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.

Burlesque dancers were also called ‘fan dancers’. Like the famous Sally Rand, these dancers incorporated fans, as well as some of the other more graceful and feminine movements of ballet, into their routines.

Today’s burlesque performers also still incorporate dance into their routines. Poster girl of the ‘new burlesque’, Dita von Teese, endured rigorous classical ballet training until she was a teenager, just like many of the early burlesque performers. Her performances regularly feature her dancing en pointe.

“Ballet is my favorite (form of dance),” von Teese has said. “I’m just a big fan of the beauty of ballet, and the fact that it’s so feminine. There isn’t one ugly move in ballet. If you snap a picture anywhere you’re going to have perfect body lines; really feminine, beautiful body shapes.”

Closer to home, when the ‘Spanish’ dancer Lola Montez toured Australia during the 1850s gold rush, she made a huge impression. Vaudeville and burlesque dancers such as Montez familiarised local audiences with the performing arts, and paved the way for ballet’s immense popularity in the early 20^th century.

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.”

The Théatre des Champs-Élysées had been the scene of the famous 1913 premiere of the Rite of Spring. But interestingly, a review in Vogue from 1925 stated that “the Negro … dances better than Nijinsky”.

A few months later, Baker had a show at the Folies Bergère and she was also taking ballet classes with Balanchine. She had swiftly become one of France’s most famous, important and beloved performers.

Writer Philip M Ward explains how her improvisations transgressed the conventions of choreographed dance. “Where European dancers showed the front, presenting the body as a unified line, Baker contrived to move different parts of her body to different rhythms,” he says. “Most shocking to dance purists, she used her backside, shaking it, as one of her biographers says, as though it were an instrument.”

Fortunately, many of her routines have been archived and Baker’s remarkable style can still be admired. With movements as syncopated and frenzied as wild fire, Josephine Baker was always in control.

In Funny Face, Audrey Hepburn turns to a cynical Fred Astaire in a dimly lit, bohemian café and says: “Isn’t it time you realised that dancing is nothing more than a form of expression or release?” She then bounds into the centre of the room and scorches herself into cinematic history with an impromptu, expressive dance routine electrifyingly choreographed by Eugene Loring.

Hepburn’s approach to fashion reflected her Funny Face character’s views about dance; it, too, was an expression and a release. And, fittingly, Hepburn’s style in turn relied on dance for inspiration. By popularising the cigarette pants and ballet flats she had simply felt comfortable in all her life, she influenced generations of women and made an indelible mark on the fashion world.

Hepburn started her career as a dancer, training in London with Marie Rambert after World War II. She went on, of course, to find fame as an actress and a humanitarian, but she retained a dancer’s poise, posture and grace her whole life.

While her collaboration with Hubert de Givenchy is legendary – in Hepburn, he found a muse for his cinched waists and full skirts – she is also remembered for the black Capri pants and Salvatore Ferragamo ballet flats made famous in Funny Face. These emphasised her dancer’s physique, and sent women the world over into a terpsichorean-style frenzy they still haven’t recovered from. (Just witness the enduring popularity of ballet flats.)

With her vivid style and incomparable elegance, Audrey Hepburn truly is the patron style saint of ballerinas.

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

Is this the first time you’ve worked with Graeme Murphy?
No, I did a ballet with Graeme for The Australian Ballet called Meander, but that was about 20 years ago. So it had been a while.

What is the background to your involvement in The Silver Rose?
I’d actually just done a production of the opera Der Rosenkavalier for the Wellington Festival a few years earlier, so I was already familiar with the story. Graeme came over and explained that he wanted to set this ballet at the turn of the century, so he already had that sort of image of what he wanted to do. And after a little bit of discussion I threw a few ideas at him, and that’s sort of how it kicked it off.

What was your main inspiration for the set design?
About six months before Graeme approached me to do the ballet, I had been to Hungary and I’d stayed at the Four Seasons Gresham Palace Hotel in Budapest. It was an Art Nouveau palace that had been converted into a hotel. The entrance foyer had this glass roof over it and I went: ‘Wow! This is a fabulous set!’ And so when Graeme said ‘Art Nouveau’, I said, ‘That’s my inspiration!’

The look of the ballet, particularly the first act, seems to be heavily inspired by the work of artist Gustav Klimt. How did that come about?
It’s always really difficult when people ask you how things evolve because things are thrown at you. Graeme might have said, ‘A bit Art Nouveau, a bit Klimt,’ and you just take it, you grab that bit and you run with it! So I used the Klimt in the curtains and in her dress, which was like a dead steal of his painting of the girl in the gold dress. And so then, when the Marschallin gets dressed [in Act 1], that painting is actually recreated on stage.

Are there any particularly tricky costume changes the dancers have to contend with in this ballet?
No. There’s really nothing like we had in Dusty for instance –there were thousands, that poor girl! In The Silver Rose there are a few things that we have to slip over the top, but there are no split-second changes.

Can you tell us a bit about where you sourced the fabrics for the costumes?
Well, when you’re in Europe everything’s mainly ordered from catalogues and books, but we did have one bit of fabric for a coat that came out of Turkey, I think. But then I had to chop that up when I saw what Graeme had choreographed – I had to make it more danceable! But the little panels down the front of Sophie’s ball gown, I had those beaded in India.

What was your main goal for the set design?
What I’ve tried to do is give you this really crisp, white set that will transform easily into the three particular acts. So from this white set, by introducing different [lighting] colours and costume combinations, you’re going to get three different looks out of the one atmosphere.

Can you talk a little about what it was like to work as a part of an all-Australian creative team (choreographer Graeme Murphy, creative associate Janet Vernon and composer Carl Vine) to create a ballet in Europe?
It was an interesting thing that the music was Australian, Graeme was Australian, I was Australian and yet we were doing [a ballet based on the European opera] Der Rosenkavalier in the home of Strauss and giving it another slant.

I think that because we have all worked internationally, I’d like to think that as a creative team we are international players. So it doesn’t really matter if you’re doing it in Sydney, New York, Munich or London, you’re applying your trade to an international standard.

How did you feel when you first saw The Silver Rose performed in Munich?
When you do shows, they get on stage and it all comes together and you go, ‘Oh wow, this is great’, you know? And not every show you do you think it’s really fabulous – I mean, you think you’ve done a good job. But sometimes you get goosebumps and you go, ‘Oh my god, this is really fabulous!’ And I really felt that about The Silver Rose.

The Australian Ballet performs The Silver Rose in Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide in 2010

Images: Bavarian State Ballet. Photography Wilfried Hoesl

How did the idea for Clair-de-Lune come about?
It started with a picture: I could see a girl at the barre in a 19th century ballet studio, and a mouse watching from a mouse hole nearby. And somehow I knew that the girl could not speak …

Can you tell us a bit about your own background in ballet?
I studied ballet by the Cecchetti method at the Burlakov School of Ballet in Penrith, where I grew up. It was one of the most memorable and influential experiences of my life.

What kind of research did you do for the book?
Clair-de-Lune is set in the 1850s, so I had to read up on ballet in the 19th century. I also saw two fascinating documentaries: Elusive Muse, the story of Suzanne Farrell and her mentor, legendary choreographer George Balanchine, and another one in which Isabelle Fokine discussed her grandfather Mikhail’s choreography for Anna Pavlova’s signature solo, ‘The Dying Swan’.

Do you think that ballet is a crucial element to the story, or could you still have told Clair-de-Lune’s story if you’d made her, say, a basketball player or a violinist?
I guess Clair-de-Lune could have had some other calling … but I had a particular kind of story in mind when I began. I wanted to write something flamboyant and baroque and romantic and intensely emotional. And the world of ballet, with its elaborate culture and traditions, and a body of legend that goes back generations, seemed the perfect background for my purposes. Plus, I wanted to write about relationships between girls and mothers and grandmothers, and about the dangers of shutting out men. Ballet seemed perfect for that, too.

You’ve mentioned that you loved Lorna Hill’s Sadler’s Wells series when you were a kid, and also Noel Streatfeild’s Ballet Shoes. What is it about ballet, do you think, that makes it such a compelling storyline for readers?
I think it’s the mixture of romance and discipline. There is nothing more magically lovely than the romantic ballets of the 19th century. And there is nothing that is harder work than becoming a skilled enough dancer to actually dance one of those roles. To work almost impossibly hard to attain such an exquisite ideal is a fascinating story in itself. It’s a metaphor that any idealistic person can understand. And anyone who lives life at that kind of pitch is going to have intense feelings about people too. So passion – and conflict caused by the tremendous demands of the art – becomes a fruitful theme as well.

Nijinsky’s remarkable Diaries, scribbled just before he was committed to an insane asylum, chronicles the rambling thoughts of a man who is descending into schizophrenia. Isadora Duncan turned to drinking after the drowning deaths of both her children, and later died shockingly in an automobile accident. Gelsey Kirkland went through a harrowing battle with eating disorders and drug addiction, but lived to tell the tale in her 1986 memoir, Dancing on My Grave.

Sometimes a dancer’s unhappy life will come full circle and end up back on stage. Boris Eifman based his 1997 ballet, The Red Giselle, on Olga Spessivtseva , an exceptional dancer who was plagued by mental illness for most her life. Jiří Kylián wrote his 1987 piece, Heart’s Labyrinth, about the tragic suicide of one of his dancers at the Netherlands Dance Theater.

Whatever the reasons for their torment – mental illness, addiction, poverty or perfectionism – the paradox underpinning it all is that these dancers brought great happiness to their audiences, despite their own suffering. And in doing so they showed us that the fine line between joy and sorrow is more like a smudge; in fact, it’s hardly there at all.

Image01 Nijinsky in L’après-midi d’un faune, 1912. Photography Baron Adolf de Meyer
Image02 Karsavina and Nijinsky in Le spectre de la rose

Already since his death, the demand for impersonators has skyrocketed, but they’re not the only ones to have been imitating Jackson over the years. Mimicry of his style can be found from Bollywood films and Filipino prisons, to Saturday Night Live skits and Justin Timberlake’s entire oeuvre.

But a less obvious – and perhaps more powerful – influence is the one he’s had on choreographers and dancers over the past 30 years; it seems impossible to imagine a dancer who might not be, in some way, inspired by Jackson’s originality and innovation.

Many of us grew up dancing to Jackson in the backyard. From the early disco beat of Don’t Stop ’Til You Get Enough to the tough street punch of Beat It and Bad, we learnt to move by mimicking what we saw him do on Rage or Video Hits.

We practised the Moonwalk of course, but he put his signature on many other remarkable moves too: the awesome toe stand, the syncopated shoulder pop, the gravity-defying lean of Smooth Criminal (we didn’t know that he wore special shoes for that). And later on there were the global dance moves he reappropriated and made entirely his own in Black and White.

He was a master of the synchronised group dance, such as the zombie monster mash of Thriller, or 1992’s elaborate Egyptian-themed clip for Remember the Time.

But it’s when he’s dancing on his own, as shown here at the Motown 25th Anniversary Special from 1983, that his innovative style and innate talent for interpretation is most powerful.

(Helpful tips from ballet fiction)

1. Get yourself orphaned
Every reader of ballet fiction knows that becoming an orphan is the critical first step in a professional dancing career. The most convenient scenario is if they simply died when you were very young, like Drina’s parents in Jean Estoril’s popular Drina series from the ‘50s and ‘60s. But better still if you can …

2. Get yourself impressively orphaned
The mother of the mute main character of Clair-de-Lune, Cassandra Golds’ exquisite novel from 2004, was a famous ballerina herself and – can you believe it – actually died onstage, while dancing the role of a dying swan. Tragic, yes. But also a pretty cool detail for Clair-de-Lune’s future bio.

3. Get a horrid cousin
The next step after getting yourself orphaned is to obtain a horrid cousin. In Lorna Hill’s beloved Sadler’s Wells series, Veronica is forced to go and live with her aunt, uncle and horrid cousin, Fiona, after her father dies. Horrid cousins are integral personalities for the beginner dancer to be exposed to, as their backstabbing and bitchiness help prepare the novice for the professional dance world.

4. If your parents insist on staying alive, it’s preferable that they try to suffocate your dance dream
Many mothers in real life tend to be hyper-enthusiastic and totally supportive of their children’s dance careers. Ballet fiction demonstrates that these ballet mums are definitely going about it the wrong way. Far more conducive to a successful ballet career is if your mother tries to foil your ambitions at every plot point.

In Edward Stewart’s popular 1979 book Ballerina, one of the main characters, Christine, comes from a rich family whose mother doesn’t consider dance a worthwhile profession. Which of course only makes her daughter all the more determined to do it.

5. Get adopted by someone eccentric
If you’ve followed Steps 1 and 2 correctly and lost both your parents in a most moving way, you’ll definitely be in the market for an eccentric guardian. This could be an aunt or uncle, but it’s better if you can find an eccentric archaeologist to adopt you, as exemplified most charmingly in Noel Streatfeild’s 1936 favourite, Ballet Shoes.

6. Avoid getting dramatically murdered
Once you finally succeed in joining a professional ballet company, expect to become entangled in criminal intrigue, as per the highly popular ballet crime spoofs of the ‘30s and ‘40s written by Carol Brahms and SJ Simon.

The first in the series, A Bullet in the Ballet, opens during a performance of Petroushka with the main dancer being shot, followed swiftly by the murder of his replacement. It goes without saying that surviving such professional mishaps are crucial if you expect to have a long and rewarding dance career.

One of the most incredible and unlikely stories to ever come out of the pop music world dates back to 1975, when big-business record label EMI gave 16 year-old Kate Bush a record deal as well as the unheard-of permission to spend the first three years of her contract on ‘artistic development’. She knew exactly what she wanted to do with the time: she wanted to learn how to dance.

She started attending open classes at The Dance Centre in Covent Garden, London, under the tutelage of Lindsay Kemp, a dancer who studied with Marcel Marceau in the fifties and also trained David Bowie in mime. These classes were the starting point of an extraordinary career, a career in which Bush has relentlessly sought to use dance as an extension of her music.

At the end of 1977, Bush burst onto the scene with her first single, Wuthering Heights. Watching both the ‘white dress’ and the ‘red dress’ versions now, they stand out for their expressiveness and originality.

Other film clips followed, often featuring her two regular dancers, Gary Hurst and Stuart Avon Arnold. Babooshka, Sat in Your Lap, Them Heavy People and Suspended in Gaffa demonstrate Bush’s refusal of being labelled as merely a pop singer – from the outset she was an artist whose sole intention was self-expression, with dance and movement being a crucial way of getting her ideas across.

Over the years she worked with several choreographers, including Kemp, Robin Kovak and Arlene Phillips, and also created choreography of her own. She only toured once, for 1978’s ‘Tour of Life’, but dance was so integral to the show that she instructed her sound technicians to come up with a headset device so that she could sing and dance without any restrictions. Essentially, it was just a wire coat hanger with a mic on it (Bush remembers they used to pick the cabs up on it), but this invention of the microphone headset revolutionised live concert performance forever.

Perhaps the most starkly beautiful and affecting clip is 1985’s, Running Up That Hill. Featuring dancer Michael Hervieu, and with choreography by Dianne Grey, Bush explains what their objective was: ‘ We wanted to do … a nice, serious piece of dance: simple, well-filmed [so we could] give dance a chance … in this pop world.’