.
I’m not a ‘dance’
man. I wasn’t allowed to learn dance as a boy, I never caught up later, and
when I appeared on the stage and someone like Gillian Lynne was foolish enough
to put me in the front row (of the singers-who-dance-a-bit) without a try-out,
merely because I had a 36-26-36 figure and an, um, big personality, the truth
became hideously obvious. When, circa 1972, I went to sea with the fabled Vic
Ogley company as primo basso … well, there was no slacking in that company of a
dozen-and-a-half bodies … everyone had to do everything. So, I sang bass and,
when the occasion demanded, baritone or tenor (‘Song of the Daaaaawn’), and I
‘danced’. My partner, in those days, was the beautiful Alison, ex-Royal Ballet
School. She took me in hand and she tried, my god she tried. But it was no
good. No one rubbished me, but years later the company régisseur, who became
(and was up till his death this month) my dearest friend, said to me: 'you
couldn’t even march. You did ‘same arm, same leg’'.
Maybe, as a
result, I didn’t much enjoy watching Dance either. I remember as a child being
taken to see Poul Gnatt as Peer Gynt at our local theatre. When my father asked
me whether I had liked it, it appears I replied: ‘when does the opera come to
our town again’. Then, when I met Ian, we went to several ballets. Ian had been
publicity manager for the Russian ballet in Sydney in 1938, so elderly ladies
called Tamara kept popping by, but when we went to Covent Garden … well, there
was one incident that summed the whole Russian ballet thing up for me. Elderly
lady in front of us no 1: 'on the thirteenth fouettée she didn’t .. ', lady no 2: 'MARGOT did fourteen …'; and now on to the floor exercises and the beam. It just
wasn’t ‘me’. Too technical, too soulless … and what in the heck were those cake
frills they were wearing.
But I was finally
to find a dance show that I liked enormously. A French company guested at
Covent Garden, and we were invited. We often were, when there were empty seats.
They played La Fille mal gardée … is
that the one where there’s a chimney? … and La
Sylphide .. no, that was the chimney!'.. and it was enchanting. No gymnastics, no fifty-two fouettées,
just glorious, graceful dance and pantomime.
Alas, France
didn’t win. And nowadays thing have got to a desperately low state, with modern
musical theatre and TV variety show choreography. On something like the
unregretted American Idol you don’t
know whether to turn the sound or the video off first … when I go to my local
shows, lines of people doing 1960s TV routines (damn you, Paddy, Irving and Duggie)_...
Anyway, this isn’t
what I set out to blog. So change gear.
The dancers I was
thinking about weren’t the grand ones. Today I got led (via my blonde burlesque
ladies) into the world of the ‘spectacular theatre’. You know, those shows
where the main elements were .. and are .. the tricky and glamorous scenery and
scene-changes, the billion costume changes, and the nubile ladies, roughly
described as ‘ballet’ (can you hold third position dear?), who filled the
evening’s entertainment when there wasn’t a smidgin of story or dialogue and an
incidental pop song going on. And in English and French terms that means the
‘opéra bouffe à grand spectacle’, in German the ‘grosse Feerie Spektakel’ and
in American … well, lets not quibble about precedence here, it’s that kind of
show that was epitomised by the infamous The
Black Crook.
So that’s where we
are going. Did the dancers in shows of the grand spectacle genre actually dance
as we would understand it? Or were they just glamorous girlies, lightly
dressed, making movements that would cause their male audience to purr? Hmmm.
Well, to start with, there don’t seem to have been any ballerinos. So the aim
was clearly signified. But the principal dancing ladies were all from Europe.
Well, they all had European names. Weren’t there any dancers in America?
Morlacchi, Bonfanti, Palladino …
 |
| Bonfanti |
 |
| Morlacchi |
And even in the
lower reaches … which is where I went today. Don’t ask me why. Ah, yes. I was
scrubbing up the featured girls for one of Lydia Thompson’s shows and there was
‘Miss Schrötter’. Too weird not to be a real name. So I put away my singers,
for a day, and went in search of the lowly Miss S.
Carolina turns up
first to my gaze as a momentarily featured chorine in the production of The Forty Thieves at Niblo’s Garden in
1869: ‘A German Fay’. Then the ‘Misses Schrotter’, Carolina and Gabrielle,
appear on the bills at the Theatre Comique, alongside Hattie Kelsey (sister of
the better-known Lizzie and also, allegedly, a Crook rescapee), Lizzie Dark and, later, star dancer Annetta
Galetti and a Blonde, Emma Grattan.
Third sister
Henrietta joined them in the Edith Challis extravaganza Lalla Rookh at the Grand Opera House, I see them (two or sometimes
three) at Pittsburgh, at the Olympic Theatre supporting Pauline Markham,
dancing a ‘Sailors’ Festival’ at the Metropolitan variety house with Lizzie Kelsey,
then a Can-Can, a Spanish Dance and a Flower Dance … Carolina seems to have got solo billing in Ahmed at the Grand Opera House, then
they can be seen at the Tivoli and the Parisian Varieties …
Nearly a decade as
second danseuses on the New York variety and occasionally theatre stages. I
suppose it was worth leaving Vienna for?
I tried to find
out what became of them, and I partially succeeded.
Gabriella was
married in 1875 to a Danish doctor named Otto Auris, and died of it 20 April
1876. At 44 Bond Street.
The others, I’m
not wholly sure of, but there are very few Schrotters around in those years in
New York, and when two of those few just happen to be a Carolina and a
Henrietta …
The Carolina
married an Austrian ex-army man by name Victor [von] Helly, of allegedly
knightly extraction, had two children and lost him in 1891. She was still alive
in the 1930 census ..
The Henrietta?
Well there seem to have been two. One who married an Arnold Reifenstuhl and went off to Chicago to people the county with little Reifenstuhls; the other who
became a Mrs Grunwald …
Carolina’s
daughter became a lady in a shop. I imagine her mother and her aunts had had rather
more fun dancing their way through life as young women.
Which should bring
me back tidily to where I started, but absolutely doesn’t … I have had a bit of
a ramble, haven’t I?
Dance, dance,
dance, little lady ..
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