![]() ![]() The cakewalk was the first American-born popular dance. Overton appeared in two numbers in the first act, a comedic song about playing the lottery and a cakewalk. ![]() In 1896, she was listed in the chorus of Black Patti’s Troubadours, an all-Black show led by concert singer Madame Sissieretta Jones, called “The Black Patti” after Adelina Patti, the most famous soprano of the time. Now she was about to headline one of New York’s most prominent vaudeville houses – not as a maid or a saucy high yella gal or a tragic Octoroon – but as a powerful seductress who could demand a saint’s head in return for a glimpse of her body.īorn on Valentine’s Day 1880 in New York City, Ada Overton started performing professionally as a teenager. Every actress worth her salt had given Salomé a whirl and Walker had done so herself three years previously, but never before at a predominantly white theater in New York…Īida Overton Walker, the most famous Black vaudeville soubrette, had co-starred in the first all-Black Broadway musical, danced before royalty, and performed in drag to critical acclaim. At a time when women had few rights and little power – and when leading roles were mostly virginal damsels in distress – the Biblical temptress provided an exotic guise that gave actresses the license to be dangerous, sexy, commanding. By then, the Salomé craze was mostly over, but the role still had plenty of allure. ![]() In 1912, Aida Overton Walker stood at the top of the stairs at the Victoria Theater about to make her entrance as the titular role in the play Salomé. (Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library) ![]()
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