Description
Born St. Louis, MissouriWhen she debuted at Paris’s Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in 1925, nineteen-year-old Josephine Baker created a sensation that rivaled the explosion that Sergei Diaghilev’s ballet The Rite of Spring sparked on that same stage in 1913.A fascination with Africa and a rage for American jazz permeated Paris after the horrors of World War I, and “Negro Vaudeville” was greatly in vogue. Capitalizing on this fervor, young Baker was brought from New York City to star in La Revue Nègre. Her appearance was such a success that she was soon engaged by the Folies Bergère, where her signature performance was a dance in which she wore nothing but a belt of bananas.Baker was also adept at cultivating her exotic public image offstage, endorsing beauty products and strolling down boulevards with her pet cheetah, Chiquita.She melded the spirit of the moment into her own: “Paris is the dance, and I am the dancer!”
Image
Lithograph With Pochoir Coloring On Paper
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
