Katie Seymour

Katie Seymour (9 January 1870 – 7 September 1903)Drawing Room Entertainment. ''London Stratford Times and Bow and Bromley News and South Essex Gazette,'' 15 March 1876, p. 5Gänzl, Kurt, 2001. ''The Encyclopedia of the Musical Theatre,'' p. 1837 was a British Victorian burlesque and Edwardian musical comedy entertainer who was remembered primarily for her dancing. She was considered, if not the first, one of the first to perform a style of dance called the skirt dance. Seymour began in song and dance routines at a very young age and would go on to appear in a string of highly successful long-running musicals staged at London's Gaiety Theatre during the 1890s. She fell ill in 1903 while on a theatrical tour of British South Africa and died not long after her return voyage home.

Early life

Catherine Phoebe Seymour was born in Nottingham to showfolk, William John Seymour and Phoebe Towers. Her father was a music hall comedian and singer, while her mother came from a noted family of actors. Seymour never attended dance classes, but instead received her early instructions from her mother who had been trained in an Italian style of classical dance.

Career 1875–1890

She first appeared on stage in 1875 as a member of Mr. Chatterton's Children's Pantomime Company
and the following year, billed as, 'the Little Wonder', six-year-old Seymour sang and danced a version of the hornpipe on 13 March at The Town Hall, London. That Christmas at London's Adelphi Theatre she was one of eighteen children to perform in a pantomime E. L. Blanchard based on the fairy tale, ''Little Goody Two-Shoes and Her Sweetheart Little Boy-Blue''. In the play, which also included eleven-year-old Connie Gilchrist as Harlequin, Seymour played Colin, a peasant boy, Puck, and a tricksy dancing spirit. A few years later, in fall 1879, she was Tim, a tiger, in a burlesque piece at London's Philharmonic Theatre entitled, ''Drury-lane and Park-lane''.

By 3 April 1881, Seymour was listed as one of the variety performers with the Middlesex Music Hall, Drury Lane and by 14 September 1884, she was a performing at the Sun Palace of Varieties, Knightsbridge. The following month she was appearing at both the Middlesex Music Hall and the Royal Foresters' Music Hall, Graydon's Palace of Varieties, Cambridge Road. By February 1885 at Deacon's Music Hall, Clerkenwell, Seymour was appearing in a comedy sketch with the Three Brothers Horn entitled ''Juggins Junior''. From February 1886 through July 1889 Seymour appeared as a variety entertainer at the Royal Holborn Theatre, London Pavilion and the Empire Theatre of Varieties (now the Empire, Leicester Square).

Over the 1889–90 season Seymour toured America as a dancer with Professor Hermann's Transatlantiques Vaudevilles company. During the tour one American press release described Seymour as having hair that ''streamed down her shoulders like rivers of gold''. and another declared ''Dainty Katie Seymour dances like a fairy or butterfly''. By July 1890 she was a member of the Bank Holiday Company at London's Oxford Music Hall.

Career 1891–1902

Seymour made her debut at the Gaiety Theatre on 31 September 1891 as a dancer in ''Joan of Arc'' an opéra bouffe by John L. Shine, Adrian Ross and composer Frank Osmond Carr. In mid-December ''Joan of Arc'' transferred to the Shaftesbury Theatre where it remained through January 1892. A critic with the St. James Gazette wrote of Seymour's first night's performance in ''Joan of Arc'':

Miss Katie Seymour, who used to dance so prettily at music-halls, now dances more prettily in a '' pas seul,'' '' pas de deux'' (her cleverest performance) and a ''pas de trois.'' Miss Lethbridge is really the more graceful of the two, but Miss Seymour is the more piquant.

On 6 February 1892 at the Prince of Wales's Theatre, Seymour danced in the debut of ''Blue-Eyed Susan'', a comic opera by George R. Sims, Henry Pettitt and Frank Osmond Carr based on Douglas Jerrold's ''Black Eyed Susan''. Seymour stayed with ''Black Eyed Susan'' through June, after which she assumed the role of Fettalana to Letty Lind's Cinder-Ellen and Sylvia Grey's Linconsina for the last few performances at the Grand Theatre of the popular burlesque comedy, ''Cinder Ellen up too Late''.Gaiety Theatre, ''Cinder-Ellen up too Late''. ''London Standard,'' 3 September 1892, p. 4,

Over the summer and early fall of 1892 Seymour toured with ''Cinder-Ellen up too Late'' and remained with the show when it reappeared at the Gaiety Theatre at the beginning of October for a run that would continue until mid-December. A few days after Christmas she was engaged at the Empire Theatre to dance in, ''Round the Town'', described as a characteristic ballet in five tableaux by Katti Lanner and George Edwardes.

After an eight-month run in ''Round the Town'', Seymour returned to the Gaiety Theatre on 9 September 1893, where she would remain until 1901, to appear in Edwardes' revival of Audran's comic opera ''La Mascotte,'' and on 21 October, ''Don Juan'', a burlesque by James T. Tanner, with lyrics and music by Adrian Ross and Meyer Lutz, respectively. During the eight-month run of ''Don Juan'', Seymour teamed up with Edmund Payne in a separate piece entitle, ''The Candle and the Moth'', in which the two performed the ''Bon-Bon Dance''.

''Don Juan'' closed at the end of June 1894 and was followed that November with Seymour in the role of Miss Robinson, a fitter with the Royal Store, in ''The Shop Girl'', a musical comedy H. J. W. Dam and Adrian Ross. ''The Shop Girl'' proved to be a huge success with a phenomenal two-year run. From July through November 1896 she was Phoebe Toodge, May's (Ellaline Terriss) maid, in ''My Girl'', another musical comedy from Tanner and Ross. On 5 December Seymour opened as Lucille, a slack wire walker, in ''The Circus Girl

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