Performing Femininity

From Oriental dancers to ballerinas and opera singers, the figure of the female performer is ubiquitous in the cinema of pre-Revolutionary Russia. From Romashkov's Stenka Razin (1908), to Viskovsky's The Last Tango (1918), the female performer remains central. In this groundbreaking new study, Morley argues that early Russian film-makers used the character of the female performer to explore key contemporary concerns from changing conceptions of femininity and the emergence of the so-called New Woman, to broader questions concerning gender identity. Morley also reveals that the film-makers used this archetype of femininity to experiment and develop a unique cinematic language.