Cabaret Travels: Cynthia's Written Assignment #2

German Kabarett: Disruptive Sexualities and Embodying the Other

Perusing these excerpts from Laurence Senelick’s books on cabaret performance in Europe feels a bit like window-shopping in a foreign city: walking/reading my way through the street/text, seeing little glimpses into diverse textures and colors of performance, arrested in writing.  Primary texts (original scripts or, more often, performance descriptions by contemporary observers or fellow artists) are briefly framed by Senelick’s succinct historical contextualizations.  It is an engaging scholarly style that is very different from the critical theoretical frames that I am used to.  As a result, I am unsure what Senelick’s agenda is and unable to summarize his central argument, if there is one. 

Moving among the fragments, many details jump out to me, suggesting some half-formed observations: a self-conscious meta-framing aesthetic, reminiscent of Brechtian alienation; an anti-bourgeoisie streak and an avant-garde desire to mobilize and refine the energy of “popular” art, which for some reason smacks of privilege to me.  While my task is to connect these readings to my prior research on Harlem cabaret and the women-loving blues, I am most immediately reminded of the American postmoderns, with their tendencies towards deconstruction, inter/multidisciplinary intersections, and their wish to unite art with everyday life – “democratic” tendencies historically undermined by often unacknowledged cultural appropriations and racial and class exclusions.  I found myself wondering whether there were any people of color or working class artists as part of the German kabarett scene.  Or was it all white dissident intelligentsia?  It is hard for me to tell from these readings.  When Senelick mentions that “tangos, foxtrots, one-steps, and Bostons were introduced weekly” “imported from America” (1993: 7), I found myself wondering: through what circulation of bodies?  What corporeal contact occurred that is not tracked here?  I know that dancer Josephine Baker (the “Black Pearl” or “Creole Goddess”) was huge in Paris, as were African-American jazz musicians.  Did they also circulate in a German context?  And who brought the tango over from Argentina?

One theme that recurs throughout the writings, which are divided between the period of 1890-1920 and the post WWII period of 1920-1940, is that of an unbridled female sexuality. In 1897, Otto Julius Bierbaum wrote “Manifesto for a Cabaret Theatre,” in which he says: "Beautiful costumes, beautiful arms, bosoms, legs, gestures -- that's what counts...solve for me the problem of emancipation from tights – that’s what I need.  And if you must write verses, make sure they are sung by beautiful girls whose corsets embrace more than the void…" (1989: 69).  I read this text, particularly since it was written by a man, as putting sexual objectification of women’s bodies hand in hand with breaking down bourgeois respectability.  In the post-war period, a hedonist sensibility pervades the cabarets, a “post-war release” that Senelick calls a "reaction against the prudery of the Wilhelmine era and release of tension in the wake of wartime depression" (1993: 7).  Valeska Gert, creator of “the grotesque dance-pantomime” that Lotte Goslar and Pina Bausch practiced, physically embodied images of “whores, procuresses, down-and-outers, and degenerates" (1993: 15).  In Canaille, which Gert self-proclaimed to be “the first socially critical dance-pantomime” (15), she performs an “alienated” “coitus” (1993: 16).  Her movement description is interestingly similar to Sandra’s last cabaret study: "I wiggle my hips provocatively, hoist the black, very short skirt, and for an instant show white flesh above long, black stockings, pink garters, and high-heeled shoes…Then I bend my knees slowly, spread my legs wide and sink down" (1993: 16).  Doubtlessly these images, which seem to hover uneasily between sexual objectification and empowerment, challenged respectable, bourgeois constructions of women’s sexuality.  In this respect, they have something in common with how blueswomen in the Harlem cabaret challenged heteronormative constructions of sexuality and gender espoused by racial uplift ideology and the educated black middle class.  Indeed, the infamous nude dancer of the German kabarett, Anita Berber, was known for being a lesbian who went out in a tuxedo and monocle, a similar gender presentation to blueswomen like Gladys Bentley.  However, the blueswomen’s practices are seen by most scholars and audiences as grounded in self-representation, while the German kabarett performances of sexuality documented here seem to rely partially upon embodying the other, whether it be the “whores” and “degenerates” that form the shadow opposite of the respectable bourgeois woman in terms of class, or an exotic cultural other.

In terms of embodying an exotic cultural other, it seems that the phenomenon of naked dancing which pervaded Berlin in the post-war period was shot through with an Orientalist streak.  Introduced by Celly de Rheydt, “mistress of an army officer,” Senelick notes that “almost every cabaret and nightclub featured unclad dance, often with Salome as a pretext (1993: 7).  In a footnote, he explains that Salome dance was inspired by Maud Allan’s “The Vision of Salome,” which she performed in London in 1908 (1993: 6).  Allan was a white Canadian-born dancer who grew up in San Francisco and later lived and performed extensively in Europe on the variety show circuit.  In a move similar to American modern dancer Ruth St. Denis’ appropriation of Orientalist imagery in her 1906 Radha (see Desmond 1991), Allan’s “identification with Orientalist imagery” allowed her to “articulate new models for middle-class white femininity” (Wong 2010: 43-44).  According to Desmond’s article, St. Denis was able to capitalize on images of the Oriental dancing girl to invoke an imagined exotic blend of spirituality and sensuality that offered a liberating alternative to the Victorian mores that bounded her as a white American woman.  From the following bejeweled, scantily clad images, I suspect that Allan’s choreographic tactic was similar*:

 

The widespread imitation of Allan’s Salome Dance, including sadomasochistic versions such as "the whip dance called 'A Night of Love in the Harem'” (1993: 7), suggested that her embodiment of the Orient struck a chord in German kabarett performers and audiences.  Given the ongoing struggle with the exotifying gaze that Sandra contends with in Germany, it leads me to wonder to what extent this legacy lives on today.  And given European cabaret’s influence on Bollywood item numbers, it makes me wonder how Euro-American Orientalist images have been translated by Indian artists in the Bollywood film industry.

* Interestingly, Allan had a long-term relationship with her female secretary and lover, Verna Aldwich, which makes me wonder about the connections between her performances of Oriental sensuality and her own lived queer sexuality.

REFERENCES

Laurence Senelick.  1989.  Cabaret Performance, Volume II Europe 1890-1920   New York: PAJ Publications.

------.  1993.  Cabaret Performance, Volume II: Europe 1920-1940.  Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.
Desmond, Jane.  “Dancing Out the Difference: Cultural Imperialism and Ruth St. Denis’ Radha of 1906.” 

Wong, Yutian.  2010.  Choreographing Asian America.  Middletown: Wesleyan University Press.

IMAGES

http://queercult.com/2010/11/30/maud-allan/

http://womenshistorynetwork.org/blog/?p=208

http://thebestofhabibi.com/vol-19-no-2-sept-2002/oscar-wildes-salome/