Spectacles of Agency and Desire: Dance Histories and the Burlesque Stage

Lydia Thompson in Drag



Lydia Thompson and her British Blondes cross dressed in many performances including Ixion  (their first performance in the US) which premiered September of 1868 at Wood’s Broadway Theatre in New York. Cross dressing onstage as a phenomenon was not new, actors had been doing it for hundreds of years, but the way burlesque was utilizing the male clothing was different. During their act, Elizabeth Mullenix notes, “Thompson and her Blondes would parody honorable and dishonorable male contemporaries, adopt their language and their gestures, and sing songs and dance in imitation of well-known artists—all of which was standard fare for the burlesque” (379). The key words here are parody and imitation. These performers were not just playing out the stories of men, they were playing out stories as men. Which is a crucial distinction to make as it directly relates to the saliency of their performance. Men who attended the performance could not brush off the idea that they were being made fun of, and were thus very affected by the performance.





 
Works Cited:

Mullenix, Elizabeth. "Fair Montague" or "Ill-beseeming beast": Breeches performance on the American stage, 1800-1869. Diss. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1995. Web. 23 Oct 2015.

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