exotism

An atmosphere of exotism, of irregular existence, of protest against conventional custom, seemed to surround this vagabond family.

The Dead Command From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan Vicente Blasco Ib����ez 1897

Vaslav Nijinsky rose to stardom as the golden slave in Diaghilev’s ballet, Scheherazade, appearing “in brown body paint, and grinning, and wound with pearls — not so much as a sex object but as sex itself, with all the accouterments of perversity that the fin-de-siècle imagination could supply: exotism, androgyny, enslavement, violence.”

Scheherazade Goes West Fatema Mernissi 2001