Atelier Jacob Merkelbach :: Danseres en zangeres, gespecialiseerd in het Jiddische lied en dans; scenefoto als Jeshiva student | Dancer and singer specialized in Yiddish song and dance; scene photo as Yeshiva student, 1937. | src Stadsarchief AmsterdamAtelier Jacob Merkelbach :: Portrait of Chaja Rachul Goldstein (1908-1999), after 1933. | src Stadsarchief · Collectie Atelier J. Merkelbach
Chaja Goldstein was born in a Polish ghetto, in the town of Rypin in 1908. […] When she was ten years old, Chaja moved to Berlin with her Orthodox parents, brother Eli and baby sister Sally, fleeing the pogroms in Eastern Europe.
She made her debut in Berlin in 1931 as Hanna Goldstein with dances such as Der reiche und der arme Jude and the Hebräische Lied. The Berliner Tageblatt praised her performances. Shortly afterwards she also performed in the Kaftan, a small Jewish theater on Kurfürstendamm, where she sang Yiddish songs. Over the next few years Goldstein grew into a famous dancer and singer, connecting the Yiddish folk culture of her childhood with modern Western culture. She soon led a lavish life in Berlin’s artistic avant-garde circles. She lived with the Hungarian painter György Kepes (1906-2001) and had a love affair with the Dutch artist Wijnand Grays (1906-1995).
In 1933, Chaja Goldstein fled to the Netherlands as a result of the rise of the Nazi party. In April 1933 she appeared for the first time under the name ‘Chaja Goldstein’ on the stage of the Amsterdam Conservatory and the Rotterdam Studio 32, with her Yiddish dances and songs. [quoted from Huygens Instituut]
Samuel Joshua Beckett (1870–1940) ~ Loïe Fuller (1862 – 1928) dancing, ca. 1900. Gelatin silver print | src the Met
The American dancer Loie Fuller (1862-1928) conquered Paris on her opening night at the Folies-Bergère on November 5, 1892. Manipulating with bamboo sticks an immense skirt made of over a hundred yards of translucent, iridescent silk, the dancer evoked organic forms –butterflies, flowers, and flames–in perpetual metamorphosis through a play of colored lights. Loie Fuller’s innovative lighting effects, some of which she patented, transformed her dances into enthralling syntheses of movement, color, and music, in which the dancer herself all but vanished. Artists and writers of the 1890s praised her art as an aesthetic breakthrough, and the Symbolist poet Stéphane Mallarmé, who saw her perform in 1893, wrote in his essay on her that her dance was “the theatrical form of poetry par excellence.” Immensely popular, she had her own theater at the 1900 Exposition Universelle in Paris, promoted other women dancers including Isadora Duncan, directed experimental movies, and stopped performing only in 1925. Loie Fuller’s whirling, undulating silhouette, which embodied the fluid lines of Art Nouveau, inspired many images, from the portraits of Toulouse-Lautrec and the posters of Jules Chéret and Alphonse Mucha to the sculptures of Pierre Roche and Théodore Rivière, as well as the photographs of Harry C. Ellis and Eugène Druet.
The pictures shown here depict movements from such dances as “Dance of the Lily” and “Dance of Flame.” These images do not pretend to evoke the otherworldly effect of the performance, which took place on a darkened stage in front of a complex set of mirrors and whose magic was entirely dependent on lighting. Here, the strange shapes, reminiscent of chalices and butterflies, take form, incongruously, in the middle of an urban park, through the efforts of a short, stout figure. Arrested in crude natural light, they still retain, however, their spellbinding energy. Part of a group of thirteen photographs complemented by six others in the Musée d’Orsay, Paris, these images belonged to the sculptor Théodore Rivière (1857-1912), and were previously thought to have been made by him. They have now been reattributed to Samuel Joshua Beckett, a photographer working in London. / quoted from the Met
Samuel Joshua Beckett (1870–1940) ~ Loïe Fuller (1862 – 1928) dancing, ca. 1900. Gelatin silver print | src the Met
Maurice Goldberg :: Theater actress and dancer Dorothy Lee, 1920. This photograph was published in the 19 December 1920 edition of the New York Tribune to promote her appearance as part of the ensemble of F. Ray Comstock and Morris Gest’s musical “Mecca” | src GMGallery on eBay
Thérèse Le Prat :: Jeanne Moreau as Le Sphinx in a 1954 adaptation of the play ‘La Machine infernale’ by Jean Cocteau, 09/1954. Gelatin silver print on Baryta paper. | src Ministère de la Culture
The dancer Nyota Inyoka, 1920s. Probably from George White’s Scandals, a long-running string of Broadway revues produced by George White that ran from 1919 to 1939, modeled after the Ziegfeld Follies. | src grapefruitMoon on eBay
Edward Steichen ~ American dancer Harriet Hoctor on pointe with arms stretched, wearing all black [unpublished (?)] | src Conde Nast via getty images
Hoctor (Sept. 25, 1905 – June 9, 1977) started touring with vaudeville companies at age 16 on the same bill as the Duncan Sisters. She was asked to join their act and became a key player in their Topsy and Eva show on Broadway. She was discovered by Florenz Ziegfeld, who cast her in his production of The Three Musketeers (1928) and several other shows followed throughout the next decade.
By the time these photos were taken she was back in the States after a season at the London Hippodrome (in a production called Bow Bells). She appeared in the Vanities revue of Earl Carroll in 1932, and later in the decade in the Ziegfeld Follies, notably in a ballet arranged by Hoctor with the aid of George Balanchine titled Night Flight.
Edward Steichen ~ American dancer Harriet Hoctor standing on toe point, with arms raised above head and wearing a black costume [unpublished (?)]. | src Conde Nast via getty imagesEdward Steichen ~ American dancer Harriet Hoctor on point in an arabesque, wearing a black costume and black cap. Vanity Fair, 1932 | src Conde Nast via getty imagesEdward Steichen ~ Harriet Hoctor. Unpublished photograph in a black costume, en pointe, with her arms in front her, 1934 (or 1932?). Vanity Fair | src Condé-Nast store ~ Fine Art
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