Centre for Dance Research, University of Roehampton

Research Seminar

‘Seven Veils’ at the Windmill: Anatomy of a Dance
Dr Larraine Nicholas, Honorary Research Fellow, University of Roehampton
20 January 2016, 6pm-7.30pm, DU.102 Duchesne, Digby Stuart Campus
Free, all welcome, no need to book

In the Coronation Year of 1937 a moral panic set in around the supposed importation of striptease from America, now increasingly being seen in clubs, and music halls. The management of the Windmill Theatre, famous for its static female nudes, had always positioned its productions as ‘middle-brow’, more decorous and artistic than vaudeville or music hall. In the midst of the striptease debacle, a new attraction, a ‘Dance of the Seven Veils’, was introduced into a Windmill show. In this paper I will attempt a description of the dance from pictorial and paper records. To what extent did it draw on the historical genre of performances with this name from earlier in the century?  Was it more like a striptease disguised under another name? Discussions about the dance also reveal the workings of theatre censorship under the Lord Chamberlain’s Office and its interactions with theatres and morality campaigners.
Larraine Nicholas was a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Dance at the University of Roehampton, 2000–2014. She is currently Honorary Research Fellow there.  Her research centres on twentieth century dance in Britain across genres of ballet, modern dance and musical theatre.  She is author of the monographs Dancing in Utopia: Dartington Hall and its Dancers (2007) and Walking and Dancing: Three Years of Dance in London, 1951 – 53 (2013).  She currently investigates the professional lives of dancers at the Windmill Theatre, London, 1932 – 64, including an oral history project.

More: