Nyota Inyoka (1896 – July 1971), sometimes billed as Princess Nyota Inyoka, was a

French French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...

Indian Indian or Indians may refer to: Peoples South Asia * Indian people, people of Indian nationality, or people who have an Indian ancestor ** Non-resident Indian, a citizen of India who has temporarily emigrated to another country * South Asia ...

dancer and choreographer.

Early life

Nyota Inyoka was born in PondicherryTessa Jahn
"Cutting into History: The 'Hindu Dancer' Nyota Inyoka's Photomontages"
in Christoph Wulf, ed., ''Exploring Alterity in a Globalized World'' (Routledge 2016): 187-195. and raised in Paris, the daughter of a French mother and an Indian father, though she was sometimes billed as being "Egyptian", "Persian", or "Cambodian". Both of her parents were teachers.

Career

Nyota Inyoka's dances and costumes appealed to a wider Western fascinations with the exotic, ancient, and "

oriental The Orient is a term for the East in relation to Europe, traditionally comprising anything belonging to the Eastern world. It is the antonym of ''Occident'', the Western World. In English, it is largely a metonym for, and coterminous with, the ...

", in the 1920s and beyond. She frequently researched her dances in the collections of the

Musée Guimet The Guimet Museum (full name in french: Musée national des arts asiatiques-Guimet; MNAAG; ) is an art museum located at 6, place d'Iéna in the XVIe arrondissement, 16th arrondissement of Paris, France. Literally translated into English, its ful ...

. She danced at the Folies Bergère in 1917, in New York in 1920, and again in Paris in 1921, wearing costumes by designer

Paul Poiret Paul Poiret (20 April 1879 – 30 April 1944, Paris, France) was a French fashion designer, a master couturier during the first two decades of the 20th century. He was the founder of his namesake haute couture house. Early life and care ...

. She performed in the United States from 1922 to 1924, where she appeared in

vaudeville Vaudeville (; ) is a theatrical genre of variety entertainment born in France at the end of the 19th century. A vaudeville was originally a comedy without psychological or moral intentions, based on a comical situation: a dramatic composition ...

and gave recitals with Japanese dancer Michio Itō. "Little Mme. Nyota Inyoka conjured up historic pictures, with childlike native grace and baby smile, strangely consorted with rapt moods of the East," commented a reviewer in ''The New York Times,'' continuing in a similar vein to describe her "cherubic but elastic torso, whirlwind arms and gyrating legs". While in New York, she danced in a program with

Anna Pavlova Anna Pavlovna Pavlova ( , rus, Анна Павловна Павлова ), born Anna Matveyevna Pavlova ( rus, Анна Матвеевна Павлова; – 23 January 1931), was a Russian prima ballerina of the late 19th and the early 20th ...

at a costume party hosted by artist

Malvina Hoffman Malvina Cornell Hoffman (June 15, 1885July 10, 1966) was an American sculptor and author, well known for her life-size bronze sculptures of people. She also worked in plaster and marble. Hoffman created portrait busts of working-class people and ...

in 1924. Sensational reports in the American press described her as haunted, cursed, mysterious; some even posited "death threats" that awaited her in India because of her revealing costumes, presumably to heighten interest in her performances. Inyoka taught dance in Paris for decades, and often performed in Paris and internationally. Sculptor Paul Landowski made a series of small bronze dancing figures based on Nyota Inyoka in 1947.

Personal life

Inyoka died from stomach cancer in 1971, aged 75. Her gravesite is at Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. Her papers are in the

Bibliothèque nationale de France The Bibliothèque nationale de France (, 'National Library of France'; BnF) is the national library of France, located in Paris on two main sites known respectively as ''Richelieu'' and ''François-Mitterrand''. It is the national repository ...

. There is a videocassette of Inyoka dancing in the Malvina Hoffman Papers at the Getty Institute.

References

External links

A photograph of Nyota Inyoka
(circa 1930) by Boris Lipnitzki, at Europeana Collections.
A photograph of Nyota Inyoka
(1922), from

Getty Images Getty Images Holdings, Inc. is an American visual media company and is a supplier of stock images, editorial photography, video and music for business and consumers, with a library of over 477 million assets. It targets three markets— creative ...

.
A photograph of Nyota Inyoka
(1931) by Rosie Ney, from Getty Images.
A photograph of Nyota Inyoka
(1937) by André Steiner, at

Artnet Artnet.com is an art market website. It is operated by Artnet Worldwide Corporation, which has headquarters in New York City, in the United States, and is owned by Artnet AG, a German publicly traded company based in Berlin that is listed on t ...

.
An oil portrait of Nyota Inyoka
(1931) by Lancelot Ney, at

Christie's Christie's is a British auction house founded in 1766 by James Christie (auctioneer), James Christie. Its main premises are on King Street, St James's in London, at Rockefeller Center in New York City and at Alexandra House in Hong Kong. It is ...

. {{DEFAULTSORT:Inyoka, Nyota 1896 births 1971 deaths French female dancers Indian female dancers Vaudeville performers People from Pondicherry French choreographers Indian choreographers 20th-century French women