Chapter IV

HOW I BECAME A DANCER

THE next engagement that I obtained was with an acrobatic troupe. Our agent booked us for the Moss-Stoll tour, and opened at the London Hippodrome where we showed for four weeks. This was my first appearance in one of the big London variety palaces, though I had performed often in minor halls.

With this combination I performed at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire, Hackney Empire, Holloway Empire, New Cross Empire, Cardiff, Swansea, Newport, Nottingham, Leicester, Manchester, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Hull, and several other towns.

My impressions of audiences may interest my readers. Let me say that in my business I have usually found that the provincial audiences are more appreciative than those of London. Some artistes speak of the roughness of the Lancashire and Yorkshire folk; but in the manufacturing towns of the North of England I have met with much kindness. The people of the North expect a good show for their money, but they are unstinting in applause when a turn pleases them.

The coldest audience I have ever faced was to be seen in Glasgow. I do not say that the Scotch are always undemonstrative, but they do not often applaud with the heartiness and enthusiasm of the southerners. I have referred to the custom of “guying” a performer and giving him what is called a “raspberry.” Not a few artistes have had “raspberries” from the audiences in the Glasgow variety halls.

The success of the Sisters was so assured that a manager in Berlin wired for us to go there upon the termination of our contract with the Moss-Stoll company. This was my second visit to Germany, and I saw again many of the towns where I had performed with Mademoiselle Elvierra in my circus days.

By this time I was quite proficient as a flying trapeze artiste. I never experienced the least nervousness, and it was of no importance to me whether I performed with or without a safety-net. I am actually more nervous when crossing the crowded streets of London than I am when I am flying from one trapeze to another, or balancing myself in the flying rings, twenty feet or more above the ground.

My dancing days began with eight hours’ practice a day with a class at a dancing school in London. I was determined to learn my new profession as quickly as possible, for I wanted to be earning money. Having very little money in reserve, it was a strain upon my small savings to pay for lessons.

There are many kinds of stage dancing, but a majority of dancers specialize in one or two styles of dancing. I tried to learn as many styles as I could, and I have now a long list of dances in which I am proficient. I have several note-books full of directions as to the various steps in dances, written down from time to time, with a number of fresh steps and poses.

The ordinary stage dances as seen in England are classed as buck, or clog, jink shoe, sand dances, eccentric, acrobatic and skirt dances. Then there are the skipping-rope, graceful dances, hornpipes, reels, and big-boot dances. In time I mastered all the ordinary step-dances performed by variety artistes, and I also learned many of the ballet steps and the pirouette. Perhaps it will be well if I explain the different sorts of dances. The usual step-dance, in stage clogs, with jingles or “jinks” on the heels, is popular everywhere. The beginner finds the shuffling movement of the feet and the double taps with the heels a very complicated and difficult matter. I have seen girls cry with vexation because they found the steps so difficult to master.

The sand dance is of American origin, like the cake-walk, the two-step and several other eccentric dances. Sand-dancing is really dexterous shuffling of the feet to music, and to increase the sound made by the feet the stage is strewn with sand.

There are acrobatic and eccentric dances without number, and every performer in this line has his own specialities, such as high-kicking and leg-twisting. The skirt-dance is fairly modern, and is often introduced into musical comedy and light opera. Graceful dances include the old-fashioned minuets, waltzes, and Spanish and Russian dances. There are hornpipes and reels of all sorts, from the simple sailor’s hornpipe to the Highland fling and the strathspeys.

Descriptive dancing is now considered to be of the highest artistic order, and very clever people write learnedly of the dancing of such exponents as Maud Allan and her numerous imitators. This dancing is seen at its best in Russia, where the ballet is in the highest favour amongst the wealthy class. It is also popular in France and Spain. In Spain, as I soon learned, dancing is regarded quite seriously as a high art, and many of the dances of that country are of Moorish origin and very ancient.

I will not bore my readers with an essay upon dancing; but they will probably like to know how dancing is taught in the stage academies. In most of the schools where pupils are trained for the variety stage, dancing is taught in classes. Recently there has been a demand for troupes of girl dancers in all parts of Europe and in America and the Colonies. There is hardly a civilized country where you will fail to find a company of English dancers in one or another of the large towns.

Many girls begin their careers as dancers by joining a troupe of six or eight. A favourite number is eight. The girls must be young and attractive as well as good dancers, and in most cases they must be able to sing. The girl who can sing well and knows music stands a much better chance of success in the troupe, or as a solo dancer, than the girl who has a poor sense of tune and time and a weak and unpleasing voice. A really good singer or dancer working a turn by herself is in a better position than a member of a troupe. In the dancing schools the hours are often from four to six hours a day. The exercise is very tiring at first. Perspiration streams down the dancers faces; their limbs ache and feel stiff after an hour or so, and the beginners often fall out of the row and sink into a chair quite exhausted. In the earliest stages, while simple steps are being learned, the pupil rests her hands on a bar that stretches across the room.

The dress is like a gymnastic costume, and dancing pumps or light leather clogs are worn. A pianist plays the air, at first slowly, but the music becomes livelier as the pupils advance in their tuition.

A large number of girls are seized with a craze for dancing. They come to the schools from all ranks of society, but most of them are from struggling families who find it hard to make both ends meet. One girl will show a natural gift for dancing as soon as she joins a class, while another is very slow in learning the simplest movements of the legs and positions of the body. Again and again I have seen girls sent away from troupes and combinations as quite incapable of keeping time and step.

Nowadays I often teach troupes and solo dancers, and I can tell almost at a glance whether a girl is teachable or not. I remember my own difficulty in mastering the art of dancing, and feel very sympathetic towards those who are slow and awkward. I came to the dancing school after a severe training as a lofty and a ground tumbler, and I was in excellent physical condition. A girl who begins to learn dancing after working in a milliner’s shop, or at some sedentary employment, finds the work very hard indeed. Her muscles are soft, she has lost her childish agility, and her breathing power is feeble. After a long and complicated dance beginners often reel and stagger as though they would fall. But after training, the lungs grow stronger and the muscles become accustomed to the severe exertion.

In theatres and music-halls the dancers are often rewarded with an encore for their performance. Now, this is very gratifying to an artiste, for it shows that her dancing is admired. But to come on after a very trying dance is very exhausting work and a tremendous tax upon the dancer’s strength. Sometimes an artiste feels like fainting after giving an encore dance. The public do not realize this. If they knew how severe is the demand on the dancer’s strength, they might refrain from the encore. However, I do not think that dancers would like to see the encore abolished.

A number of society ladies learn graceful dancing in the theatrical schools, so that they may entertain their friends at private parties. These pupils are often difficult to teach. A lady thinks that because she is pretty and has a charming figure she ought to shine as a skirt-dancer; but there are other things besides looks and a shapely form that go to the making of an expert dancer. The heart and the lungs must be strong and the limbs supple, and the dancer must have a sense of music and a natural grace of movement.

When training for the pantomimes or the halls the artistes are worked very hard for weeks. A new dance must be practised daily until every step, gesture, pose and movement of the arms is perfect. In a troupe every dancer must work in time. It is necessary, too, that the dancers should be all of the same height. A troupe with two girls of about five feet and one or two of five feet eight inches would look ridiculous.

One of the popular dances that I have found most difficult is the skipping-rope dance. I cannot say why that is so, for there are more difficult dances. Hornpipes and step-dances, with clogs or jink shoes, I soon mastered, as well as skirt and graceful dances. My acrobatic training was of great service to me in learning eccentric dances, in which the leg muscles play a very active part.

The dancer’s life is not all bright and exciting. There is much patient, hard work connected with it, and the chances of even fair success are only moderate. I like my profession, and would not care to change it for another; but I do not wish to draw a too attractive picture of a stage dancer’s life. No girl should enter into this profession unless she is prepared to work hard and to suffer disappointments and to wait patiently for success. There are too many dancers, as I have said before. But there are not too many really clever dancers, and the artiste who can think out a new line for herself as a solo dancer stands a fair chance of earning regular money. In some cases she may be able to secure a high salary.

The pay of dancers varies considerably. I have known girls who have earned as little as ten shillings a week, and that not regularly. Fifty shillings to three pounds a week, with travelling expenses, is considered a pretty good salary for a troupe dancer. Even an able solo dancer in the pantomimes at small theatres may not earn more than two pounds a week for two performances a day. I have known the manager of a touring comedy company to offer as little as thirty shillings a week to a dancer, and he had no trouble in finding an artiste to take the offer.

There are no fortunes to be made as a dancer unless you happen to be a Loie Fuller, a Genée, a Maud Allan, or a La Belle Otero. But most dancers of the rank and file like the stage life, and prefer it to business. They are doing the work they like, and this is a compensation for their small pay.

The salary of a dancer would be good when compared with that of a waitress, seamstress, or typist if the work were regular. But in the variety profession the work is not regular, except for a minority of exceptionally brilliant “stars.” Two pounds a week for six months in the year only equals a pound a week taking the year through. A girl who can ask three pounds a week may think herself very well off—and so she is for the time being—compared with a shop assistant. But at any time the dancer may be suddenly thrown out of work. Her position after weeks of unemployment is very deplorable. I could tell many tales of the suffering that I have witnessed among artistes who were said to be “resting.”

A dancer “out of a shop” must appear respectable. She must not wear shabby clothes or look broken down. When she interviews an agent or a manager she must wear a nice dress and hat, smile, and appear to be flourishing and happy. How can she accomplish this when she is in debt at her lodgings, underfed, and depressed in spirits? This is the riddle that one has to solve, for there must be no hint of failure written upon the face or stamped in the seedy dress and faded hat.

My début as a dancer was in a touring “combination company.” We were booked for a tour in the small towns of the Midlands and the North of England. But trade was bad just then, and in some towns the audiences were small, and our manager soon found that his resources were quite exhausted.

In the fourth week of our tour we were stranded at the manufacturing town of Wednesbury. I shall never forget this experience, because it was the first of the kind. We had started out from London full of hope, and prospects seemed good. It was a good combination, with several clever variety artistes as members; and our “number” had been carefully practised for weeks. We had also obtained new stage costumes for this expedition.

A mishap of this sort is, unfortunately, common in the profession, and it is the frequent fate of small companies working town-halls and assembly-rooms with variety turns. When we were told that there was nothing in the treasury, and that salaries would not be paid that week, I felt that I could cry. So far as my memory serves me, we four girls had only a shilling or two amongst us. What were we to do in this predicament? We had not even the price of our fares back to London. It was a very serious position, for starvation was staring us in the face.

Well, every cloud has its silver lining. To our immense relief, some of the townsfolk rallied round us in our trouble, and a benefit performance was arranged in the town-hall. The show was fairly well attended, and we all worked with a will to please our audience. But when we came to receive our share of the takings we found that there was barely enough to pay our fares to London.

A time of hardship, anxiety and disappointment followed upon this fiasco in the Black Country. I had to endure the bitterness of “resting,” when I had hoped that my position as a dancer was assured. I almost regretted that I had left the acrobatic business. Even in that line there were no vacancies anywhere. It was a period of despair.

But one day, to my utter delight, my agent informed me that he was sending out a troupe called the Six Turner Girls. The pay was not high, by any means, but it was enough to live upon. In a week we started for the Midlands, where we performed at Walsall, Bordesley, Leicester, West Bromwich and other towns.

A better chance turned up for me when I made the acquaintance of a Greek artiste named Gamboli. He had married a girl friend of mine, a clever dancer, and she was now the mother of a lovely boy of about three years of age. Lily Gamboli had been my close friend, and when her husband proposed that I should join them and go to France, I seized at the chance of travelling in such congenial company.

Mr Gamboli is one of the cleverest artistes with whom I have been associated. He is full of ideas for novel “numbers,” he has artistic feeling and is well educated. He is fluent in several languages, and has much tact and business capacity.

With the Gambolis I went to Paris. It was my first visit to this beautiful city, and I shall never forget how it delighted me. What a contrast it was here in the tree-shaded streets and charming gardens to the dingy manufacturing towns of England! It seemed like a new world.

We opened in Paris at the famous Folies Bergère, a splendid hall of the first class, where we posed in various living statue groups, besides performing several dances. Our show was a success, and our reputation spread from hall to hall. We performed successfully at the Casino de Paris and at several of the leading café chantants for several months.

This was a prosperous time, and I was very happy with my friends, the Gambolis. We all three worked well together, and put our hearts into our “numbers.” This pleasant time in Paris was followed by a no less enjoyable series of engagements in Switzerland. For a month we made good money in Geneva, and we visited other towns before returning to delightful Paris.

I do not wish to appear ungrateful to my own countrymen, but I am bound to say that the artiste is better treated, in almost every sense, on the Continent than he is in our country. The British public are not unkindly on the whole; but in England the performer is often regarded with mingled scorn and pity as a lazy person and a ne’er-do-well and “waster.” Of course, the public have their pets in the profession; but the mass of artistes are often spoken of, with a shrug of the shoulders, as “those music-hall people!” Even many actors on the “legitimate” stage often express contempt for the variety artistes.

It is different on the Continent. I have performed, both as an acrobat and a dancer, in Holland, Belgium, France, Germany, and Spain, and everywhere I have met with courtesy and kindness. A French or a Spanish manager is almost invariably a gentleman. He treats the performer with respect, and he is polite and considerate towards the lady artiste. This is especially the case in the Spanish-speaking countries.

We made a second tour of Switzerland in the winter. At Christmas we were at the beautiful town of Lausanne, where Gamboli arranged a series of living statuary groups appropriate to the season. In one of these poses I represented Abel, and Mr Gamboli was an angel bearing me to Heaven after being murdered by Cain. I suppose that scriptural subjects for living statues would not be approved of by English audiences; but in Switzerland they were received with enthusiastic applause. In the tableau of Abraham and Isaac, little Henry, Lily Gamboli’s boy, appeared as Isaac, and he also posed in other Biblical scenes.

From Switzerland we went to the South of France, and here our good luck changed. We visited the lovely town of Nice, and went on to Marseilles; but business was far from brisk. At Monte Carlo we were more successful; and I had my first peep at the gambling tables, though I had no money to gamble with.

While at the old town of Perpignan, one of the most picturesque places in Europe, Lily and I were greatly terrified by hearing that a prowling gang of robbers were committing violent assaults upon women after dark, and robbing them of their money and jewellery. They were quite reckless in their thefts, and if they could not unfasten a woman’s earrings they would actually slice off a bit of her ear with a sharp knife.

You may be sure that Gamboli would not allow us to go out alone if he could help it. But now and then he was busy in the café chantant till late in the evening, and Lily and I used to walk home together. We chose the best-lighted streets, and often went a roundabout way to avoid dark and suspicious thoroughfares.

Fortunately, Gamboli became acquainted with the leader of this desperate gang, whom he met one day in a café. The robber appeared to like him, for his manners were always polite and amiable, and the two conversed together for a while. Upon parting, the leader of the robbers said to Gamboli; “Well, monsieur, I know that the ladies of your company sometimes go home unattended in the dark. But do not fear; I will see to it that they are not molested.”

After this comforting assurance Lily and I were not afraid to be out after nightfall.

From Perpignan we worked our way by the magnificent Pyrenees Mountains to the border of Spain, by way of Port Bou. At this place we were hard up for the first time since leaving England. The prospect seemed desperate. We had not enough money for our railway fares into Spain, and there was very little hope of obtaining food and lodging on credit. In my next chapter I will tell how we contrived to escape from this plight, thanks to Mr Gamboli’s cleverness.