000. Encyclopedia of Theatre Dance in Canada/Encyclopédie de la Danse Théâtrale au Canada. Toronto: Dance Collection Danse Press/es.
  ISBN: softcover 0-929003-42-X; hardcover 0-929003-44-6

Works

Spring Song (1903), Felix Mendelssohn
Adagio (1903), Ludwig von Beethoven
Gavotte (1903), Johann Sebastian Bach
Musette (1903), Bach
Reverie (1903), Robert Schumann
Funeral March (1903), Fréderic Chopin
Waltz in A Minor (1903), Chopin
Mazurka in G Sharp Minor (1903), Chopin
Mazurka in F Sharp Minor (1903), Chopin
Ave Maria (1903), Franz Schubert
Valse Caprice(1903), Anton Rubinstein
The Vision of Salome (1906), Marcel Remy
Waltz in A Flat (1908), Johannes Brahms
Peer Gynt Suite (1909), Edvard Grieg
Passpied (1909), Léo Delibes
Dryad (1911), Jean Sibelius
The Birds (1911), Grieg
Poetic Tone Poem (1911), Grieg
Waltz of the Flowers (1911), Piotr Ilich Tchaikovsky
Arabian Dance (1911), Tchaikovsky
Reed Pipe Dance (1911), Tchaikovsky
Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy (1911), Tchaikovsky
Danse sacrée et profane (1911), Claude Debussy
Am Meer (1913), Schubert
Moment Musical (1913), Schubert
Romance (1913), Rubinstein
Nair the Slave (1916), Pietro Belpassi
La Marseillaise (1917, Rouget de Lisle
Valse Triste (1917), Sibelius
Blue Danube Waltz (1917), Schubert
Grand Valse (1923), Alexander Glazounov
Egyptian Ballet Suite (1923), Luigini
Prelude in C Sharp Minor (c. 1923), Sergei Rachmaninoff
Bacarolle from Tales of Hoffman (c. 1923), Jacques Offenbach
Fête Bohème (1923), Jules Massenet
Mystery of the Desert (1925), Reginald Poole
Oriental Fantasy (1925), Joseph Achron
Pathéthique (1926), Tchaikovsky
Prelude in C Minor (1936), Chopin
Nocturne in E (1936), Chopin
Scherzo from the Funeral Sonata (1936), Chopin
Suite in G Minor (1936), George Frideric Handel
 

Photos

Top: TBD
Middle: TBD
Bottom: TBD
 

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