Dance in Popular Theatre

Palace Theatre of Varieties

This programme from the Palace Theatre of Varieties for 19 March 1894 features a typical music hall programme, including singers, dancers, dramatic sketches, performing collies, an impersonator, acrobats and tableaux vivants. In tableaux vivants performers dressed and posed as 'living pictures', usually some well-known painting by a famous artist. Similar acts were 'living statuary' or 'poses plastiques', where the performers dressed in flesh-coloured all-over tights and stood in athletic or heroic poses. The programme cover features a dancer in a typical dress and pose. Several music hall programmes featured dancers on the covers as they were attractive and could be drawn in a variety of poses to give the impression of life and energy. Another part of the cover shows the pride of the theatre - its foyer and the smoking rooms, which, from the space devoted to them, were obviously a great attraction for audiences.

The Tivoli programme

The Tivoli Music Hall was built in the late 1880s on the site of the Tivoli Beer Garden and Restaurant. Its prime location on the Strand had long been an area of entertainment. In the 1600s it housed the New Exchange, where the shops and promenade played host to fashionable London society for a while, before the area fell into disrepute as a haunt of vice.

By the Tivoli's opening night on 24 May 1890 though, the Strand was once again a fashionable promenade. The new music hall was a 'handsome building', 'spacious and well planned and of elegant appearance'. The programme you see here is typical of an evening's mixed entertainment, as was the first night when The Era reported that Mlle Bertoto's 'transformation dances put the spectators in excellent humour', but the Sisters Leyton went down less well at the end of the bill. They danced well but 'will please more with their singing when they have learnt to sing harmoniously'.

Adagio Dancers

Adagio dancing was a cross between dancing and acrobatics which involved lots of lifts and flips and required extreme flexibility. Usually the act was made up of one woman and one or more men, although there were occasional acts made up of two women. Variety shows on cruise ships are one of the few places where traditional adagio acts can still be seen today. Although adagio dancing is not popular any more, many of the moves survive in ice-skating and have even been incorporated into ballet. Similar throws and flips featured in American wartime dances such as jive and jitterbug and some Latin dances.

Topsy Sinden

Topsy Sinden, cabinet card sepia photograph, Guy Little Theatrical Photographs, London, 19th century. Museum no. S.136:459-2007

Elsie's Step Toe Dancing on a Snare Drum

Music hall featured hundreds of novelty dance turns such as this one, which gave popular dance an extra twist. Step toe dancing involved tapping out the rhythm, as in traditional folk step dancing, but wearing point shoes, like those worn in ballet to help the dancer rise on tip-toe. These shoes sometimes had metal plates on the flat 'point', like taps on tap shoes, to increase the rhythmic sound.

Wilson, Keppel and Betty

Wilson, Keppel and Betty formed the greatest eccentric dance act of all time. Wilson and Keppel were two doleful, gangling, moustachioed, skinny-legged and obviously English men. They wore parodies of Eastern dress, usually a fez and a short nightshirt, revealing their scrawny legs. The third member of the team was the glamorous Betty. To the popular music ‘Egyptian Ballet’ by Luigini, they performed a sand dance based on poses familiar from Egyptian tomb art, with Betty as the central seductress. Their complete seriousness added to the hilarity. The dance only became funnier as Wilson and Keppel got older and more emaciated. Music hall spawned many comedy dance acts but no other has become part of the general public consciousness like Wilson, Keppel and Betty. A comedian or performer only has to turn in profile and raise a hand in ‘Egyptian’ style for audiences to know the reference. They even turn up (or their costumes do) as Gulli, Gulli and Betti in Terry Pratchett’s Jingo – once the fez and nightshirt were out of the bag, no reader needed the parodied name to get the reference.

Adeline Genée in High Jinks at the Empire Theatre

For 12 years from 1897, Adeline Genée starred in the ballets at the Empire Theatre in London. Ballet had not been popular since the decline of the Romantic Ballet in the 1850s, but Genée restored it to public favour. A superb dancer, pretty, blonde and charming, she was idolised by the public. As the first president of the Royal Academy of Dance she later helped establish ballet in Britain.

Genée's hunting solo in the ballet High Jinks was one of her most popular dances. She danced both hunter and hunted, depicting the exhilaration of the rider and the nimbleness of the pursued fox. The designer Wilhelm meticulously recreated a riding habit for her, but Genée objected to the accurate but uncomfortable woollen breeches. She got her way and had them changed to silk.

Costume worn by Adeline Genée as Madame Prevost in La Danse

Costume worn by Adeline Genée (1878 -1970) as Madame Prevost in the ballet La Danse, designed by Wilhelm, Paris, France, 1912

Costume worn by Adeline Genée as Madame Prevost in La Danse

Costume worn by Adeline Genée (1878 - 1970) as Madame Prevost in the ballet La Danse, designed by Wilhelm, Paris, France, 1912. Museum no. S.1460-1982

Letty Lind's Skirt Dance

Letty Lind was born Letitia Rudge in Birmingham in 1862. She was one of five sisters, all of whom became well known performers. She first appeared on stage when she was about five, then appeared as a dancer in pantomime, and toured from the age of 12. She became famous as a skirt dancer of great charm and grace. Though technically her singing voice was limited, she used it with great skill and she later became a popular musical comedy performer. Skirt dancing, Lind explained, was an alternative school of dance to ballet, with its own distinctive steps and styles. Most important were the control and movement of the full silk skirts with their lace frills. Skirt dancing's advantage over ballet was that people could do it at home and it became popular among all social classes.

Skirt Dancing in 1892

Skirt Dancing in 1892, Pall Mall Budget (publisher), magazine, April 1892

Letty Lind's Skirt Dance

Letty Lind was one of the few skirt dancers who had the technique of a ballet dancer. She started as a child performer, and had long experience in all branches of light entertainment before making her name as a dancer. One anecdote recounts that she only became a dancer by accident. When she was given a song to sing in one of her plays, she asked if she could do a dance instead because her singing voice was so weak. However, in the 1890s she became a star of the new musical comedy, where charm was more important than vocal strength.

Lottie Collins 'Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay'

Music hall performer Lottie Collins became a household name thanks to the song 'Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay' and the dance that went with it. She would begin the song slowly and quietly, and then at the end of the first verse she would leave a long pause, put one hand on her hip and launch into the chorus and a wild can-can dance. Her high kicks, accompanied by a big drum and 'an excited foam of lace petticoat' delighted or shocked audiences, depending on their sensibilities. The playwright George Bernard Shaw went to see her perform in 1892 while still in his 20s, and described how she did three low kicks on the 'Ta-ra-ra' and then a high kick on the 'boom'. He added admiringly: 'Miss Collins appears to be in fine athletic training.'

Newspaper article on skirt dancing

The article from the newspaper Daily Graphic in 1892 is another report on the display given by Miss Garratt's students. By the 1890s, girls were learning dances that developed grace and poise, including a version of the popular stage act, skirt dancing. The graceful manipulation of the skirts could be learned by everyone, but the real skill, as with all dancing, was to put meaning and emotion into the movements. Although the girls were learning social, not stage, dancing, ballet terms were used to describe many of the movements, such as coupée (a quick transfer of weight from one foot to the other), battement (a beating step) and glissade (a sliding step). Miss Garratt had been a pupil of the great ballerina Marie Taglioni who taught social dancing in London in the 1870s. Taglioni would have approved of the long skirts worn by the girls in the illustration. She had a particular dislike of the shorter ballet tutu that evolved in the late 19th century.

The Tiller Girls act in the 1960s

For over 50 years, there was hardly a country in the world without a Tiller Girls troupe. This photograph shows the discipline and precision for which they were famous. Although they danced in many different styles, they are primarily remembered for their high kicking precision routines. From the first troupe formed by John Tiller in Manchester in 1890 grew dozens of groups appearing throughout the world.

Each group was composed of girls who were perfectly matched for height and weight. Individuality was not encouraged. The important thing was for a girl to sink her personality into that of the group. This was difficult for the dancers, many of whom longed to express their own personalities. It was the discipline and group ethic that proved the act's downfall. In the 1970s new dance groups, like The Young Generation and Pan's People gave more freedom to individuals within the group and the day of the Tiller Girls was over.

The Tiller Girls about 1890

This photograph from the 1890s is of one of the earliest troupes of Tiller Girls. John Tiller first started a dance troupe in Manchester in 1890. The Four Sunbeams were four ten year old little girls, and from this small beginning at the King's Theatre grew one of the most professional chorus and dance ensembles in this country. John Tiller started out as a successful cotton merchant but when he fell on hard times, he decided to try to make a living in the theatre, his great passion. He noticed that the chorus, however beautiful, often spoiled the effect of its numbers through lack of discipline. John Tiller and his wife Jenny opened a residential school which trained girls to dance with the precision of a corps de ballet. By the turn of the century all the major musical comedy managers were employing 'Tiller Girls', and his pupils worked everywhere from Paris to New York.

The Tiller Girls in Ever Green

This cartoon published in the Glasgow Evening Times in 1930 features the highspots of the new Rodgers and Hart musical Ever Green. The Tiller Girls appeared as ‘Vanities’ in the revue ‘Eternal Youth’, which closed the first act of the musical. By the 1930s, The Tiller Girls were appearing throughout the world. They appeared in Hollywood films and at the Folies Bergère in Paris.

In Britain they danced in variety shows, pantomimes and summer shows. Each group was composed of girls who were perfectly matched for height and weight. Individuality was not encouraged. The important thing was for a girl to sink her personality into that of the group. This was difficult for the dancers, many of whom longed to express their own personalities. At one time, a girl could not be married and stay a Tiller Girl. As some girls were as young as 16, they were usually closely chaperoned, especially when they were working abroad.

Tiller Girls stockings advert

By the 1920s John Tiller girls were appearing throughout the world. They had become part of the public consciousness and many people, seeing an advertisement with a line-up of precision chorus girls like this, would have thought 'Tiller Girls'. Jack Buchanan sometimes employed Tiller Girls in his musicals. Stockings at this time were made of silk or lisle, a heavier yarn usually worn for every day. Nylon stockings did not become generally available in England until the 1950s.