The dancer vs. the management in post‐civil war America

Abstract

For most of us the stereotyped image of the late nineteenth-century ballerina in America is of a plump, coyly posing foreign superstar. Her hairdo is elaborate and she is squeezed into a tutu and pointe shoes at least three sizes too small. We tend to dismiss these women and their contribution to the progress of dance in this country, yet many of them were well-trained artists from La Scala and other prestigious European academies, working under conditions far more difficult than those faced by today's dancer. Many of these dancers came to America to dance in the ballets in the musical spectaculars that dominated our theater following the Civil War. Devoid of dramatic interest, these productions were accused of being an attenuated thread whereon were strung, like so many clothespins, or pins with no clothes to speak of, the limbs of ... ballet girls.1 These productions exhibited, in fact, a kaleidoscopic spectrum of dance, of which ballet was only one aspect. Stunning stage effects, lavish costumes, and variety acts were all served up together as a theatrical diversion, a soothing antidote for a country recovering from the wounds of the war. Moralists claimed that audiences preferred leg to legitimate theater; the presence of European ballet dancers gave an air of refinement. In the 1860s and 1870s, New York theater managers sailed to Europe to recruit ballerinas to outclass those employed by their competitors. For the danseuse working her way up through the ranks of the various European state opera houses, the American stage presented a unique opportunity: a lack of trained dancers and an abundant