Carmel Magazine

T he par ty of the centur y, "A Surrealistic Night in an Enchanted Forest" in honor of ar tist Salvador Dali and his wife, Gala, was given by Samuel FB Morse three months before the United States was pulled into World War II by the attack on Pearl Harbor. The surreal par ty's proceeds were to benefit "European refugee painters." The Museum of Modern Ar t in New York sponsored the event. Dali designed the par ty's invitation, which stat- ed, "It is requested that you come in costume, preferably in a costume copied after your dream, or in a costume of a primitive animal or of the people of the forest." The cost was "$4.00 for dinner or $2.50 for those not having dinner." Dali is photographed dressing the ballerina, Charlotte Maye, and her partner, Burt Hargers, in gauze bandages on which Dali applied red dye "blood." Dali had arranged the choreography for the dance, which would begin with the bloodied, bandaged dance couple emerging from a wrecked, overturned auto at the end of the Bali Room (now the El Praedo Room) at Hotel Del Monte (now the Naval Postgraduate School). In the wrecked auto was a young woman, who was nude and covered artistically by large leaves, where she was playing "dead" (the model had been given a sedative to sleep throughout the whole party). Dali thought that American people were always in deadly car accidents and this was the basis for his idea for the interpretive performance of the "Dance of Death." Look Magazine's Fall 1941 issue explained it as, "Ballet about an auto wreck was the entertainment of the evening." —Barbara Briggs-Anderson, curator for the Julian P. Graham Historical Photographic Collection. More information can be found at www.julianpgraham.com. it happened here Photo: Julian P. Graham/Loon Hill Studios Dance of Death 36 C A R M E L M A G A Z I N E • H O L I D A Y 2 0 1 4 Who: Salvador Dali Where: Hotel Del Monte, Monterey When: September 2, 1941

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