Exotic Dancing, Regency Style?

Anyone who has the remotest grasp of Regency Era etiquette and society would have likely found the “Slave Dance” scene at Lord Steyne’s house in Vanity Fair to be quite disturbing. I was one such baffled person. Vanity Fair is one of my favorite movies — it is a gorgeous and visually stunning work, and it never ceases to bring tears to my eyes. That is not to say I don’t have my reservations. One of them is the historical accuracy of the scene where Becky and Steyne’s own daughter-in-law, among others, belly dance for the Prince Regent. Now do not get me wrong — I love the scene because of the music and visuals. It brings an exotic touch to an otherwise straight-laced film (well, compared to some Austen adaptations, it’s quite risque). But, I must say it was far out of place. Here is the clip of the scene (it is in Spanish; I couldn’t find an English version, but they don’t say much anyway).

This episode occurs in Chapter LI, titled “In Which a Charade is Acted that May or May Not Puzzle the Reader”; perhaps this is Thackeray’s warning that what follows is supposed to be startling. Mira Nair, the director, was questioned about the scene during an interview; of Indian descent herself, she gave VF a very Eastern feel, inserting numerous references to India, an Eastern servant, Eastern garb, and this Eastern dance scene throughout the film. The Vauxhall scene was also saturated with Indian references (and when Amelia walked across the pond with her skirt pulled up around her calves, I was shocked — look what all this Regency research has done to me! ). When asked about this distinct Indian flair, Nair replies:

What was brilliant about the book, and why I made the film, really, is that it was about a time in early 19th Century England when colony was hugely intersecting the Empire. People in the middle classes of England were getting fat off the riches of India, specifically. All the spoils of the colonies were basically stuffing up the coffers at home, and so much was influenced at home as a result of this intersection. And Thackeray wrote a kind of a cinema verité portrait of what went on in that day. He writes at length about fashion that came from India, or the marble inlayed furniture that came also from India, or the furniture that came from China. He wrote at length about all this, about Joss Sedley’s brocaded vests that he took seven pages to describe.

Indeed, William Thackeray was born in Calcutta, India in July of 1811, during the British East India Company’s golden era, so he would have been very familiar with Indian culture. The Eastern flair is not at all out of place in this film (as it would be in, say, an Austen adaptation), since the East India Company was really beginning to import rare and fine goods from India and the Orient in abundance around this time (the British Raj would not begin until 1858), but the exotic dancing is a bit much. The scene Nair borrows as the foundation for the dancing episode is actually a game of charades that takes place at Gaunt House, Lord Steyne’s residence. Thackeray mentions that the game has recently been imported from France, and, like the waltz, it was considered somewhat adventurous:

The last act opens. It is a Grecian tent this time. A tall and stalwart man reposes on a couch there. Above him hang his helmet and shield. There is no need for them now. Ilium is down. Iphigenia is slain. Cassandra is a prisoner in his outer halls. The king of men (it is Colonel Crawley, who, indeed, has no notion about the sack of Ilium or the conquest of Cassandra), the anax andron is asleep in his chamber at Argos . . .

Aegisthus steals in pale and on tiptoe. What is that ghastly face looking out balefully after him from behind the arras? He raises his dagger to strike the sleeper, who turns in his bed, and opens his broad chest as if for the blow. He cannot strike the noble slumbering chieftain. Clytemnestra glides swiftly into the room like an apparition–her arms are bare and white–her tawny hair floats down her shoulders–her face is deadly pale–and her eyes are lighted up with a smile so ghastly that people quake as they look at her.

A tremor ran through the room. “Good God!” somebody said, “it’s Mrs. Rawdon Crawley.”

Scornfully she snatches the dagger out of Aegisthus’s hand and advances to the bed. You see it shining over her head in the glimmer of the lamp, and–and the lamp goes out, with a groan, and all is dark.

An act earlier involved Mrs. Winkworth as a slavewoman from the East, who is paraded before a sultan, but not Becky. Also, this is charades, not some obviously rehearsed performance as in the film. There is a scene where Becky dances later in this chapter, but she is “in powder and patches” dressed as a “the most ravissante little Marquise in the world,” and she performs alone.

Nair becomes defensive in the interview about the scene, which was choreographed by a Bollywood director. She somewhat denies taking any poetic lisence, though she most certainly did, and claims that she wanted people to get their money’s worth — which would they rather see, the charades or the dance? I admit, the dance did for me exactly what she wanted it to do: I could not take my eyes off the screen . . . but my jaw was hanging open the whole time (as was Sir Pitt’s), I assure you. When asked specifically about accuracy, she says:

Becky was dressed, in Thackeray’s words, in next to nothing as a slave girl . . . It’s about—the creation of the slave charades—was to shock. So the intent is there, to shock that world, and to show you that this was not exactly normal, and therefore it was scandalous. But, also realize that this was pre-Victorian. This was a time when they were given to flamboyant excesses, and great debauchery, especially for visiting royalty. So, you know, I think Thackeray would love it. We hope.

Yes, but Becky was not specifically in the slave charades, nor does Thackeray make any mention of skimpy clothing. The game of charades and the waltz — the waltz (that “indecent foreign dance” that was “so fatal a contagion”) — were considered scandalous! This would have been deemed satanic. Had the dancers been actual harem girls brought from the East, that might have been acceptable — it would have been the social equivalent of watching a freak show (which the people loved to do) or visiting a zoo. But to have respectable ladies — and those like Becky, who, though not wholly respectable were still high on the ladder — dancing and dressed in such a manner? People would have had coronaries. The Regency, by the way, was not full of great debauchery. Victoria’s ascension to the throne in 1837 was not some cleansing of British society. One has merely to read the rules of the calling card to understand the severity with which decorum was regarded in this time period. The whole movie is really a bunch of social indecencies thrown together (Amelia lounging on the ground with George! OMG!), which adds to the artistic/entertainment factor, but historical accuracy is rather lacking. Again, I love the film, but it has some quirks; not surprisingly, the book is much better.

“Belly Dancing” debuted at the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago (and it was there it was actually given the name); with the rampant colonization throughout the Middle East and Asia, Europeans acquired a taste for all things exotic. Travellers (like Jos Sedley) brought back tales and treasures, and occassionally, a dance troupe, from the East. These troupes performed all over Europe (and America) attracting large and curious crows from London to Paris to New York. As I said earlier, these performers were by no means considered respectable people of society. Participating in such dancing and theatrical art forms was anathema to the upper class, though they would pay handsomely for the entertainment. Rebecca Sharpe, as socially shrewd as she is, would not wish to remind her new set of acquantainces that she hails from less-than-respectable roots. During her initial stay at Queen’s Crawley, Becky announces that she is a Montmorency, a member of a respectable French family scattered by the Revolution; “Indeed it was from this famous family, as it appears, that Miss Sharp, by the mother’s side, was descended.” Of course she did not say that her mother had been on the stage; it would have shocked Mr. Crawley’s religious scruples” (Ch. X). Miss Crawley nearly dies when she learns that her beloved Rawdon married the daughter of an opera singer: “”Her mother was an opera girl, and she has been on the stage or worse herself,’ said Mrs. Bute. Miss Crawley gave a final scream, and fell back in a faint. They were forced to take her back to the room which she had just quitted. One fit of hysterics succeeded another” (Ch. 16). When she has Lord Steyne around her finger, perhaps she feels that her reputation is no longer of critical importance. Still, Lord Steyne would have not allowed (or rather forced) his own daughter-in-law to perform. In short, could this have possibly occured in Regency England? No. A hired troupe, yes; an assortment of upper class women, absolutely not.

For anyone interested, the song, titled “El Salam”, is by Hakim (a modern Egyptian singer).

 

~ by Lady Ashley on October 2, 2008.