[Loch-Ruadh] Word of the Day, March 2-3, 2002
Cait O'Hara
lady_cait at lycos.com
Sat Mar 2 08:47:26 PST 2002
ladder-dance
So called because the performer stands upon a ladder, which he shifts from place to place, and ascends or descends without losing the equilibrium, or permitting it to fall. This dance was practised at Sadler's Wells at the commencement of the last century, and revived about thirty years back....In the reign of Queen Anne, James Miles, who declared himself to be a performer from Sadler's Wells, kept a music-booth in Bartholomew Fair, where he exhibited nineteen different of dances. Among them were a wrestler's dance, vaulting upon the slack rope, and dancing upon the ladder. The latter, he tells us...was performed by a "young woman surpassing all her sex."
-- Joseph Strutt's Sports and Pastimes of England, 1801
On this date in 1717, a ballet was first performed in London.
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