The
theatre season now will end,
We’ll miss the stars, alas!
The
pony ballet will disband
And be turned out to grass.
c.
April 7, ‘10
The Pony ballet was a type of kick-line routine developed by the British choreographer John Tiller sometime in the 1890s. A group of eight girls were dressed as ponies and imitated the animals’ movements with exact precision and in perfect harmony. A later innovation divided the group into two sets of four ponies and added two taller girls as drivers who simply trotted behind, reining in the other ponies.
Tiller’s troupes were so popular and successful that from the late 1890s they were dancing all over the world, particularly in America, the UK and Europe. In 1899 Tiller introduced the Pony ballet in George Lederer’s show The Man in the Moon that opened 24th April 1899 at the New York Theatre. Tiller’s troupe’s proliferated across the globe and in 1912 he had companies at the Folies Bergere and the Apollo in Paris, at Bordeaux, Amsterdam, Turin, Berlin, London and New York. His pony ballet was a resounding success and quickly copied.
For example, in June 1907 Mortimer M. Thiese had a pony ballet in The Maid and the Millionaire, a musical production staged with Henry Pincus at the Madison Square Roof Garden. At the beginning of their career the Dolly Sisters were appointed as two of the eight ‘pony’ girls. Later, in mid-1909, the Dolly Sisters were also in the English pony ballet of Lew Field’s The Midnight Sons.
When the dancing craze hit Broadway after 1910, many new venues opened as a cabaret and dancing nightspot.
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