C] Blonde, Bewigged and Winged with Gold: Ballet Girls in the Music Halls of Late Victorian and Edwardian England

Abstract

ballet, says Anstey, 'everything else on the programme is scarcely more than pudding'.' These venues, off-shoots of the traditional music hall, presented at least one, usually two and sometimes three ballets nightly and each production normally ran for six months or more. Approximately one hundred and forty new works were created during this period.2 In quantitative terms, the duration of this period of activity, the number of ballets produced, the number of people employed and the size of audiences all exceeded those of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. And yet, whilst the names of Diaghilev's collaborators, performers and ballets are common currency in dance discourse, the music hall ballet has been almost eclipsed from record. Clearly, historians have exercised judgements to do with perceived quality of artistic achievement, rather than recording the achievement itself. The ballets and their creators have all but disappeared from dance history. Katti Lanner's name is now barely known but, as arranger of thirty-five new ballets at the Empire, she has the rare distinction of being a woman choreographer in a field apparently dominated by men.3 Even the performing stars of the ballets such as Bessone, Brianza, Legnani, Palladino and, to a lesser extent, Genee, tend to be credited only in secondary sources for their achievements away from London's Leicester Square venues.4 If the premieres danseuses have had their music hall performances omitted from their biographies, the numerous women who comprised the corps de ballet have had no biographies at all, neither individually nor collectively. Whilst it is understandable, perhaps, that they rarely appear in records as named individuals, the corps as entity has been little recognised in dance historiography. Such a