Staging Dance in the Early-Victorian Theatre: the Adelphi Season 1847-48

Dance was ubiquitous in the theatres of early-Victorian London. The “minor” houses presented vibrant and diverse mixed bills that might on any single evening include melodrama, farce, burlesque, extravaganza or pantomime. All these theatrical genres could and did incorporate dance. In this period the Adelphi Theatre on the Strand was particularly well-equipped to employ dance in its productions because the theatre’s manager and leading actress, Madame Celeste (c1811-1882), was also a classically- trained dancer. How then did dance contribute to the performances in which it figured? My paper will examine, by way of example, the work presented during a single season, 1847-48. By identifying the dances that were shown (and, where possible, the dancers), and by locating dance events in the context of the plays and the programmes in which they occurred, it is possible to gain a greater understanding of the power and significance of dance in the early-Victorian theatre - a significance that dance and theatre historiography both tend to occlude.

Amanda Hodgson is an independent scholar working on Victorian theatre dance. She taught theatre studies and Victorian literature in various universities, including the University of Nottingham. Now retired, she is pursuing research that combines her long-standing passion for dance with her academic specialism. She is interested particularly in the function of dance in Victorian theatre pieces, not only as an important component of melodrama and burlesque but also when embedded in more naturalistic plays. Her papers on theatre dance in the 1840s and 1850s have appeared in Dance Research, Dancing Times and Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film.