Lesbian Dancers & Choreographers Throughout History

... modern dance, one of the first performance artists, and a pioneer of theatrical lighting techniques.

Loïe Fuller was openly lesbian. She had a relationship with the painter Louise Abbéma (allegedly the former lover of Sarah Bernhardt), who introduced her to Nathalie Barney's gay Parisian salon. After starting a relationship with Gabrielle Bloch a.k.a Gab Sorère, a set designer and choreographer of the Belle Époque who exclusively wore dapper suits, they moved in together in 1905 and remained together for 23 years, up until Loïe’s death.

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... Maud Allan (born Ulla Maude Durrant) studied piano in Berlin but changed career direction to become a dancer, with a "unique expressive style of dance" - sometimes performing scantily clad and barefoot. She made her stage debut in Vienna in 1903 and over the following five years, danced throughout Europe to Beethoven, Bach, Chopin, Debussy Schubert, Schumann, and Mendelssohn.

Maud achieved notoriety with her sensational version of Salome (The Vision of Salome) and her "Dance of the Seven Veils", based on Oscar Wilde's controversial play which she performed in Vienna (1906) and at the Palace Theatre, London, 1908. Not only was Oscar's play, Salome, controversial (it had been banned during rehearsals in London due to its depiction of biblical characters which was illegal and deeply contentious), Maud danced topless; her body only covered by intricate jewellery!

In 1918, she intended to reprise this role, working with a Dutch theatre impresario, J T Grein. This time, however, the performances in London were to be private in order to escape the censorship of the Lord Chamberlain, who had banned Oscar Wilde’s works in the aftermath of Oscar's trial. To be a private audience member one had to apply to a: Miss Valettea of 9 Duke Street Adelphi W6.

Under the sensational headline, "The Cult of the Clitoris", in his own journal Vigilante, Noel Pemberton-Billing (a British inventor, writer and Member of Parliament) implied that Maud Allan was a lesbian and a member of a "cult" of women who loved women. Moreover, Pemberton-Billing speculated that Maud's private performances of The Vision of Salome would attract a number of high-profile homosexuals, who he claimed were named in a "Black Book". 47,000 British "sexual perverts" were said to be included in this Black Book. Pemberton-Billing believed that some of the audience would be open to being blackmailed by the German government in exchange for the Germans keeping their sexuality secret.

Maud commenced criminal proceedings for obscene, criminal and defamatory libel against Noel Pemberton-Billing and the libel case opened at the Old Bailey in May, 1918. On 4th June, 1918, the jury found Pemberton-Billing... not guilty. The "Black Book" has never been found. Check out UK National Archives and spartacus-educational.com

After the trial, Maud returned to America and toured South America and performed sporadically in London, Brussels, Paris, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. She returned to London in 1928 and there she established the West Wing School of Dancing where she taught dance to underprivileged children.

Though Maud (understandably) denied Pemberton-Billing's accusations, she did swing for the girls. It is thought she had a special "friendship" with Margaret Asquith who was married to Herbert Asquith, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (1908 - 1916). Margaret paid for Maud's apartment overlooking Regent’s Park (for twenty years?), until Herbert Asquith's death in 1928. Maud managed to stay on, in the Regent's Park and lived for tens years with Verna Aldrich, her secretary and lover who was twenty years younger than Maud and who... paid the rent!

26 portraits of Maud Allan are archived in the The National Portrait Gallery.

BTW: Urban myth? - in 1900, Maud illustrated an encyclopaedia for women titled Illustriertes Konversations-Lexikon der Frau! The reason for changing her name from Ulla Maude Durrant to Maud Allan was that in 1895 her brother, Theodore Durrant (a 23-year old medical student), was charged with the brutal murders of two women, Blanche Lamont (a 20-year old teacher) and Minnie Flora Williams (a 21-year old Emmanuel Baptist parishioner). Her brother became known as "The Demon of the Belfry" and was executed on 7th January 1898

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who performed throughout Western Europe, the Soviet Union and the Americas. Isadora Duncan rejected traditional ballet steps to stress improvisation, emotion, and the human form. Thus her dance teaching and performances helped free ballet from its conservative restrictions and was a prelude to the development of modern dance. Isadora Duncan was among the first choreographers to raise dance to the status of creative art.

Isadora Duncan was an atheist and bisexual. Duncan bore three children, all out of wedlock and unbelievably tragically her first two children drowned in the care of their nanny in 1913, when a runaway car went into the River Seine. More so, tragically haunting as Isadora died at age 50 when her scarf became entangled in the wheels and axle of the car in which she was travelling in Nice, France.

Isadora had a relationship with the poet and playwright Mercedes de Acosta.

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... Ballets Russes of Sergei Diaghilev, based in Paris. With her own company, Pavlova became the first ballerina to tour ballet around the world. She is most recognised for the creation of the role The Dying Swan, which is a short sole ballet lasting 4 minutes, choreographed by Mikhail Fokine to Camille Saint-Saëns's Le Cygne from Le Carnaval des animaux as a pièce d'occasion and which she performed about 4,000 times.

During a performance in London, American sculptor and author Malvina Hoffman first laid eyes on Pavlova, after which they became friends, and Pavlova the model for many of Hoffman's most powerful sculptures. They had an affair which apparently led to Hoffman's divorce.

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... Marion first started out as physical education teacher at the Manual Arts High School in Los Angeles. She was then hired as a dance instructor, for a summer program at the University of California, Berkeley. There she began recruiting girls for a dance troupe to perform in vaudeville on the Orpheum Circuit (a chain of vaudeville and movie theatres across America). The dance troupe grew from 6 dancers to up to 25 members under the name The Marion Morgan Dancers. From the mid-1910s until the mid-1920s the Marion Morgan Dancers performed on stage, interpretive dances often with Egyptian and classical Greek and Roman themes such as Helen of Troy. They toured across America, creating a sensation particularly as they sometimes danced in filmsy costumes, bare-armed and bare-footed.

With the growing popularity of movies, Marion began to focus on film production. In addition to creating choreography for dance sequences in movies, she staged and directed her own dance films and wrote scenarios for movies. Her choreography for movies, includes A Night of Love (1926), Paris at Midnight (1926), Up in Mabel's Room (1926), The Masked Woman (1927)...

Though Marion married Matthew A. Morgan in 1900 and had a son, they separated five years later, in 1905. She met the acclaimed film director Dorothy Arzner on set and they lived together as a couple for the 40 years of Marion's life.

Slick images of the Marion Morgan's Dancers appear in the Museum of the City of New York's Collections and The New York Public Library Digital Collection.

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... Carmen Tórtola Valencia was born in Seville, Spain in 1882 but at the age of three, her family emigrated to London. She was self-trained in dance, and was much inspired by American dancer and choreographer, Isadora Duncan. As part of the show Havana, in 1908 at the Gaiety Theatre in London, Carmen Tórtola Valencia's made her first public appearance under the name of Bella Tortola. That same year she was invited to dance at the Wintergarten in Germany and at the Folies Bergère in Paris. From 1908-1930, Carmen performed internationally: in Spain (her Spanish debut was in 1911, in the Romea theatre in Madrid), England (London), Germany (Nuremberg), Denmark (Copenhagen, she joined the Cirkus Varieté where she worked with Alice Réjane), Greece, Russia, India and Latin America. In the mid 1910s, she studied Oriental and African dance and thereafter focused on that style of chorography. She was much admired by Spanish intellects including Emilia Pardo Bazán (novelist), Jacinto Benavente (who won a Nobel Prize for Literature in 1922) , Pío Baroja (writer) and Ramón del Valle-Inclán (dramatist).

Her life-partner was Angeles Magret Vilá who she had met in 1928. At the end of the Spanish Civil War, Carmen was jailed for being gay and having leftist ideas (she was a "pioneer Spanish feminist of the 20th century". After hanging up her dance shoes she began painting in Barcelona.

Carmen's personal papers and dress collection are preserved in the Centre de Documentació i Museu de les Arts Escèniques in Barcelona. It is thought that Carmen was the inspiration for, Nicaraguan poet, Rubén Darío's poem, La bailarina de los pies desnudos ("The Barefoot Dancer").

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movement training without ballet shoes. At the age of 23, Mary became a student of Émile Jaques-Dalcroze (a Swiss composer who created Dalcroze eurhythmics (experiential approach to teaching and learning music)), Suzanne Perrottet (a Swiss dancer and movement teacher) and then Rudolf Laban (an Austro-Hungarian dancer, choreographer and a dance / movement theoretician).

Subsequently, Mary formulated her own theories of movement and her choreographic repertoire spans more than 45 years and includes works that were vital in establishing modern dance’s stature as an art form.

Her reputation as a magnetic performer and progressive choreographer drew in students to the school that she opened with her swiss assistant Bertha Trümpy in Dresden, (on Bautzner Strasse) in 1920. Students included Dore Hoyer, Gret Palucca, Hanya Holm, Harald Kreutzberg, Margarethe Wallmann, Susanne Linke and Yvonne Georgi. By 1927, Mary had 360 students enrolled at Dresden and more than 1,200 enrolled at "Wigman Schools" run by former students in Berlin, Chemnitz, Erfurt, Frankfurt, Freiburg, Hamburg, Leipzig, Magdeburg, Munich, Riesa and in New York (run by Hanya Holm).

With dancers from her school Mary toured extensively throughout Europe performing group and solo works. In 1930, 1931 and 1933 they toured the United States. In 1942 Mary sold her school in Dresden and appeared for the last time as a solo dancer with Abschied und Dank (Farewell and Thanks). After WW2, she established a Leipzig school and staged a sensational performance of Orfeo ed Euridice with her pupils at the Leipzig Opera (1947). In 1949, Wigman settled in West Berlin, where she founded a new expressive dance school, the Mary Wigman Studio.

Throughout her artistic career Mary "explored the balance of narrative and abstraction thus plotting the expressive human form through space, and creating a nuanced tome in the language of dance." dance.washington.edu

Mary Wigman's most notable works include The Seven Dances of Life (1918), Totenmal (1930), the entire opera Orpheus and Eurydice (1947) of Christoph Gluck. Mary received the Schiller Prize of the City of Mannheim (1954) and the Great Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (1957).

Was she a Nazi sympathiser? Though she was privately sympathetic to Jewish students in her Dresden school, she didn't rebel against orders to remove Jewish dancers from her company. At the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games, Mary choreographed and performed Lament for the Dead, with music composed by Carl Orff and supported by eighty female dancers all dressed in grey mourning the dead of World War I. But, a year later, Reich Minister of Propaganda, Goebbels decreed that dance "must be cheerful and show beautiful female bodies and have nothing to do with philosophy". The Third Reich saw Mary as an anti-establishment figure and decadent artist. It has been suggested that she closed her Dresden dance school when her protector died in 1942 - who was a prominent arms manufacturer.

Was she a lesbian / or bi? Hmmm. She was never married and she may have had a "close friendship" with Bertha Trümpy.

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... (who were wealthy and influential Ukrainian Jews), Ida moved to St. Petersburg and began studying theatre and dance. Though, it has been indicated that she had limited dance training, her private performance of Oscar Wilde’s controversial and banned play, Salomé, brought her to the attention of Serge Diaghilev (a ballet impresario and founder of the Ballets Russes). One can perhaps surmise his attention - she stripped naked during the Dance of the Seven Veils. Dancing the Dance of the Seven caused trouble for Maud Allan and brought on a court case.

Sergei Diaghilev took Ida with the Ballets Russes to Paris where she danced the title role of Cléopâtre in 1909, and Zobéide in Scheherazade, in 1910. Scherezade was admired at the time for its racy sensuality, costumes and design. A year later Ida left the Ballets Russes and formed her own dance company. That same year, 1911, Ida performed in Le Martyre de Saint Sebastien whose creative team included Mikhail Fokin (a groundbreaking Imperial Russian choreographer and dancer); Léon Bakst (design); and incidental music by Debussy. Though it was praised for its stylised modernism it caused such a scandal that The Archbishop of Paris prohibited Catholics from attending because St. Sebastian was being played by a woman and a Jew!

It was after a performance of Le Martyre de Saint Sebastien that Ida met the American painter Romaine Brooks. Ida was bisexual and she had a three-year affair with Romaine. She became Romaine's favourite model who painted Ida in a series of nudes that were extremely controversial at the time, especially because they were painted by a female artist.

During WW1, Ida nursed wounded French soldiers and travelled across France reciting poetry from Count de Montesquiou’s "Offrandes blessées". After the war Ida appeared in a number of plays, and in Staat's Istar at the Paris Opera in 1924. Between 1928 and 1929, she directed her own company in Paris with Bronislava Nijinska (a Russian ballet dancer of Polish origin, and an innovative choreographer). Ida commissioned and performed in Maurice Ravel's Boléro in 1928. Other works developed in 1928 were Massine's David, with music by Sauguet; and Le Baiser de la fée, with music by Stravinsky, and choreography by Nijinska. The repertoire also included The Firebird (L'Oiseau de Feu) with music by Stravinsky, and choreography by Fokine; this had been one of the most sensational creations for the Ballets Russes. Her company was revived in 1931 and 1934, with new works but closed one year later. In 1938 Ida gave one of her greatest performances in the title role of Jeanne d’Arc au Bûcher (Joan of Arc at the Stake), a concert-oratorio by Arthur Honegger (1892–1955) to a text by Paul Claudel (1868–1955), which she performed in France and Belgium on the eve of the German invasion. When the Germans invaded France, Ida fled to England and after a few performances, she withdrew from public life.

In 1934 the French government awarded her the Légion d'honneur, in 1935 she was awarded honorary French citizenship and in 1939 Ida was awarded the Grand Cross of the order (the highest honour in France). The play Ida Rubinstein: The Final Act by Christian Holder was performed at the London's Playground Theatre in 2021.

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... Marjorie attended ballet classes with the legendary ballet dancer Pavlova at Ivy House, London in 1913 and became one of, renowned, Phyllis Bedell’s special pupils as well as her understudy. In 1919, Marjorie became the dance partner of Georges Fontana and after gaining huge success in London, performing at Grafton Galleries, Trocedero Restaurant they performed in Europe; at Casino de spa, Belgium; Casino Municipal Cannes, France; Claridge’s Hotel, Deauville Casino, Paris, Monte Carlo's Hotel Metropole, France; Club Mirador, NYC, USA ... Sadly her career was plighted by ill health and consequently she had to take breaks to recuperate. Learn more from jazzageclub.com about graceful Marjorie Violet Moss.

Dancing Times: "These two have evolved a style of their own ... Light as a feather and graceful as a bird on the wind, Miss Moss's grand jete en l’air as she is raised from the floor without the semblance of an effort by Mr Fontana is one of the most beautiful things to be seen in dancing today ..."

Slap my wrist! if Marjorie was neither lesbian nor bi but, from experience of researching for this site... when in doubt, I don't include, yet I think there are some potential hairpins (hints)?:

• Personal life - even though she was a popular dancer, there is no personal info about her on the web, so, she it seems she kept her private life very private?
• Marriage - some have interpreted her marriage with fellow, Brit, film director Edmund Goulding, who was known as being bisexual and for his "flamboyant" parties, as a lavender marriage. On November 28, 1931, apparently Hollywood was shocked when Edmund married Marjorie (aged 38). According to Edmund’s biographer, Matthew Kennedy, Marjorie had said she didn’t have any place to hold parties so Edmund offered his house to host them. He proposed. She said yes. Famous actress, Louise Brooks, a friend, however, claimed that Edmund married Marjorie because she had been diagnosed with tuberculosis (doctors had given her less than three years to live) and Edmund had wanted her to live her last years comfortably, surrounded by friends.
• Friends of Dorothy - living in America, almost all of their (Marjorie and Edmund's) inner circle was apparently gay. Moreover, Marjorie was "good friends" with serial lesbian seducer Mercedes de Acosta. There were rumours about their relationship - in 1931 when Mercedes gained a writing contract at RKO in Hollywood, she left for the West Coast with Marjorie who had been living in NYC at the time. Indeed, in the collection of The Mercedes de Acosta Papers housed at rosenbach.org includes letters from Marjorie to Mercedes and photographs and negatives of Marjorie sent from Edmund to Mercedes.

NB: If my gaydar is wrong: I humbly apologise, hold my head down in shame and will respectfully remove (but, I'll still be delighted that I discovered Marjorie and her stellar dance skills).

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... Anita Berber was born in Leipzig in 1899, to violin virtuoso Felix Berber and cabaret singer Lucie Berber (née Thiem). At the age of sixteen, she made her debut at the Blüthnersaal, one of Berlin’s major performance venues, in 1916, as a part of a performance by Rita Sacchetto’s dancing school. (Rita Sacchetto’s (1880-1959) was a leader of expressive dance). Anita trained in Eurythmic dance which at the time was a revolutionary form of dance that had been developed by Swiss composer, musician, and music educator Émile Jaques-Dalcroze (1865 - 1950. Dalcroze's Eurythmics aimed at creating a holistic relationship between physical movement and musical rhythm.

Anita performed in cabarets and performance venues across Europe. Anita was a pioneer of the eroticization of dance and performance art - her style was provocative with costumes ranging from cross-dressing tuxedos, well before Marlene Dietrich did this) to ... complete nudity! In Berlin, she caused a stir with a naked live dance performance in a screening of Dante's "Divine Comedy" at the Capitol-Lichtspielhaus. Between 1918 and 1925, Anita appeared as a dancer and actress in at least twenty-six silent films including Die Eerie Tales (1919), Reise um die Erde in 80 Tagen (1919) and Fritz Lang's cult classicDr. Mabuse, der Spieler (1922).

Having burned her Weimar candle at both ends she died young - at the age of 29. On July 13, 1928 she collapsed on stage in Damascus. After being diagnosed with tuberculosis she returned to Berlin and stayed in her mother's apartment. She died on November 10 1928, in Bethanien Hospital and was buried in a pauper’s grave, in St. Thomas parish, Berlin-Neukölln. During the Nazi era, her creative legacy was buried as the Nazis considered queer and radical Germans as degenerate. She was only rediscovered in the 1980s and, is now considered an icon of Weimar Berlin's nightlife.

Though she was married three times, she was out as bi and did enjoy sapphic relationships. Of her three marriages it seems her; first was a marriage of convenience to upper-class German screenwriter Eberhard von Nathusius; her second to German dancer and actor Sebastian Droste who was bi/gay and, her third was a lavender marriage to American dancer Henri Châtin Hofmann who was gay. Her affairs and scandals were the talk of the town. In 1922, she left her first husband and moved in with Susi Wanowsky, a prominent figure in Berlin’s lesbian scene, with whom she had a lesbian relationship with. Susi Wanowsky, who later opened the lesbian bar Le Garconne. Find out more about Anita Berber.

Image Source: German Dance Archive Cologne

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... Mabel's early life sounds an utter tragedy! Mabel's mother died from poison when Mabel was two months old ; she was then raised for 7 years by her maternal grandmother until her grandmother died from a stroke. For a short time she lived with her aunt and uncle in New York City but ran away after a year, after being raped by her uncle, a minister. From ages 8 to 17 she lived with a white family in New Jersey but good fate was still not on her side. While attending a women-only party in Harlem, in 1919, Mabel was falsely imprisoned in the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women for sex work. After spending 13 months of her 3-year sentence she was released on the condition she had to leave New York.

In the 1920s, Mabel danced in exclusively Black productions alongside Harlem Renaissance stars and socialised with the likes of stars Ethel Waters, Gladys Bentley, and Alberta Hunter. She performed at the club "The Garden of Joy" and sang in the Lafayette Theater Chorus. Sadly the popularity of the Harlem Renaissance waned, and Mabel left the chorus lines and found work as a domestic and hospital worker. Had she been white, could she have continued her career as a dancer / performer?

Living openly as a lesbian, Mabel had several relationships with women. Mabel's life long partner of 46 years was Lillian B. Foster.

She became an activist for gay and lesbian rights and in the mid 70s joined the Lesbian Herstory Archives in New York City, an organisation co-founded by her good friend, Joan Nestle (a Lambda Award winning writer). There Mabel donated (with Lillian) invaluable memorabilia, ephemera, letters, academic publications, documentary records, and lesbian pulp fiction which she had collected throughout her career to the Archives. Moreover, she also recorded several oral histories with Joan. These archival materials help provide an invaluable insight as to what life was like for African-American lesbians in the time of the Harlem Renaissance and through the 20th-century.

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... agent and civil rights activist. Her life is so incredible I couldn't keep her bio short! Being billed as "the highest-paid chorus girl in vaudeville" landed Baker an opportunity to tour in Paris. Swiftly, she became the toast of Paris and an iconic image and a symbol of the Jazz Age and the Roaring Twenties, appearing practically nude onstage in her self-designed costume comprising short skirt of artificial bananas and a beaded necklace. Among her various performance accolades Josephine became the first Black woman to star in a major motion picture, the silent film Siren of the Tropics (1927).

Though she was married four times she had many lesbian affairs. Co-author and an unofficial adopted son, Jean-Claude Baker's biography "Josephine: The Hungry Heart" mentions six of her lady lovers: Bessie Allison (a performer who later became the first African-American woman to hold a seat in the New York State Legislature, Clara Smith ( "Queen of the Moaners"), and actresses Evelyn Sheppard, and Mildred Smallwood, all of whom she met on the black performing circuit during her early years onstage in the United States and when she relocated to Paris: expat jazz singer Ada "Bricktop" Smith, and the French novelist Colette. Perhaps her most famous of her lovers, was Mexican artist Frida Kahlo who she during Kahlo's trip to Paris in 1939. Awkwardly, Frieda Kahlo was travelling with her husband, muralist Diego Rivera.

When WWII broke out, and Paris was occupied by the Third Reich, Josephine was recruited by French Resistance. Taking advantage of the occupiers’ trust, she risked her life on clandestine work for the Allies. Her celebrity and fame opened doors, and in social gatherings she rubbed shoulders with and charmed high ranking Nazi personnel, and officials to collect information.

To boot, as an international entertainer, she had an excuse to travel which she did within Nazi-occupied Europe, to neutral Portugal, and to South America. Risking her life, courageously, Josephine smuggled coded messages, written in invisible ink on her music sheets, between the French Resistance and the Allies. The messages contained crucial military intelligence about for example German troop concentrations, airfields, harbours, and defences. If this wasn't enough, she also heroically hid fugitives in her home, supplying them with forged identification papers and visas obtained through her clandestine contacts. Commissioned as a lieutenant, later in the war, she joined the French Women's Auxiliary Air Force and preformed shows for Allied troops to keep their spirits up. An utter heroine. After Frances liberation, she returned to Paris in October 1944, she was greeted by throngs of people on the Champs-Élysées welcoming her home. In recognition of her wartime heroics, she deservedly was awarded the Croix de guerre (Medal of Resistance ) by the French military, and eventually she was named a Chevalier of the Légion d'Honneur by General Charles de Gaulle.

Why did Paris and France become her home? When she would return to America she was continuously greeted with racism. In one example, in the 1950s her husband and herself were refused reservations at 36 hotels because of racial discrimination. Over the years she gave talks on the subject of racism, challenged segregation laws and marched for civil rights with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at the historic March on Washington in 1963. She was so vociferous in her denunciations of American racism at various international forums that she ended up on the FBI watch list and lost her US citizenship rights for over a decade.

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... she danced under the stage name "L'Etoile". Her repertoire included tap, high kicks, tumbles, hula and adagio (acrobatics). In the late 1930s she passed a Royal Academy of Dancing advanced examination. During WW2, Freda entertained New Zealand and American Expeditionary troops at the Wintergarden cabaret and nightclub at the Civic Theatre in Auckland. There she became famous as an exotic dancer - clad only in a feather headdress, a G-string and gold bodypaint which earned her the title "Fever of the Fleet."

At the end of the war Freda retired from the theatre and moved to London. There she married New Zealand dancer Harold Robinson, a student at the Sadler's Wells ballet school, in 1947. They shared a love of dance and starred in Curves And Contrasts (1947), directed by New Zealander Robert Steele. Though the marriage was short lived and most likely was a lavender marriage, they remained firm friends until Freda's death.

Freda's dance career for sure has been overshadowed by a scandal. In 1933, Freda joined Ernest Rolls’' revue company, where she met Thelma Trott, an accomplished actress and dancer. The two women fell in love. The following year they performed together in the opera, The Duchess of Dantzic, at His Majesty's Theatre in Auckland - Thelma played the staring role while Freda performed in the chorus. Though Thelma married the conductor Eric Mareo, Freda frequently visited the couples home. On 15 April 1935 Thelma was found dead from a fatal dose of the drug Veronal. Eric Mareo was arrested, and in the much-publicised murder case that followed, Freda was the star witness for the prosecution. Though Eric Mareo testified that "his wife's desires were met by association with women" to discredit Freda's testimony - Eric Mareo, was twice condemned to death but served 12 years in prison.

Freda ashes were buried at the foot of Thelma's (1906 – 1935) grave, at Waikumete Cemetery, Auckland, New Zealand, apparently under the words she put there long before: "Waiting till we meet again... Freda."

Freda's life has been celebrated by New Zealand creatives: in the movie Constance (1983) directed by New Zealander Bruce Morrison (where an actress imitates Freda Stark's golden dance), in a play Stark by Amanda Rees, in a documentary The Mighty Civic by Peter Wells (1989) and in the television series Epitaph, re-telling the Mareo trial.

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Apart from testimonies from fellow tap dancers, sadly little is known of Louise's tap dancing career, and to date there is no known footage of her on film. She was highly praised by her contemporaries for her tap dancing skills who described her tap style as "like a man". She often performed unusually in white "tails", white pants, a top hat and low-heeled shoes. Many suspected that she was a lesbian.

Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, Louise performed in theatre and club circuits, and performed alongside tap dancer ("Living National Treasure") LaVaughn Robinson at the Apollo Theater. From 1933 to 1934 Louise performed in the first run of the musical revue Blackbirds of 1933, at the Apollo Theater in New York City, featuring in the dance number "Tappin' the Barrel". Later she would perform in a revival of the revue in London.

Though she was highly praised for her tap dancing skill and style, compared to her peers she received little recognition and few / no film opportunities. Peers have surmised that it was related to her darker complexion and, that she challenged gender norms by performing in male white tails and top hat. Not only was there colour discrimination - on top of this there was, "colourism" / a colour hierarchy which limited stage and film opportunities for Black women. "Colourism" discrimination came in the form of the (unthinkable - but true) "brown paper bag test," which was sometimes used for Black chorus girls and dancers (and for some African-American social institutions such as sororities, fraternities, and social clubs). For a "brown paper bag test" an individual's skin tone was compared to the colour of a brown paper bag - those with a skin colour that matched or was lighter than a brown paper bag were allowed admission or membership privileges. Black female tap dancers

It's such a great shame Louise's talent did not reach wider audiences and was not documented on film. Raising my top hat to Louise Madison.

Also check out 1940s tap dance duo "Salt & Pepper" (Edwina "Salt" Evelyn and Jewel "Pepper" Welch) who were Black show business headliners, performing at Harlem's Apollo Theater with the likes of Count Basie, Fats Waller and Earl "Fatha" Hines.

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Rocío graduated, at 17, with honours at the Royal Dance Conservatory in Madrid. Throughout her career, she has worked with prestigious dance companies, leading figures in flamenco such as: Antonio Canales, Israel Galván, María Pagés and Miguel Poveda.

As choreographer her works have been performed in theatres and festivals across the world, including Festival d’Avignon, Barbican Centre (London), Stanislavsky Theatre (Moscow) and Bunkamura (Tokyo).

Movies: Impulso, Living In Seville, Más allá del Flamenco

Awards: include:

• Silver Lion award for dance of La Biennale di Venezia (2022)
• Gold Medal for Merit in Fine Arts (2021)
• The UK National Dance Award (2016)

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