Monday, December 17, 2007

Valentine de St.-Point

Valentine de St.-Point, Guénon's friend and associate in Cairo, was more important as an artist than I had thought--mostly for her 1917 performance of Metachorie at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York, and as the only female futurist.

For the 2009 PERFORMA in New York, marking the Centenary of Furturism, Adrien Sina and RoseLee Goldberg are proposing a multi-media symposium, "Valentine de St.-Point: Tragédies Charnelles. Performance, Dance, War, Politics and Eroticism."
Articles that have newly come to my attention include:
  • Günter Berghaus, "Dance and the Futurist Woman: The Work of Valentine de Saint-Point (1875-1953)," Dance Research: The Journal of the Society for Dance Research 11, no. 2 (Autumn, 1993), pp. 27-42.
  • Leslie Satin, "Valentine de Saint-Point," Dance Research Journal 22, no. 1 (Spring, 1990), pp. 1-12.
For the start of an investigation of the relationshop between St.-Point's art and her spiritual life, see:
  • Nancy Gaye Moore, "The Hermetic Dances of Valentine De St.-Point (1875–1953)," Proceedings of the Society of Dance History Scholars Twenty-second Annual Conference, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico10–13 June 1999.
  • Nancy Gaye Moore, "The Convergence of Orientalism and Parisian Occultism in the Dances of Valentine de St.-Point (1875-1953)" Supplement to the Proceedings of the Congress on Research in Dance held at NYU, October 26-28, 2001.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

she became a Moslem didn't she?
i wonder why a femenist noble woman like her would chose Islam?

Anonymous said...

Well, first of all if you had read her "Manifesto of Futurist Woman", then you could have been able to see that she was not a feminist... maybe you could (she was completely the oppoesite! See this quote of her: "But no feminism. Feminism is a political error. Feminism is a cerebral error of the woman, an error which her istinct will recognise"!); secondly, if you had read her "Manifesto of Futurist Woman", then you could have been able why "a feminist noble woman like her" converted to Islam... maybe you could!

Mohsin R. said...

"why she, a French party girl steeped in a anti-religious environment, accepted Islam?"

I think that was the intent was of the Question asked above.

A good explanation is this lecture by TJ.Winters at Oxford.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnxUBlfz14k