ABSTRACT
This chapter presents some of the ways that women dancers engaged with the genre of autobiography and coulisses literature in order to represent the production and consumption of their dances. It shows how these narratives engage with and perhaps challenge the prevailing cultural narratives about the danseuse, and as such develop a Modernist response to and revision of nineteenth-century representations. The chapter focuses on two novels which, although now almost unknown, were popular in their time: Armen Ohanian's autobiography La Danseuse de Shamakha (1918; the translation by Rose Wilder Lane, The Dancer of Shamahka [sic], was published in 1923) and Colette Andris's Une Danseuse tine (1933). La Danseuse de Shamakha is the first of some 15 books published by Armen Ohanian (1887-1976) between 1918 and 1965. Finally, in the chapter Miss Nocturne addresses the issue of nude dancing and desire.
