thumbnail|right|Dance of Salome. [[Armand Point, 1898]]
The Dance of the Seven Veils is the dance performed by Salome before King Herod Antipas in modern stage, literature, and visual arts. It is an elaboration on the New Testament story of the Feast of Herod and the execution of John the Baptist, which refers to Salome dancing before the king, but does not give the dance a name.
The name "Dance of the Seven Veils" was chiefly popularized in modern culture with the 1894 English translation of Oscar Wilde's 1893 French play Salome in the stage direction "Salome dances the dance of the seven veils". The dance was also incorporated into Richard Strauss's 1905 opera Salome.
Biblical account
According to ten verses of Matthew 14, John was imprisoned for criticizing King Herod Antipas's marriage to Herodias, the former wife of Antipas's half-brother Herod II. Herod offered his unnamed niece a reward of her choice for performing a dance for his guests on his birthday. Herodias persuaded her daughter to ask for John the Baptist's head on a platter. Against his better judgment, Herod reluctantly acceded to her request.
A similar account is recorded in Mark 6.
Josephus
The Romano-Jewish historian Josephus lists Antipas's stepdaughter's name as Salome, but makes no mention of a dance nor makes any connection between Salome and John the Baptist.
Oscar Wilde
thumb|The Stomach Dance by [[Aubrey Beardsley, an interpretation of the Dance of the Seven Veils]]
The idea that Salome's dance involves "seven veils" originates with Wilde's 1891 play Salomé. Wilde was influenced by earlier French writers who had transformed the image of Salome into an incarnation of female lust. Rachel Shteir writes that,
Wilde was especially influenced by Gustave Flaubert's story "Herodias" in which Salome dances on her hands to please Antipas. The type of dance was common among "gypsy" acrobats in the 19th century. Oscar Wilde assigned this symbolic descent to the underworld of the unconscious, a ceremony that equates stripping naked to being in a state of truth, the ultimate unveiling, to Salome." Wilde may have learned of the descent of the goddess by his acquaintance with Oxford professor Archibald Sayce, who lectured and published an English translation of this text.
Wilde's concept of "seven veils" is believed to be derived from the popularity of what were known as veil dances at the time. These were westernised versions of imagined Middle Eastern styles of dance. The dancer Loïe Fuller was especially associated with such dances. In 1886, Fuller appeared at New York's Standard Theatre in a show called The Arabian Nights. According to Rhonda Garelick, this "featured fourteen different Oriental dance numbers, including the 'Veil of Vapor' dance, done with clouds of steam instead of fabric veils."
The Hebrew word makhól (), meaning to twist or whirl (in a circular or spiral manner), is used in Judges 21:21–23, Judges 11:34, and I Samuel 18:6–7. In these instances it refers to a type of erotic dance done during biblical ceremonies, and performed by women. Most notably, in Canaan before 900 BC, a small piece of cloth worn around the hips (ḥagor), would have been all that was worn.
Richard Strauss
Strauss's operatic adaptation of the play also features the Dance of the Seven Veils. The dance remains unnamed except in the acting notes, but Salome's sexual fascination with John seems to motivate the request—though Herod is portrayed as pleased. The music for the dance comes from near the climax of the opera. The visual content of that scene (about seven minutes long with standard tempi) has varied greatly depending on the aesthetic notions of the stage director, choreographer, and soprano, and on the choreographic skills and body shape of that singer. Strauss himself stipulated that the dance should be "thoroughly decent, as if it were being done on a prayer mat." In Derek B. Scott's view, "The eroticism of the 'Dance of the Seven Veils' is encoded in the sensual richness (timbral and textual) of a huge orchestra, the quasi-Oriental embellishment of melody (intimations of 'exotic' sensuality), and the devices of crescendo and quickening pace (suggestive of growing excitement)."
Later versions
The Wilde play and the Strauss opera led to the phenomenon of "Salomania", in which various performers put on acts inspired by Salome's erotic dance. Several of these were criticised for being salacious and close to stripping, leading to "insistent vogue for women doing glamorous and exotic 'oriental' dances in striptease". The dance first appeared in film in 1908 in a Vitagraph production entitled Salome, or the Dance of the Seven Veils. her voluptuous seduction of a drunken lascivious Herod Antipas remains highly praised and is now widely regarded as Bazlen's best performance.
In the 1977 television miniseries Jesus of Nazareth, Salomé is portrayed by Spanish actress Isabel Mestres and king Herod Antipas by Christopher Plummer.
Salome and the dance are recurring thematic and plot elements in Tom Robbins's 1990 novel Skinny Legs and All.