Maud Allen (1873-1956)

According to Maud Allan in 1908: 

"The art of dancing, as understood by the great masses, is a series of regular rhythmical movements requiring a certain music; not so in my work. In that the movements of the plastic poser are inspired by the music.... What one usually only vaguely feels when listening to beautiful music I am trying, through movement and mimicry, to express clearly and deeply - the thought which seems to hover on the wings of the melody."  (Source: http://bytesdaily.blogspot.com/2013/03/maud-allan.html)

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.
 

Works

Spring Song (1903), Felix MendelssohnAdagio (1903), Ludwig von BeethovenGavotte (1903), Johann Sebastian BachMusette (1903), BachReverie (1903), Robert SchumannFuneral March (1903), Fréderic ChopinWaltz in A Minor (1903), ChopinMazurka in G Sharp Minor (1903), ChopinMazurka in F Sharp Minor (1903), ChopinAve Maria (1903), Franz SchubertValse Caprice(1903), Anton RubinsteinThe Vision of Salome (1906), Marcel RemyWaltz in A Flat (1908), Johannes BrahmsPeer Gynt Suite (1909), Edvard GriegPasspied (1909), Léo DelibesDryad (1911), Jean SibeliusThe Birds (1911), GriegPoetic Tone Poem (1911), GriegWaltz of the Flowers (1911), Piotr Ilich TchaikovskyArabian Dance (1911), TchaikovskyReed Pipe Dance (1911), TchaikovskyDance of the Sugar Plum Fairy (1911), TchaikovskyDanse sacrée et profane (1911), Claude DebussyAm Meer (1913), SchubertMoment Musical (1913), SchubertRomance (1913), RubinsteinNair the Slave (1916), Pietro BelpassiLa Marseillaise (1917, Rouget de LisleValse Triste (1917), SibeliusBlue Danube Waltz (1917), SchubertGrand Valse (1923), Alexander GlazounovEgyptian Ballet Suite (1923), LuiginiPrelude in C Sharp Minor (c. 1923), Sergei Rachmaninoff
Bacarolle from Tales of Hoffman (c. 1923), Jacques OffenbachFête Bohème (1923), Jules MassenetMystery of the Desert (1925), Reginald PooleOriental Fantasy (1925), Joseph AchronPathéthique (1926), TchaikovskyPrelude in C Minor (1936), ChopinNocturne in E (1936), ChopinScherzo from the Funeral Sonata (1936), ChopinSuite in G Minor (1936), George Frideric Handel

(Source: http://www.dcd.ca/pih/maudallan.html)