Alice Matilda Lethbridge (1866 – 4 February 1948) was an English

music hall Music hall is a type of British theatrical entertainment that was popular from the early Victorian era, beginning around 1850. It faded away after 1918 as the halls rebranded their entertainment as variety. Perceptions of a distinction in Bri ...

dancer and

Gaiety Girl Gaiety Girls were the chorus girls in Edwardian musical comedies, beginning in the 1890s at the Gaiety Theatre, London, in the shows produced by George Edwardes. The popularity of this genre of musical theatre depended, in part, on the beautifu ...

, best known for her "

skirt dance A skirt dance is a form of dance popular in Europe and America, particularly in burlesque and vaudeville theater of the 1890s, in which women dancers would manipulate long, layered skirts with their arms to create a motion of flowing fabric, often i ...

" act.

Early life

Alice Matilda Lethbridge was born in

Clerkenwell Clerkenwell () is an area of central London, England. Clerkenwell was an ancient parish from the mediaeval period onwards, and now forms the south-western part of the London Borough of Islington. The well after which it was named was redisco ...

, the daughter of Thomas and Louisa (née Holliday) Lethbridge. Travel writer

Grace Marguerite Hay Drummond-Hay Grace Marguerite, Lady Hay Drummond-Hay (née Lethbridge, 12 September 1895 – 12 February 1946) was a British journalist, who was the first woman to travel around the world by air (in a zeppelin). Although she was not an aviator herself at fir ...

was her niece, the daughter of her brother Sidney Lethbridge. Alice Lethbridge studied dance with

John D'Auban Frederick John D'Auban (1842 – 15 April 1922) was an English dancer, choreographer and actor of the Victorian and Edwardian eras. Famous during his lifetime as the ballet-master at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, he is best remembered as the c ...

Career

Lethbridge was a

, best known for performing a "

", in which she manipulated a voluminous long skirt while dancing, swirling the fabric to reveal glimpses of knees and thighs. Lethbridge's version of the skirt dance involved arching her back almost to the horizontal, a challenging position that may have inspired similar moves for American dancer

Loie Fuller Loie Fuller (born Marie Louise Fuller; January 15, 1862 – January 1, 1928), also known as Louie Fuller and Loïe Fuller, was an American actress and dancer who was a pioneer of both modern dance and theatrical lighting techniques. Career Born ...

. In 1896 she was described as "the tallest dancer on the English stage". She was appearing in the musical farce ''A Man About Town'' in 1897, when

George Bernard Shaw George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950), known at his insistence simply as Bernard Shaw, was an Irish playwright, critic, polemicist and political activist. His influence on Western theatre, culture and politics extended from ...

reviewed her work as "sufficiently hard-working and conscientious" but showing "no compensating brilliancy in the twinkling of her feet". Other shows featuring Lethbridge were ''Mynheer Jan'' (1887), in which she danced a "vigorous"

saltarello The ''saltarello'' is a musical dance originally from Italy. The first mention of it is in Add MS 29987, a late-fourteenth- or early fifteenth-century manuscript of Tuscan origin, now in the British Library. It was usually played in a fast tr ...

, ''Carina'' (1888), ''La Prima Donna'' (1889), ''Robert Macaire'' (1891), ''Joan of Arc'' (1891), ''Cinder-Ellen'' (1892), ''

Little Christopher Columbus ''Little Christopher Columbus'' is a burlesque opera in two acts, with music by Ivan Caryll and Gustave Kerker and a libretto by George R. Sims and Cecil Raleigh. It opened on 10 October 1893 at the Lyric Theatre in London and then transferred ...

'' (1894), and ''

Baron Golosh ''Baron Golosh'' is an operetta adapted from the 1891 French opérette ''L'oncle Célestin'' by Edmond Audran with some of the original music replaced with songs composed by Meyer Lutz and Leslie Stuart. After a tryout in Swansea, it premiered fro ...

'' (1895). She toured in Australia and North America in the 1890s.

Personal life

Alice Lethbridge married actor Henry Jameson Turner in 1889. She was widowed when he died soon after. She married again in 1906, to author and diplomat Sir Reginald St Johnston. She died in 1948, aged 81 or 82.

References

External links

* *Martie Fellom, "The Skirt Dance: A Dance Fad of the 1890s" (Ph.D. dissertation, New York University, 1985). ProQuest document ID 303393658. {{DEFAULTSORT:Lethbridge, Alice 1866 births 1948 deaths People from Clerkenwell English female dancers Date of birth missing Place of death missing