Jean Idelle, World Famous Fan Dancer

One of the first things about Burlesque that really struck me was fan dancing. I thought it was incredible how you could be invisible on stage yet be such an ethereal, graceful presence. If you feel like showing yourself, you can or you can choose to hide behind the grandeur of the fans and create a moment of mystery. The soft wispiness of the fans not only allows for that but invites that mysterious feeling.

If you ever wanted to try fan dancing, you should definitely know the history of one of the worlds most famous fan dancers, Jean Idelle.

Jean Idelle was one of the performers that I always loved to see in historical Burlesque photos. There really weren’t very many fan dancers because fans were/are so expensive (nowadays a very basic set of 24x41 single layer ostrich feather fans will run you around $200/300 with shipping, however the whole trick with Burlesque is to have the biggest, the fanciest, the best props so many of the Burlesque Fans you see on stage are thousands of dollars per set.) You had to be pretty committed to Burlesque to invest in such expensive props.

Jean Idelle certainly was invested in dance. She attended the Katherine Dunham School of Dance before becoming a world renowned international Burlesque star. They called her “the Sepia Sally Rand”.

Not only did she invest fully in Burlesque but she was the very first Black Burlesque fan dancer. She was one of the rare, few performers who was regularly invited to perform in primarily white clubs. Considering how much effort, time and energy she put into her craft I wonder if she grew exhausted with the problematic racist environment prevalent in Burlesque at the time.

In addition to her being the very first Black burlesque fan dancer, she was chipping away at the racist industry of Burlesque since the 1950s, over a decade before the civil rights movement would start to feel its full impact on a National scale in America.