Vera Fokina in Scheherazade (1914)

Vera Fokina (1886-1958) was a Russian-American ballerina. In 1906 she married the groundbreaking Russian choreographer and dancer Michel Fokine.

The ballet Scheherazade premiered on June 4th 1910, at the Opéra Garnier in Paris by the Ballets Russes. The choreography for the ballet was by Michel Fokine and the libretto was from Fokine and Léon Bakst.

The Ballet Russes’ Scheherazade is known for its traditionally dazzling costumes, opulent scenery, and erotic choreography and narrative which was rarely seen in ballets of the time.

Vera Fokina in Scheherazade at Kungliga Operan, 1914 via

Vera Fokina in Scheherazade at Kungliga Operan, 1914 via

Vera Fokina in Scheherazade at Kungliga Operan, 1914 via

Vera Fokina in Scheherazade at Kungliga Operan, 1914 via

Vera Fokina in Scheherazade at Kungliga Operan, 1914 via

Parisian Postcards of Mata Hari by Lucien Waléry (1906)

Lucien Waléry lived and worked in Paris in the period 1900-1930. He photographed an extraordinary number of beautiful women from most of the particular risque dance revues, a.o. Mata Hari and Josephine Baker.

 

Postcard of Mata Hari in Paris by Lucien Waléry, 1906 via

Postcard of Mata Hari in Paris by Lucien Waléry, 1906 via

Postcard of Mata Hari in Paris by Lucien Waléry, 1906 via

Denishawn Dance Company (1920)

Denishawn dance company founder Ruth St. Denis and husband Ted Shawn with a smattering of vestal virgins, Louise Brooks in the middle, 1920 via

Two Pink Tinted Postcards From The Early 1900s

Belle Epoque Lady in Art Nouveau Style Belly Dancer Costume with Pearls and Pink Veil, early 1900s via

Studio Portrait by Henri Manuel of Paris, 1900s via

Vintage Photos of Berlin Cabaret Artists (1920s-1930s)

Marlene Dietrich (1901-1992). Her earliest professional stage appearances were as a chorus girl on tour with Guido Thielscher’s Girl-Kabarett vaudeville-style entertainments, and in Rudolf Nelson revues in Berlin. Her performance as Lola-Lola in The Blue Angel (1930) brought her international fame and resulted in a contract with Paramount Pictures. Photo of Dietrich by Ruth Harriet Louise, c 1930 via

Trude Hesterberg (1892 – 1967) was a German stage and film actress, cabaret artist, chanson singer, soubrette and operetta singer, as well as founder and director of a cabaret stage. It is thought that she was an early consideration for the lead role in The Blue Angel, before it was given to Marlene Dietrich via

Margo lion (1899 – 1989) first came to Berlin in 1921 and made her debut at Trude Hesterbergs cabaret ‘Wild Bühne’ (The Wild Stage) in 1923 . She is best known for her role as Pirate Jenny in director G.W. Pabst’s 1931 French language adaptation of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill’s Threepenny Opera (Die Dreigroschenoper) via

Anita Berber (1899 – 1928) was a German dancer, actress, and writer. Her hair was cut fashionably into a short bob and was frequently bright red, as in 1925 when the German painter Otto Dix painted a portrait of her, titled “The Dancer Anita Berber” via

Valeska Gert (1892 – 1978) could be considered one of Germany’s most ambiguous and overlooked artists. She was a dancer, actress, film and cabaret star. She was a pioneering performance artist who is said to have laid the foundations and paved the way for the punk movement via

Kate Kühl (1899-1970) nicknamed ‘The Red Nightingale’ went on to perform in all the major cabaret venues of the time including the Wilde Bühne, Kadeko and the Katacombe via

Blandine Ebinger (1899 – 1993) was a German actress and chansonniere. Ebinger became acquainted with Friedrich Hollaender in 1919, and with him she became heavily invested as a performer, writer, and composer in the Berlin cabaret scene in the 1920s, beginning in the cabaret Schall und Rauch and the Café Größenwahn. Photo of Blandine Ebinger performing Lieder eines armen Mädchens, 1925 via

Incredible Vintage Photos of Flamenco Dancers by Man Ray

 Flamenco Dancer Vicente Escudero by Man Ray, 1928 via

 Flamenco Dancer by Man Ray, 1934 via

Flamenco Dancers by Man Ray, 1957 via

Beautiful Vintage Photos of Rosa Rolanda by Man Ray (1928)

Californian born Rosa Rolanda (1895-1970, aka Rosemonde Cowan, Rose Rolando, Mrs or Miguel Covarrubias) was a multidisciplinary artist, dancer and choreographer.

In 1916, Rosa Rolanda began her artistic career in New York as a celebrated dancer in Broadway revues. She became involved with the Mexican artist Miguel Covarrubias in 1924, and in the following year the couple traveled to Mexico, where Rolanda began to take photographs.

During the late 1920s or early 1930s, Rolanda experimented with photograms, creating significant series of surrealist self-portraits that may have been influenced by Man Ray, who photographed Rolanda in Paris in 1923.

She probably began painting around 1926. The majority of Rolanda’s canvases depict colorful, folkloric scenes of children and festivals, portraits of friends such as the movie actresses Dolores del Río and María Félix, and self-portraits.

Rolanda and Covarrubias married in 1930, and by 1935 they had permanently settled into his family home in Tizapan El Alto, close to Mexico City.

Rosa Rolanda by Man Ray, 1928 via

Rosa Rolanda in Paris c. 1923, photograph by Man Ray via

Rosa Rolanda by Man Ray 1923 via

Rosa Rolanda in Paris circa 1923 by Man Ray via

Ann Pennington teaching Felix the Cat how to dance the “Black Bottom” (1927)

The “Black Bottom” refers to a dance which became popular in the 1920s, originating among African Americans in the rural South. It was adopted by mainstream American culture  and became a national craze in the 1920s.

The dance was most famously performed by Ziegfeld Follies star Ann Pennington (1893 – 1971) , who danced the Black Bottom in a Broadway revue put on by Ziegfeld’s rival George White in 1926. The dance was first popularized in New York by the African American show Dinaah that had been staged in Harlem in 1924, after Pennington performed the Black Bottom on Broadway, the dance became a national phenomenon, overtaking The Charleston in popularity.

Ann Pennington teaches Felix the Cat the Black Bottom, 1927 via

Ann Pennington teaches Felix the Cat the Black Bottom, 1927 via

Ann Pennington teaches Felix the Cat the Black Bottom, 1927 via

Ann Pennington teaches Felix the Cat the Black Bottom, 1927 via

Ann Pennington teaches Felix the Cat the Black Bottom, 1927 via

Ann Pennington teaches Felix the Cat the Black Bottom, 1927 via

Alluring Vintage Celebrity Photos by Jean De Strelecki

A painter, sculptor, poet and camera artist, Jean de Strelecki became the chief photographer of celebrities for Reutlinger Studio, Paris, in the 1910s. During this period he studied painting with Leon Bakst, the revolutionary scenic designer for the Ballet Russe.

De Strelecki took hundreds of photographs of the Ballet Russe during their historic forays to France. Among these dance images was Anna Pavlova’s favorite image of herself, as the swan. Bakst introduced de Strelecki to Serge Diaghilev, impresario of the Ballet Russe, who convinced him to set himself up as an independent artist. With Baron Adolph de Meyer, de Strelecki supplied photographic publicity portraits for dancers for several productions, most famously for Sheherazade.

In 1915 de Strelecki crossed the Atlantic to avoid the disruptions of war, residing in Newport, Rhode Island.

Dancer Roshanara for production of Sinbad at the Winter Garden Theatre, by Jean de Streleck, 1918 via

Dancer Roshanara by Jean de Streleck, 1910s-1920s via

Dancer Ruth St. Denis by Jean de Strelecki via

Ruth St Denis in Greek Veil Plastique by Jean de Strelecki, 1922 (via nypl) via

Famous Flappers of the Roaring Twenties

Flappers were a “new breed” of young Western women in the 1920s who wore short skirts, bobbed their hair, listened to jazz, and flaunted their disdain for what was then considered acceptable behavior. Flappers were seen as brash for wearing excessive makeup, drinking, treating sex in a casual manner, smoking, driving automobiles, and otherwise flouting social and sexual norms.

Flappers had their origins in the liberal period of the Roaring Twenties, the social, political turbulence and increased transatlantic cultural exchange that followed the end of World War I, as well as the export of American jazz culture to Europe.

Zelda Fitzgerald was an American socialite and novelist, and the wife of American author F. Scott Fitzgerald, who dubbed her “the first American Flapper”. She and Scott became the emblem of the Jazz Age, for which they are still celebrated via

Clara Bow epitomized the Roaring Twenties’ flapper. At only 25, she retired exhausted by repeated scandals about her presumed sexual life. Photo: Bow in a shiny strapless dress by Eugene Robert Richee, 1926 via

 Coleen Moore was Bow´s “chief rival”. After Bow took the stage Moore gradually lost her momentum. In spring 1924 she made a good, but unsuccessful effort to top Bow in The Perfect Flapper, and soon after she dismissed the whole flapper vogue. Photo: Coleen Moore in “Why Be Good?”, 1929 via

Louise Brooks 1920. She was an American dancer and actress noted as an iconic symbol of the flapper, and for popularizing the bobbed haircut via

Gilda Gray, 1924. She was an American actress and dancer who popularized a dance called the “shimmy” which became fashionable in 1920s films and theater productions via

Tallulah Brockman, 1922. Bankhead was an American actress of the stage and screen, and a reputed libertine britannica.com

Anita Loos was an American screenwriter, playwright and author, best known for her blockbuster comic novel, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes first published in 1925. It was one of several famous novels published that year that chronicled the so-called Jazz Age – including Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. Photo: Loos, on page 12 of the April 1922 Photoplay via