Princess Rajah Dance (1904) This film was shot in St. Louis during a very important part of history and features Princess Rajah doing one of her stage skits for the camera. It starts off rather routine as she dances around in what I'm sure was erotic back in 1904. The film gets a lot more interesting when she picks a chair up with her mouth and begins to dance around with it. I must admit that she really had my attention once the chair entered her mouth because she did some pretty wild and over-the-top tricks with it. While being amazed by the actual act I couldn't help but wonder how she picked up this talent and what possible thinks might have gone wrong whenever she first attempted it.

As I have often mentioned with films from the earliest days, you cannot adequately score a film like this because it's only about a minute and a half long. It has no real narrative—just a dancer doing her routine for the stationary camera. Still, it is a nice historical record of the past and needs preservation because of this.The first part of the film is pretty unremarkable. You have a fully dressed woman doing something akin to a belly dance. However, she really shakes her bosom as well and I am pretty sure this was considered hot stuff back in the day. BUT, about midway through this relatively dull film the woman does something really remarkable. She picks up a chair with her teeth and then does some acrobatics—all the while with the chair in her mouth! Then, she begins dancing and shimmying like before as she holds the chair over her hear and then swings it! It's a pretty amazing act and you cannot help but be impressed by this woman's skills—strange as they are!

Watching Princess Rajah Dance is a bit like being at some party where your aunt has a little too much to drink and starts performing her embarrassing dance routine. Strain your imagination a little bit and you can almost hear the strains of 'Agadoo' or 'The Birdie Song' as she shimmies and shakes and makes things jiggle that aren't supposed to jiggle.Things get a little amazing however when the lady performing the dance casually picks up a chair - with her teeth, no less - and effortlessly hoists it above her head without missing a step. She then continues to amaze as she swings the chair around above her head, and you wonder how she ever hit on the idea in the first place. The film is little more than one minute along and is completely pleasant for its entire duration.

Back in a time when Americans were squeaky-white and ladies often fainted, Princess Rajah and her "hoochie coochie" dance must have been quite scandalous. Filmed in 1904 at a Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, Princess Rajah condensed highlights of her stage act into this little reel for eternal preservation. The Library of Congress says, "According to vaudeville historians Joe Laurie, Jr. and Douglas Gilbert, Princess Rajah started as a "cooch" (an early form of belly dance) dancer at Coney Island in the 1890s. She was booked for a time at Huber's Museum in New York City before Willie Hammerstein presented her in her vaudeville debut at Hammerstein's Victoria theatre on 42nd Street. In addition to her dance with a chair, she also performed an Oriental dance with snakes."