Salomania

Germany 2009. Dir Pauline Boudry & Renate Lorenz.


With Yvonne Rainer, Wu Ingrid Tsang.

Salomania reconstructs the ‘dance of the seven veils’ from Alla Nazimova’s 1923 silent film Salomé and features sections from ‘Valda’s Solo’ which the choreographer and filmmaker Yvonne Rainer created after having seen Nazimova’s film. Salomania takes up Salomé as a transgender figure and the motif of a queer appropriation of the exotic. At the beginning of the 20th century, ‘Salomania’ gripped stage and screen performers alike as they took, in their droves, to dancing the dance of the seven veils. The figure of Salomé stood for sexual freedom and became an icon of ‘sodomite’ subjectivity. The film features Rainer performing alongside artist Wu Ingrid Tsang.