Princess
Amina
Princess
Amina was a woman who lived in Munich In 1960s. I first found out
about her by the name of Lady Moynihan. Her name, where she was
from, and what she did was a mystery – filled with sex, drugs, and
dance. This much is clear, she was a dancer who performed in
nightclubs. A bellydancer?
Searching
Lady Moynihan online, I come across an new item in “The Times”
from 1965:
“A
young Malayan belly dancer became a peeress today with the death of
Lord Moynihan, a former chairman of Britain's Liberal party.
The new Lady Moynihan is the former Shirin Berry, known professionally as Princess Amina, who was married in 1958 to Anthony P.A. Moynihan, the Baron's son, at a secret Moslem ceremony in Tangier, Morocco.
A year later they were married again in England. Mr Moynihan, a devotee of rock'n'roll, resigned his reserve commission in the Brigade of Guards and played the bongo drums at his wife's worldwide cabaret appearances. [The Times]”
The new Lady Moynihan is the former Shirin Berry, known professionally as Princess Amina, who was married in 1958 to Anthony P.A. Moynihan, the Baron's son, at a secret Moslem ceremony in Tangier, Morocco.
A year later they were married again in England. Mr Moynihan, a devotee of rock'n'roll, resigned his reserve commission in the Brigade of Guards and played the bongo drums at his wife's worldwide cabaret appearances. [The Times]”
http://webofevil.livejournal.com/717433.html
(22.5.2013) (I had seen an archive of the actual THE TIMES, but could
not access it anymore)
Her
names and origins multiply as I keep searching. She disappears and
reappears in multiple contexts, under different names. Yet what is
constant- she dances, in nightclubs, cabarets- she is known as a
bellydancer.
On the
wikipedia page of Baron Anthony Moynihan, for example, she is called
Shirin Berry appears. She is said to be a Malaysian dancer who lived
and worked in Australia. There she met the son of a British Baron,
Tony Moynihan, who played the banjo. They performed together, and got
married. She became known as Princess Amina.
Married
in Marocco? Danced in Australia? Malaysian?
I
continue the search, this time typing in Shirin Berry-- and get some
pictures!
I
find an Italian newspaper article from 1962 about a Pakistani dancer
appearing in Rome- accompanied by her husband Anthony Moynihan! Ok,
now she is Pakistani!!!
Is
this really the same woman in all the pictures?
Ok,
now, with the names, Princess Amina, Moynihan, and Berry I search
further--- and come across an article about a girl from Karachi!
Bobbie Berry, daughter of the Anglo-Indian widow Mrs Berry, and the
African American sailor Gunboat Jack!
In
a quite beautifully written article in a Pakistani called “POETIC
LICENCE: Of Gunboat Jack and Princess Amina” by Kaleem
Omar
(http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_31-10-2002_pg3_7,
22.5.2013) I finally read what seems like a somewhat reliable
version of her story.
She
grew up in Karachi, finished school, and then disappeared for some
years (to Australia, I ask in my mind??)- only to reappear in Karachi
“in
a most dramatic fashion one day in 1963 when Bobbie Berry suddenly
(...) to perform at the Le Gourmet nightclub as a belly dancer billed
as “Princess Amina”, accompanied on the bongo drums by the Right
Honourable Tony Moynihan, if you please.
Tony
Moynihan was the eldest son of Lord Moynihan, a member of the British
peerage. His younger brother was Colin Moynihan, who went on to
become a minister in Margaret Thatcher’s government. Tony Moynihan,
however, was a ne’er-do-well and a drifter to boot.
But
still didn’t quite explain just what the son of a member of the
House of Lords was doing playing the bongo drums with a belly dance
act in Karachi. The mystery was solved when it was revealed that Tony
Moynihan had married Bobbie Berry a couple of years earlier and —
by some mysterious process — had transformed her into the belly
dancing sensation, Princess Amina.
Her
performances at Le Gourmet electrified Karachi’s nightclub crowd.
Princess Amina wasn’t just another belly dancer;; she was the
ultimate belly dancer — a performer of dazzling virtuosity and
seemingly inexhaustible stamina. Compared to her, even such belly
dancing greats as Egypt’s Samia Gamal were nothing. What gave
Princess Amina’s dancing its special quality were partly her skill,
partly her supreme physical fitness, and partly the sheer aura of
sensuousness she radiated.”
They
disappeared again, supposedly to the “Far East” and then back to
London, where Moynihan, after his father's death took his seat in the
House of Lords (see The Times above).
They
got divorced, and Lord Moynihan apparently consecutively married two
other belly dancers and passed away in 1991, at age 55 in Manila. He
is variously described as a “bongo-drummer, confidence trickster,
brothel-keeper, drug-smuggler and police informer,” and a key
witness for the American Drug Enforcement Agency
(http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/6604750/Lord-Moynihan.html,
22.5.2013)
By
and large, her time in Munich, where she crossed paths with my mom
remains a mystery to me. However, I would be interested to pursue the
oral history of this nomadic cabaret dancer, who, after disappearing
from Munich reappears in Italy... where, at least according to the
2002 article by Kaleem Omar she still lived with her second husband,
whose name I could not locate, so I lost her trace for now.
(http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_31-10-2002_pg3_7,
22.5.2013)
Princess
Amina is the individual artist you interests me, because it opens a
space to create a character who is nomadic, a fascinating woman, and
allows me to inteface nightclub performance with exoticism, and the
attraction of the exotic.
However,
her reception and history reflects an image of the cabaret
performance being conflated with nightclub settings and the kind of
“light” entertainment associated with such establishments. This
image is rather narrow, even as the French word cabaret des indeed
refer to an establishment serving alcohol
(http://www.musicals101.com/cabaret.htm,
23.5.2013). However, in approaching a creative grappling with a
persona like Princess Amina I am interested in older and more
complicted histories of cabaret, that highligt political
subversiveness over its commercial sexappeal as a performance
methodology.
I
am hence here looking towards the European origins of the cabaret,
namely the “
cabaret artistique” which started in 1881 in Paris at the Le
Chat noir, and
the literary cabarets that have a strong lineage in the Berlin,
Vienna and Munich, which starts in 1901
(http://www.kabarettarchiv.at/Ordner/history.htm,
23.5.2013).
I
am here particularly drawn to the literary-political cabaret of the
1930s.
The
cabaret artistique and Le Chat Noir, it
is said, attracted well known, avant-garde artists and a regular
audience, an a small, interactive space. John
Kenrick writes that
Performers
got to test new material, audiences enjoyed a stimulating evening for
the price of a few drinks, and owners could count on a steady flow of
regular customers – a win-win-win proposition. Le
Chat Noir attracted
such notables as Maupassant, Debussy and Satie.
While
the cabaret as a perormance mode and space spread throughout Europe,
it became especially strong in Berlin during the Weimar Time, after
censorship was loosened:
The
overthrow of the kaiser, the revolutionary tumult that resulted in
the establishment of a Social-Democratic republic, and the hardships
of the inflation period were the troubled waters in which cabaretists
could fish with spectacular success. Berlin became a maelstrom,
sucking in the energies and talents of the rest of Germany. . . What
New York in the 1920s was to jazz and speakeasies, Berlin was to
cabaret.
“Laurence Senelick, Cabaret Performance, Volume II: Europe 1920-1940 (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1993), p. 25.
“Laurence Senelick, Cabaret Performance, Volume II: Europe 1920-1940 (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1993), p. 25.
Also
cited in http://www.musicals101.com/cabaret.htm)
The
German Cabaret went through a revival again after WWII, where it
expanded into the radio and TV. I remember Cabaret being part of
Saturevening TV entertainment we watched at home. However, since the
late 1990s Kabarett is struggling to compete with Comedyshows.....
(http://www.mediaculture-online.de/fileadmin/bibliothek/hoerburger_nihilisten/hoerburger_nihilisten.pdf,
28.5.2013)
To
this day, the German word KABARETT has political and satirical
resonances, and to me as a German speaker means something different
than the cabaret- even though they have the same roots. At a point
of intersection between European, South Asian and Anglo-phone
conception of the cabaret, I am hence interested in approaching
Princess Amina's story through the performative mode inspired by the
German Kabarett tradition or “Kleinkunst” which combines text,
perofmance arts and music aiming to comment on a parody the current
socio-political condtion of a given country or society, critically,
or funny, entertaining or aesthetically- its all possible
(http://mephisto976.uni-leipzig.de/themen/beitrag/artikel/cabaret-oder-kabarett.html#share
, 28.5.2013).
Princess Amina is so intriguing. I think it is so interesting you have a personal connection to her through your mother and in your searches have found so many possible ethnic identities, but a clear unifying thread to her identity---famous belly dancer. I see a connection in the faces of photos 1 and 3 but the 2nd photo she looks completely Anglo. It would be so interesting if you created a movement study of her based upon all your found research. Makes me think about the role of Belly dance in Cabaret and how in some countries that is the main dance performed in that setting. Like Helen and the scene in Mumbai, makes me wonder about gender roles. Male belly dancers? Very interesting
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed your explanation for your interest in Princess Amina -- the interface of nomadism, exoticism, nightclub performance -- as well as the additional material you added about the German kabarett tradition. It really helps to contextualize your interest in the material. In English (and of course cabaret is a word borrowed from French), the word cabaret does not immediately have implications of political satire, though it is one possible kind of cabaret. This of course gestures towards the different histories of cabaret in Germany and in the US, which is exciting for how it disentangles different strands of the tradition in the "West," which is so easily imagined as one monolithic entity. In your embrace of this politicized definition of German kabarett, which I am very sympathetic to, I did find myself wondering whether you imagine that Princess Amina performed in these politicized cabarets or in the more commercial nightclubs, or if you wish to re-perform her using the strategies of a political cabaret, or something else. How does performing exoticism fit into this politicized and avant-garde context? In the Harlem cabaret context, the performance of race, exoticism, and primitivism can be seen in the segregated cabarets and its interface with the Negro Vogue of the early 20th century, where white middle-class folks went to see black performers perform exotic and primitive spectacle within manageable limits in a kind of "Jim Crow cosmopolitianism," where white viewers' spectatorial pleasure was predicated on the subjection of the black body. On the other side were the black cabarets, smaller working class establishments focused more on black patrons and performers, though white people hungry for a little more "transgression" might venture over as well. In a different but somewhat related manner, in a European context, as the exclusive, bohemian, and transgressive cabaret became popular, it also came to attract the fashionable, cosmopolitan, middle-class, who often were the targets of the cabaret's parodies, according to Vogel. How do commercialism, exoticism, racial otherness, and political satire intersect in the figure of Princess Amina?
ReplyDeleteReading through your writing, as you follow many contradictory clues and traces of Princess Amina's life, I'm reminded of Marta Savigliano's scholar-as-detective, as well as the significance of gaps and absences in the archive. I would love to hear more about your mother's experience meeting Princess Amina - under what auspices did that happen? What did your mom think of her? What textures, smells, sounds does she remember? I'm also curious how Princess Amina's nomadic life and cabaret practice impacts your own artistic practice -- or the public's reception thereof -- as a contemporary Indian dancer in Munich.
I really enjoyed reading about Princess Amina and the elaboration about your interest in her.
ReplyDeleteI also agree with Cynthia and am intrigued to know more about the thoughts and questions that she has shared here.
What I find very interesting is the element of mystery attached to Princess Amina, her nomadic character and the multiple identities that make it difficult to see her as one person.
Also the contradictions inherent in her life, the fact that her husband was part of her performances and not a hindrance to her pursuing a certain performance form, her acceptance to a certain kind of society despite her choice of performance intrigue me a lot.
Connecting it further to my own research I feel, even in Hindi cinema the element of suspense and mystery surrounded the position of the cabaret dancer greatly. She was always the keeper of secrets, maybe even an eye witness to a murder and lives with many identities, sometimes to protect secrets and sometimes to protect herself. If possible, I would really be interested in investigating what could be the reason(s) behind Princess Amina's multiple identities? In Hindi cinema, the cabaret dancer also served as a missing link to several key events in the film's narrative, as maybe her space - the dark space, became a safe place for people of repute to hide their secrets! I would like to, maybe through Princess Amina, explore this position of the nomadic/traveling cabaret dancer further to see if apart from personal secrets she was also keeping/managing/carrying any political secrets or missions???
You quoted above: "What New York in the 1920s was to jazz and speakeasies, Berlin was to cabaret." In one of my researches it said that speakeasies (secret places that served alcohol during Prohibition) were places that cabarets took place. So I'm wondering if it's the same thing.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I think the whole Princess Amina confusion is an interesting form of Orientalism...she's Moroccan, Malay or Pakistani, but to the orientalist it wouldn't matter, they're all the exotic East . And being a belly dancer is, of course, the epitome of the exotic East.
Is her name well known in Munich? what else do your Mom and others say about her? what is their attitude toward her? Is she respected? Scandalous?...
I would love to see your idea of telling her story through “Kleinkunst” The thought reminds me a little bit of the "Jazz Hot" song in my research of Victor Victoria because it is actually a story about a woman who fell in love with jazz and travels around the world showing up wherever jazz music is playing. I wonder if the lyrics could be rewritten to tell the story of Princess Amina or of her ex-husband the serial Bellydancer groom/bongo player.
But of course, its an American song so wouldn't be in German “Kleinkunst” style.