I can’t believe it but after many years of intense research that felt a lot like wrestling a minotaur, my research on the Gellert Sisters is finally published!!
I must confess I cried when I opened up the box and saw my work in print!
Of course I didn’t do it alone. The work is the result of MANY interviews, researching different databases, visiting NYC, the Historic New Orleans Collection, the French Quarter, the New England Genealogical Society, etc.
As an academic research scholar covering a niche topic with little to no previous published research, it’s been a long arduous road of research and years of obsession with the dancing Gellert sisters AKA Nita & Zita.
I’m thrilled to add Nita & Zita to the academic canon so they can be remembered and so that other researchers can take my research and expand and continue as more and more of the performing arts gets digitized.
Artists like Nita & Zita are rarely covered in academia for several reasons including things like–they were outsider artists who made art out of what we now call “found objects” (previously called trash) and while we now consider this a beautiful thing, in previous years this was considered “low art” if it was called art at all.
In this category of “low art” would be burlesque dancing, which has been the bawdy hidden sister of “high art” dancing like ballet or modern dance. What was the difference between “high art” dancing and “low art” dancing? Isadora Duncan made up her own style of dancing in various stages of undress and so did Mata Hari, but they managed to do so on bigger stages and in museums. Nita & Zita made up their own style of dancing and performed in cabarets, restaurants, and nightclubs, all venues for a lower income audience. Is it the venue that made the difference? The income of the audience? Which audience considered themselves higher class vs. lower class?
Added to this controversy is the fact that the sisters made so many of their costumes from found objects which are obviously fragile and wouldn’t survive unless someone knew how to protect them. I’m sure there were other dancers and artists who made costumes from found objects, however their work didn’t survive. Nita & Zita spent the last 40 years of their lives as recluses and as such, their creations survived and were sent out into the world by their neighbor, Betty Kirkland, who held the 5-year yard sale. We have more people to thank for preserving the sisters’ legacy like Judy of Judy’s Collage, Jane Blevin, and Cyndi MacMurray who had shops in the French Quarter where people like me could discover the remarkable sisters.
As for my own research, I could never have completed this wild beast of an article without my editor and publisher of the journal Mark Bauman, who believed in me and my capability. When I turned in my initial 100 pages of topsy-turvy-knock-on-doors-in-New-Orleans oral interviews, Mark didn’t toss them out like I thought he would. Instead he advised me how to rewrite them with more of my own analysis. He waited an entire year for me to think (lol) with the occasional gentle nudge “Am I ever going to get this article?” email. I wrestled, I thought, I continued researching, I forced myself to sit down and write when I didn’t want to and finally got another draft sent to him. My writing tends to lean towards the more colorful rollicking kind and shies away from the more formal academic kind. Like a gladiator, Mark slashed, edited, added, advised, and turned my wild beast of massive research into something more streamlined for the academic mind. He helped me put it into context with his own massive troves of research and then sent it out to peers for more feedback.
Did he returned it to me finished? No. He returned it to me with a list of around 50 books for me to read for my final research round. Weirdly, I was thrilled! I LOVE to read and it felt like the perfect moment to read all the niche history around this era for performers, dancers, Jewish women, caribbean tourism, New York dancers, the emergence of cabaret dancers, vaudeville, burlesque, saloon dancers, New Orleans history, Hungarian history, Jewish women in Hungary in 1919…I lit my fire, pulled out highlighters and my cappuccino machine and got to work diving into even more minute details bout the era preceding, during, and after Nita & Zita. A few more final edits, revisions, and proofreading and… it was done.
But then I went to Romania with my team and learned even more. With Sharon (producer), Stefanie (composer), and Courtney (Asso. Producer), I was able to walk streets the Gellert sisters walked (the town hasn’t changed much since medieval times). I was able to visit the closed-up synagogue, the school Flora attended up to 8th grade, and even walk the street they lived on. I wanted to add more into my article but it was ready for press, so I just added a couple sentences (Thank you Mark and Bryan Stone!). Visiting the town of Baia Mare didn’t significantly change the research, but it did significantly change me and gave me more to think about.
In addition to Romania, we were recently able to go interview a neighbor who knew the Gellert sisters in New Orleans. Sharon asked why we are still researching if the film and article are complete? I could only answer that my obsession continues…
So for now, the result of my obsession is here in this article. It is the culmination of all my film interviews with the addition of history books, an excellent editor, and more!
You can read it for free in the following databases and order a copy for yourself at the Journal of Southern Jewish History:
https://www.jewishsouth.org/contents-southern-jewish-history-volume
