Image
Article
Butterworth, George Sainton Kaye (1885–1916), composer and folk dancer, was born on 12 July 1885 at 16 Westbourne Square, Paddington, London, the only child of Sir Alexander Kaye Butterworth (1854–1946), a solicitor and later general manager of the North Eastern Railway Company, and his wife, ...
Article
Anita McConnell
Campion, Mary Anne (c. 1687–1706), singer and dancer, was born of lowly parents, her father having possibly been a servant of William Cavendish, first duke of Devonshire. She displayed a precocious talent on the stage; aged eleven, she was a member of Christopher Rich's...
Article
Jeffrey Green and Rainer E. Lotz
Davis, Belle (b. 1874, d. in or after 1938), dancer and singer, was born in Chicago on 28 April 1874, the daughter of George Davis. Of European and African ancestry, she spent most of her adult life abroad, largely in Britain, where she arrived in mid-1901 with two boys who were billed as Piccaninny Actors. Her performance style changed from ‘coon shouting’ and ‘ragtime singing’ in the 1890s to a more decorous manner, where prancing children provided the amusement. She directed their stage act, and with two, sometimes three or four, black children the act was a vigorous and popular entertainment in British and continental theatres....
Image
Article
Val Wilmer
Johnson, Kenrick Reginald Hijmans [Ken] [called Ken Snakehips Johnson] (1914–1941), dancer and bandleader, was born on 10 September 1914 at 193 Wellington Street, Georgetown, British Guiana, the first of two surviving sons and eldest of six children of Dr Reginald Fitzherbert Johnson...
Article
Michael Heaney
Kennedy, Douglas Neil (1893–1988), folk musician and dancer, was born on 11 May 1893 at 138 Bruntsfield Place, Edinburgh, the son of John Henderson Kennedy (d. 1912?), solicitor and singing teacher, and his wife, Patricia Grieve Thomson (d. 1906). He was educated at ...
Image
Image
Article
Michael Heaney
Kimber, William (1872–1961), morris dancer and musician, was born on 8 September 1872 at Huggett's Cottage, Old Road, Headington Quarry, Oxford, eldest of the four sons and two daughters of William Kimber (1849–1931), builder, and his wife, Sophia Ann (1850–1931), née Kimber, smocker, of ...
Article
Kiralfy [formerly K?nigsbaum], Imre (1845–1919), dancer and impresario, was born in Pest in the Austro-Hungarian empire, the first of the seven children of Jacob K?nigsbaum, a clothing manufacturer, and his wife, Anna (Rosa) Weisberger. The K?nigsbaums were a prosperous family of Jewish descent. However, their family business was ruined in the Hungarian revolution of 1848, after which they suffered temporary poverty and ...
Image
Article
Stephen Bourne
Mills, Florence [real name Florence Winfrey; married name Florence Thompson] (1895–1927), singer and dancer, was born in Washington, DC, on 25 January 1895, the daughter of John Winfrey, carpenter, and his wife, Nellie, formerly Symonds, laundrywoman. Her parents had been born in slavery in ...
Article
Mary Anne Alburger
Peacock, Francis (1723/4–1807), dancing-master and musician, was possibly born in or near York, although precise details of his birthplace are unknown. He studied dancing under Desnoyer, later dancing master at George III's court. In 1747 he was recommended to Aberdeen as 'a capable master … of a discreet and moral character' (...
Article
Olive Baldwin and Thelma Wilson
Poitier [married names Vernon, Thompson], Jane Henrietta (b. 1736, d. in or after 1788), singer and dancer, was born in the parish of St Martin-in-the-Fields, London, on 8 June 1736, the daughter of the French theatre dancer Michael Poitier (d...
Image
Article
Silvester, Victor Marlborough (1900–1978), ballroom dancer and bandleader, was born on 25 February 1900 at the vicarage of St John's Church, Wembley, the second of six children and younger son of the Revd John William Potts Silvester and his wife, Katherine (née...
Article
Wells, William Nathan [Jinky] (1868–1953), morris dancer and musician, was born on 30 January 1868 at Mill Arches, Weald, Bampton, Oxfordshire, the illegitimate elder son of Sarah Ann Taylor (1849–1932). Born into a complex of interrelated morris-dancing families, within his own community he was known as ...