The Adventure Begins
Adelaide Behr, a budding American showgirl who joins the fight for women’s rights on the eve of World War I, is asked to choose between her values, her career,
and the music of her heart.
and the music of her heart.
Adelaide and her accompanist (and accomplished suffragette) Ruth, 1913
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Prevailing attitudes of the Progressive Era held that women who fought for the vote were leaving their families "without mothers".
This image looks like a woman exercising her power, doesn't it? Not the case at the turn of the century. At that time this was a most degrading image, portraying the burlesque queen as treacherous gold-digger, manipulating her sugar-daddies like marionettes on her strings...
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The Short Explanation:
what is this?
"Sing Dance Vote" is a musical story about friendship, sacrifice, and what it takes to reconcile two disparate worlds.
Following Adelaide Behr as she journeys from Upton Sinclair's Chicago to the Ziegfeld Follies, the story is based loosely upon on the lives of "America's Sweetheart of Song" Ruth Etting, Willa Cather’s "Song of the Lark" heroine Thea Kronborg...
...and the thousands of Suffragettes and Showgirls who personified the ever-adapting, indomitable female spirit of the America's Progressive Era.
Following Adelaide Behr as she journeys from Upton Sinclair's Chicago to the Ziegfeld Follies, the story is based loosely upon on the lives of "America's Sweetheart of Song" Ruth Etting, Willa Cather’s "Song of the Lark" heroine Thea Kronborg...
...and the thousands of Suffragettes and Showgirls who personified the ever-adapting, indomitable female spirit of the America's Progressive Era.
Ruth Etting, "America's Sweetheart of Song" (1937)
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"Le chant de l'alouette" by Jules Breton (1827-1906)
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Meet THE Characters
ADELAIDE BEHR
Singer, Daughter, Future Showgirl, Reluctant Suffragette |
RUTH SOFER
Pianist, Recent Immigrant,
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MOE "THE GIMP"
Chicago Nightclub Manager,
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Lillian RusselL
Famous actress of stage and screen; benefactress of the chorus equity association |
Eddie Cantor
"illustrated song" performer, comedian, dancer, singer, and actoR; AMERICA'S "APOSTLE OF PEP" |
Alice Paul
American socialist, suffragist,
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Let's Be Friends!We're big nerds over here, and there's nothing we like more than talking with other nerds!
Whether your passion is theatre, writing, American history, women's rights or music, we've got some good conversation waiting over here for you. |
This is a photo of the Brittania Panopticon, the world's oldest surviving music hall. We aim to perform in this historic venue... someday...
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Synopsis:
A Voice Unleashed
For Adelaide, the worldly fifteen-year-old daughter of a country doctor in fin de seicle Nebraska, success looks like being well-paid for her singing so that she never has to depend on a man for money. Soon enough, she comes to realize that pulling off this feat with any alacrity will involve becoming “well-loved” by those same men... but as a female artist living in the time of a nation-wide double standard, it seems inevitable to Adelaide that she must someday work in adult entertainment in order to make her fortune (morally questionable though that path may be).
Adelaide's forebears. Even the hardship of settling the frontier could not deter them from their love of music.
The Chatauqua tent in Grandpa George's empty lot next to the train tracks.
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One of the cabinet cards circulating amongst the young men of Davis City. This is the image that is forever burned into Adelaide's mind as the depiction of a woman who commands the most attention...
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Upon her arrival in Chicago in March of 1913 to study classical singing, Adelaide is converted to the school of feminist thought by her alluring accompanist Ruth, and finds that she must choose between her newfound beliefs in the rights of women, her grandfathers' desire that she become an opera star, and her stalwart conviction that vaudeville is still the quickest vehicle to convey her to money, power and ultimately, artistic freedom. Varied and sundry adventures ensue, and Adelaide's experiences include a short-lived burlesque career, a failed marriage, deep involvement with the Actors Equity Strike of August 1919, and finally, a return to singing.
Ruth and her friends rehearsing for the Chicago Suffragette Parade.
A suffragette in marching costume, ready to join the Chicago Women's March of 1916
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Dancer June Conrad in 1916. She is Adelaide's only friend from their job at the Gem Theatre.
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Along the way she encounters such American luminaries as performer Eddie "Banjo Eyes" Cantor, socialist, suffragist, feminist and women's rights activist Alice Paul, and legendary Follies Dance Director Ned Wayburn.
In the early 20s women could be arrested for wearing bathing suits that were too revealing.This particular photo is of “Smokey” Buchanan from the West Palm Beach police force, measuring the bathing suit of Betty Fringle on Palm Beach, to ensure that it conforms with regulations introduced by the beach censors. 1925.
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Ned Wayburn rehearses the Follies on the theatre rooftop due to soaring summer temperatures.
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After spending time confronting her demons, Adelaide lands a recording contract with Columbia Records. In November of 1928 Adelaide returns home to David City, Nebraska to share her records with her invalid grandfather George, who finally gives her his blessing to continue recording popular music. It is Election Day, and as she and George finish listening to the recording, Adelaide opens the door and steps out to vote.
Grandpa George set to raising Adelaide when her mother "flew the coop".
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Adelaide's home stream back on the farm, Davis City, Nebraska
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Creator's Statement
Several months ago, while moving into my forever home and unpacking countless boxes, I discovered a treasure trove: several linear feet of fin-de-siecle and early 20th c. sheet music. The music belonged to my great-grandmother, who emigrated from Belgium in 1909 to become the governess to Ellin MacKaye, Irving Berlin's second wife.
Here we have a portrait of my great-granny Rudolpha C. Paul (nee Rigelsen), who emigrated from Belgium on 20 June 1907 aboard the Kronprinz Wilhelm, shown below. She was just 21.
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My interest was piqued. Here was the music that correlated with the Progressive Era, that rough-and-tumble time period when "America came of age". Here, right in front of me, was the actual sheet music - much of it now lost to the world - that would have shaped the way the (mostly female) artists who played it thought about themselves and their lives. With a swoop of clarity and historical curiosity I realized that the music I was holding painted the soundtrack not only to women’s home lives, but also to the ten years leading up to the passage of the 19th Amendment which - on August 26th, 1920 - granted women nationwide the right to vote.
My interest was piqued. Here was the music that correlated with the Progressive Era, that rough-and-tumble time period when "America came of age". Here, right in front of me, was the actual sheet music - much of it now lost to the world - that would have shaped the way the (mostly female) artists who played it thought about themselves and their lives. With a swoop of clarity and historical curiosity I realized that the music I was holding painted the soundtrack not only to women’s home lives, but also to the ten years leading up to the passage of the 19th Amendment which - on August 26th, 1920 - granted women nationwide the right to vote.
Digging deeper, I discovered that this time period was fraught with change not only for American politics, but for the very role women filled in society. Motor cars had just been invented, and women flocked to the cities by the hundreds of thousands to fill jobs as typists and manicurists. I learned that women comprised 86% of the typing force just a few years after a time when only respectable profession for a small-town girl would have been that of homemaker or teacher.
But what of the "New Woman" who wanted to become neither a typist nor a manicurist, neither a homemaker nor a teacher?
What of the woman who was a performer?
What of the woman who wanted to do something that would afford her MORE VOICE in the world?
But what of the "New Woman" who wanted to become neither a typist nor a manicurist, neither a homemaker nor a teacher?
What of the woman who was a performer?
What of the woman who wanted to do something that would afford her MORE VOICE in the world?
As an artist I have been greatly affected by the writings of Willa Cather; anecdotes about American showgirls, and by my own experiences as a young singer trying to “make it” in NYC. When I merged these influences with the historically relevant stories of Suffragettes fighting for women’s rights, the prevailing moral attitude of the day, and the surrounding historical context of a society inexorably marching toward the utter proliferation of consumable media, I started paying attention to how singers/performers and women active in politics have interacted with one another both then and now.
When I couched my findings within the narrative of someone who has, quite literally, been learning how to manipulate their voice since childhood, #SINGDANCEVOTE was born.
As an artist I have been greatly affected by the writings of Willa Cather; anecdotes about American showgirls, and by my own experiences as a young singer trying to “make it” in NYC. When I merged these influences with the historically relevant stories of Suffragettes fighting for women’s rights, the prevailing moral attitude of the day, and the surrounding historical context of a society inexorably marching toward the utter proliferation of consumable media, I started paying attention to how singers/performers and women active in politics have interacted with one another both then and now.
When I couched my findings within the narrative of someone who has, quite literally, been learning how to manipulate their voice since childhood, #SINGDANCEVOTE was born.
The Creator
Leighanne Saltsman is an artist, musician, history buff and 12th-generation Hudson Valley native. She holds a B.A. and a B.Mus from Oberlin. She is in a relationship with her sweetie, cultural history, iPhone camera and the Hudson river.
Leighanne Saltsman is an artist, musician, history buff and 12th-generation Hudson Valley native. She holds a B.A. and a B.Mus from Oberlin. She is in a relationship with her sweetie, cultural history, iPhone camera and the Hudson river.
Some of the Music
(aka What We're Listening To!)
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