Dance of the Seven Veils

For other uses, see Seven veils (disambiguation).

File:MaudeAllanSalomeHead.jpg

Salome (as portrayed by Maude Allan) asking for the head of John the Baptist after her Dance of the Seven Veils.

Dance of Salome. Armand Point, 1898.

The Dance of the Seven Veils is a term used to refer to the dance performed by Salome) before Herod Antipas. It is an elaboration on the biblical tale of the execution of John the Baptist, which refers to Salome dancing before the king, but does not give the dance a name. The name Dance of the Seven Veils originates with Oscar Wilde's play Salome in the stage direction “[Salome dances the dance of the seven veils.]”.

Biblical account

According to ten verses of Matthew 14, John was imprisoned for criticizing King Herod Antipas's marriage to Herodias, the former wife of Antipas's "brother" Herod II. Herod offered his niece a reward of her choice for performing a dance on his birthday. Herodias persuaded her daughter to ask for John the Baptist's head on a platter. Against his better judgment, Antipas reluctantly acceded to her request.

Account by Flavius Josephus

The historian Josephus lists the stepdaughter's name as Salome, but neither mentions a dance nor makes any connection between Salome and John the Baptist.

Possible reference to pagan/pre-Christian myth

1920s American vision of Seven Gates

See also: Striptease § World origins

The Dance of the Seven Veils is also conjectured to have originated with the myth of the fertility goddess Inanna of Sumer or the related Ishtar (Astarte) of Assyrian and Babylonian religion, though these may only have sparked the elaborating imagination of playwright Oscar Wilde in his play Salomé, see below. In this myth, Inanna or Ishtar decides to visit her sister, Ereshkigal, in the underworld. When Inanna or Ishtar approaches the gates of the underworld, the gatekeeper lets Inanna or Ishtar pass through the seven gates, opening one gate at a time. At each gate, Inanna or Ishtar has to shed a symbol of sovereignty which she carries, mainly jewelry items, and one or two articles of clothing such as her royal robe, but never a veil in particular. When she finally passes the seventh gate, she is naked. She is then imprisoned by Ereshkigal. When she is later rescued and passes back through the seven gates, Inanna or Ishtar receives one of her shed items back at each gate, and is fully re-ennobled by her symbols and regnal clothes as she exits the last gate.

Cultural references

Oscar Wilde's play Salomé (see section above), and Richard Strauss's operatic adaptation both feature the Dance of the Seven Veils. The dance remains unnamed except in the acting notes, but Salome's sexual fascination with John seems to motivate the request—though Herod is portrayed as pleased. The most famous music for the dance comes from near the climax of the opera. The visual content of that scene (about seven minutes long with standard tempi) has varied greatly depending on the aesthetic notions of the stage director, choreographer, and soprano, and on the choreographic skills and body shape of that singer. In the 1953 film Salome, Rita Hayworth performs the dance as a strip dance.

Brigid Bazlen as Salomé in the biblical epic King of Kings (1961).

In the 1961 film King of Kings, Salomé, portrayed by Brigid Bazlen, performs a similar dance; her voluptuous seduction of a drunken lascivious Herod Antipas remains highly praised and is now widely regarded as Bazlen's best performance.

In The Night Porter (Il Portiere di notte), a controversial 1974 art house film by Italian director Liliana Cavani, Charlotte Rampling plays concentration camp survivor Lucia Atherton. In an iconic scene, Lucia sings a Marlene Dietrich song and dances for the camp guards while wearing pieces of an SS uniform, and her Nazi abuser Max rewards her with the head of a male inmate who had been bullying the other inmates.

The climax to the Tom Robbins 1990 novel Skinny Legs and All features the mysterious belly-dancer Salome performing an hours-long version of the Dance of the Seven Veils. As each of her veils drops, the main character comes to an epiphany about life.