Posts by Lorelei Vashti

The word ‘burlesque’ originally referred to a certain type of vaudevillian stage show, but these days the word is most often used to describe a form of striptease dance.

The link between burlesque and ballet today isn’t immediately obvious, but it can be agreed that both art forms pursue beauty of form and movement. However, ballet and burlesque also actually share a history – most interestingly in that many of the most well-known burlesque dancers from the 1860s onwards started out as classically trained ballet dancers themselves.

In Victorian England, being a ballet dancer was not considered a proper vocation for a woman. The lowly status of the average ballet dancer in society, combined with the other very real dangers of being a dancer in 19th century England and Europe – the illness, the poverty and the risk of tutus catching on fire – made the profession quite unappealing. So it’s not surprising that some turned their highly trained classical skills to other more lucrative things.

Lydia Thompson was one of the first to move from ballet into the bawdier world of burlesque. Thompson had been a part of the corps de ballet at Her Majesty’s Theatre, but when she took her vaudeville show British Blondes to America in the 1860s, she was an instant hit. (more…)

Uninhibited, exotic and spontaneous, Josephine Baker (1906-1975) swept through the landscape of 20th century dance like a wild, booty-shaking tornado. From the moment she arrived in Paris in 1925, she electrified French audiences with her signature piece — the jaw dropping ‘Banana Dance‘, in which she wore little else except for a skirt made out of bananas.

Baker was African-American, born in St Louis, Missouri. She was 16 when she started performing on the streets of her hometown, but moved to New York a few years later to become a chorus girl on Broadway. In October 1925 she performed in La Revue nègre at the Théatre des Champs-Élysées in Paris. With her partner Joe Alex, she danced a pas de deux called Danse Sauvage. Josephine Baker was an instant hit.

Contemporary critic Pierre de Régnier described watching her perform the Danse Sauvage:

“She is in constant motion, her body writhing like a snake or more precisely like a dipping saxophone. Music seems to pour from her body. She grimaces, crosses her eyes, wiggles disjointedly, does a split and finally crawls off the stage stiff-legged, her rump higher than her head, like a young giraffe.” (more…)

Born on a sheep station in South Australia in 1909, Sir Robert Helpmann was one of Australia’s most legendary performers. He was an actor, a choreographer, and the director of plays, operas and musicals, but he was a dancer first and foremost.

The Bobby Dazzler! exhibition, currently showing at the Arts Centre, marks the centenary of Helpmann’s birth. Wandering through the rich and varied items on display you get a great sense of the dancer as a man, the man as a dancer. Photos, posters, theatre programmes, costumes and films paint a portrait of a brilliant and agile performer.

Helpmann was a student of Anna Pavlova and Ninette de Valois and starred in many films, including 1948’s The Red Shoes. He partnered Margot Fonteyn, and had a great friendship with Katharine Hepburn. The exhibition includes a hilarious photo of Hepburn and Helpmann at the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary in Brisbane, on their 1955 Old Vic tour to Australia, both smiling cheesily and cuddling koalas.

Another highlight is the lyrebird mask worn in The Display, the 1964 ballet Helpmann choreographed for The Australian Ballet. Look also for an action figure of him as the Child Catcher in the 1968 film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, alongside the actual coat he wore in the film.

The hour I spent there was crowded, with people drawn in by the costumes and especially by the 1990 film by Don Featherstone. It may be worth coming to the exhibition to see this illuminating 54-minute documentary alone. Bobby Dazzler! is an unmissable exhibition for ballet fans.

At the Arts Centre Gallery 1 until 6 June

Kathleen Gorham and Barry Kitcher in The Display - photographer unknown