SPIDER DANCE. American, Reel (2/4 time). D Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB. Although A.S. Bowman's "Spider Dance Reel" may refer to some particular kind of dance, or just a name of fancy, most people in 1908 (when Pepper's collection was published) would have immediately associated the name 'spider dance' with the noted mid-19th century performer Wikipedia:Lola_Montez (1821-1861) whose tumultuous life reads like the stuff of novels. She was born Eliza Rosanna Gilbert of Anglo-Irish parents, and proved to be intelligent, both determined and wild as a child. She eloped at age 16, going to India with her soldier husband, but the marriage fell apart within five years. She invented the name and persona of "Lola Montez, the Spanish Dancer" and attempted a career in London, but her origins and notoriety were soon discovered and she was obliged to leave England for the Continent, where she continued to pursue her career. She met with success as a dancer and as a courtesan, even gaining political power as the mistress of King Ludwig I of Bavaria, who made her a Countess. Her affair with composer Franz Liszt provided her entry to novelist George Sand’s inner circle of friends, including writer Alexandre Dumas with whom she had a brief relationship. In 1851 Lola resumed her dancing career in the United States, toured the east coast and then headed west, where she eventually married the latest in a succession of husbands and attempted to settle down. Lola served as an inspiration to another aspiring young entertainer, Lotta Crabtree (for whom see "Lotta's Favorite"), whose parents ran a boarding house in Grass Valley, California. Lola, a neighbor, provided dancing lessons and encouraged Lotta's enthusiasm for performance.
A tour of Australia followed, where she performed her Spider Dance. Shocking for the time, accounts say that it consisted of rifling through her in her dress looking for an errant spider as she danced. Montez reportedly lifted her skirts high enough for the audience to see she wasn’t wearing anything under them. The review in the Australian paper Argus was scathing, calling her performance “utterly subversive to all ideas of public morality.” She scandalized further when she attacked a newspaper editor with a whip for publishing a bad review of her Spider Dance.
Towards the end of her life she delivered moral lectures written by a clergyman in England and America. Her free-spirited life ended at age 39, probably from the final stages of syphilis, and she is buried in Brooklyn under he real name.
Additional notes
Printed sources : - A.S. Bowman (J.W. Pepper Collection of Five Hundred Reels, Jigs, etc.), Phila., 1908; No. 181, p. 38.
