Nyota Inyoka and the Ziegfeld Follies: Where She Actually Performed, 1922–1924

When I wrote my profile of the dancer Nyota Inyoka, I left one question hanging. Florenz Ziegfeld saw her dance in Paris in the summer of 1922, brought her to New York, and announced that he was putting her in the Ziegfeld Follies. Did she ever actually appear?

She did not. Variety reported it twice, eight months apart, and she said so herself. What the record does show is how close she came: she rehearsed at the New Amsterdam Theatre, a New York paper counted her among Ziegfeld’s company, and Ziegfeld meant to write her into the show as soon as a place could be found for her. No place ever was.

She did dance, though, and in some notable rooms. Below is what I have been able to document of her American engagements between 1922 and 1924.

The Nyota Inyoka Ziegfeld Follies Question, Answered Twice

“Imported for ‘Follies,’ But Never Got Chance, She Says”

That is the subhead. The item ran in Variety on 22 November 1923, under the headline “Egyptian Dancer Scores”:

Princess Nyota Inyoka, an Egyptian dancer, scored sensationally at a special concert given Sunday evening at the Greenwich Village theatre. She offered five numbers and was recalled half a dozen times for two of the dances. The “bell ringer” was programed “Égypte Moderne—Bédouine” and is described as full mixture of shimmy, cooch and jazz.

The Egyptian dancer was brought over originally by Flo Ziegfeld, who saw her in Paris last winter, and planned to use her in the “Follies.” No place could be found and she first appeared in “Jack and Jill,” but remained for only a few weeks. When queried after the successful appearance in the Village the Princess stated she had never been given a chance on Broadway.

One correction to Variety’s own account, though. Jack and Jill was not quite her first American appearance. She had been dancing in Manhattan at the Knickerbocker Grill since October 1922, and she had appeared at the Rialto that January. And when she said she had never been given a chance on Broadway, she cannot have meant that she never appeared there—Jack and Jill opened at the Globe on 22 March 1923 with her in it. She probably meant she was never given a real chance.

Variety had in fact already reported the same thing eight months earlier. In its issue of Thursday, 29 March 1923, in the column Inside Stuff on Legit, the paper noticed her in the new show at the Globe — under yet another spelling of her name:

Nyoka-Nyoka the foreign dancer brought here by Ziegfeld last fall is in “Jack and Jill.” She was the only artist selected by Zeiggy [sic] during his trip abroad. He found the girl who is of East Indian extraction in Paris and wanted her in the “Follies,” it being his plan to provide new features during the run here, but a spot was never found for her.

Two reports, eight months apart, saying the same thing: Ziegfeld wanted her in the Follies and never found a place to put her.

The Announcements Came First

Two Notices, Ten Days Apart

In August 1922, Ziegfeld came back from his first trip abroad in ten years. The New York Herald of 5 August 1922 reported that “he had engaged an Indian dancer, Nyota-Nyoka, a woman protégé of Paul Poiret. She will arrive in New York August 27.”

Four days later the New-York Tribune was more specific: the Follies, “sixteenth of the series, will be kept at the New Amsterdam Theater indefinitely. The East Indian dancer, Princess Nyota Nyoka, soon will make her American debut in the ‘Follies.'”

But did she?

Two Accounts That Show How Close She Came

The October 22, 1922, New York Herald reported:

The winter season at the Knickerbocker Grill was opened Thursday night with an entertainment arranged by Ned Wayburn. The Princess Nyota-Inyoka, who came from Paris three weeks ago to join the Ziegfeld Follies, headed the program. This is the first time that Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr., has permitted any member of his Follies to appear in an “after the theater” program anywhere except on the Amsterdam Roof.

The account isn’t conclusive, but it does refer to her as a Follies member. Of course, she could be a member of the company and still never appear on stage.

Eight years later an interesting account appeared in the August 2, 1930 Baltimore Afro-American under a column titled Stage Reflections: I Remember, by Frank Byrd:

The sensation that Flo Ziegfeld on the Big Street caused by his importation of Princess Nyota Nyoka, the East Indian dancer, who, back in ’20 and ’21, was a bigger sensation in Paris than Jo Baker is to-day. She crammed the backstage entrances of the New Amsterdam, on rehearsal nights, September, 1922, and had admirers waiting in line for a glimpse of her curves at her hotel—the old Brevoort over on Fifth Avenue and Eighth Street.

This has her at the New Amsterdam Theatre (home of the Ziegfeld Follies at the time) but only mentions rehearsals. Still, she was said to be well-known enough to draw crowds there and at her hotel. Byrd was a Harlem-based Black journalist who chronicled the neighborhood’s nightlife and popular culture before later documenting its everyday life for the Federal Writers’ Project, so he is a credible source. But he was writing eight years after the fact.

Neither account puts her on the New Amsterdam stage in a performance. What they show is how near she got—inside the building and inside the company—and still outside the show. Between the two Variety reports and her own statement, I take the question as answered. She did not dance in the Ziegfeld Follies.

Where She Actually Danced In America

A Chronology, 1922–1924

She kept performing in Europe after leaving the U.S. in 1924. Her last performance reported in Variety was at the Vital Hall in Passy, France, in 1947, twenty-five years after Ziegfeld “discovered” her.

A Different Origin Every Few Weeks

Indian, East Indian, Zanzibari, Egyptian, Half Hindu

A fascinating aspect of the American newspaper coverage of her over nineteen months is the constantly shifting description of her heritage. She was an “Indian dancer” (August 1922), an “East Indian dancer” (four days later), “a native of Zanzibar” (September 1922), “Princess Nyota-Inyoka, of Egypt” (October 1922), an “Egyptian dancer” (Variety, 1923), and “half Hindu and half —” (March 1924). London settled on “the famous Indian dancer” in 1930. Paris was still calling her a Hindu dancer in 1947.

Deepening the confusion is that, in his reminiscence, Frank Byrd wrote the press agents in 1922 claimed she spoke only French and “several of her native dialects,” and yet “only two years later, the gal chirped English like a Continental.”

How I Put This Together

Three bodies of digitized material: Newspapers.com, which turned up 291 pages mentioning her between 1921 and 1937; the Library of Congress Chronicling America collection, which is free and carries the New York dailies; and Internet Archive as well as the Media History Digital Library, whose Lantern index reaches into Variety and The Billboard. The trade press is what settled the Follies question, and I would not have found it in daily papers. The chronology above also draws on Musical America, Musical Courier, Editor & Publisher, Theatre Arts Monthly and the Nation and Athenaeum, along with society and regional papers from Buffalo to Pittsburgh.

One practical note: Inyoka’s name has many published variants. An exact search for “Nyota Inyoka” returns three hits for 1923. Add “Nyota Nyoka,” “Nyota-Inyoka” and “Princess Nyota” and the same year returns fifty-five. Her name was spelled differently almost every time it was set in type.

Related: Nyota Inyoka: The Scholar-Dancer History Forgot, my full profile of her life and work, and Ziegfeld Follies history, on the revue she was hired for but never appeared in.