bogie book

body movement tuesday :: dawn

DAWN
Edward Bower Hesser
Among dancers and early motion picture performing community there existed a very strong belief in the ideals of the physical culture movement, of physical perfectibility, bodily beauty, hygiene, and expressive sexuality. Some, Isadora Duncan, Ted Shawn, Annette Kellerman, Margaret Edwards, Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., were messianic exhibitionists intent on demonstration to any public that would look the splendor, the human physique.  Edwin Bower Hesser in his own distinctly suspect way latched on to certain of these convictions.  From 1923 until the mid 1930s he edited and supplied imagery for as many as seven art magazines designed for art students concerned with problems of the human form.  His brief stint of study at the Art Institute of Chicago did not entirely elevate his aesthetics from kitsch and artiness to art.  This was, of course, what Duncan and the Greek dance movement was doing at the same time. Dancing in minimal costume in the open air.  Few copies remain of the publications in which Edward printed.  He was not the only supplier of images to these publications.  Included was Alfred Cheney Johnston, John De Mirjian, George DeBarron, and Strand Studio.

the folies bergère paris

The Folies Bergère is a Parisian music hall which was at the height of its fame and popularity from the 1890s through the 1920s. As of May 2009, the institution is still in business. It opened on 2 May 1869 as the Folies Trévise, with fare including operettas, comic opera, popular songs, and gymnastics. The Folies Bergère on 13 September 1872, named after a nearby street, the rue Bergère (the feminine form of "shepherd").
The Folies Bergère catered to popular taste. Shows featured elaborate costumes; the women's were frequently revealing, practically leaving them naked, and shows often contained a good deal of nudity. Shows also played up the exotic of persons and objects from other cultures, obliging the Parisian fascination with the négritude of the 1920s.
In the early 1890s, the American dancer Loie Fuller starred at the Folies Bergère. Nearly thirty years later, in 1926, Joséphine Baker, an African-American expatriate singer, dancer, and entertainer, became an overnight sensation at the Folies Bergère with her suggestive "banana dance", in which she wore a skirt made of bananas and little else. French writer Colette and Charlie Chaplin were two of the many notable performers to grace the stage.
excerpt taken from the Folies Bergère

ida rubinstein

Ida Rubinstein as Salomé



Vaslav Nijinsky and Ida Rubinstein, Scheherazade 1910


Ida Lvovna Rubinstein (5 October 1885 – 20 September 1960) was a famous Russian ballerina, actress, patron and iconic Belle Époque beauty.
Born in St. Petersburg, Russia into a wealthy Jewish family, Rubinstein was orphaned at an early age. She had, by the standard of Russian ballet, little formal training. Under the private tutelage of Mikhail Fokine she debuted in 1909 with a single private performance of Oscar Wilde's Salomé, stripping completely nude in the course of the Dance of the Seven Veils.
Sergei Diaghilev took her with the Ballets Russes and she danced the title role of Cléopâtre in the Paris season of 1909. This performance was as a powerful spectacle, the costumes were designed by Leon Bakst and the finale inspired Kees van Dongen's Souvenir of the Russian Opera Season 1909.
excerpt take from Ida Rubinstein

much more written with Theatrex..

whirling beauties :: flapperdoodle

flapperdoodle

brassaï

Brassaï (1899-1984)
Among the numerous means of expression open to him, Brassaï chose photography as it allowed him to capture the atmosphere of the Parisian nights for which he became famous. Henry Miller called Brassaï a "living eye". Paris became a theatre set where the subject dominates the composition, in which he captured a dimension that lay between journalistic account and poetic vision. The graffiti engraved on the walls captured the attention of this photographer obsessed by the reality of man and matter. "The surrealism of my images was nothing more than reality rendered fantastic by the way I saw it".

1920s fashions in 21st century illustration

chic et simplicite

Chic et Simplicite
1919-1926
47, Rue de Sevre - Paris, France
Illustrator, Georges Barbier