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Showgirl

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Show-girl (La Cocotte[1]) in Bouwmeester Revue [nl][2] at Scala Theatre, Wagenstraat, The Hague; by Isaac Israëls, 1920s

A showgirl is a female performer in a theatrical revue who wears an exotic and revealing costume and in some shows may appear topless. Showgirls are usually dancers, sometimes performing as chorus girls, burlesque dancers or fan dancers,[3] and many are classically trained with skills in ballet.

The French view the term showgirl as an American idiomatic expression. Some strip clubs and some strippers use the term showgirl as part of their business name.[4]

History

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In eighteenth century England, the term showgirl meant a young woman who acted in a showy way to attract male attention, but by the mid-nineteenth century the term had come to mean a singer and dancer in music hall acts.[3]

Showgirls in the modern sense date from the late 1800s in Parisian music halls and cabarets such as the Moulin Rouge, Le Lido, and the Folies Bergère which first featured a nude showgirl in 1918. A popular showgirl dance was the can-can.[4] The trafficking of showgirls for the purposes of prostitution was the subject of a salacious novel[which?] by the nineteenth-century French author Ludovic Halévy.[5] The Ziegfeld Follies revue on Broadway introduced showgirls to the United States in 1907, and Busby Berkeley included them in his Hollywood films in the 1930s.

The Bluebell Girls, a dance troupe created by the Irish dancer Margaret Kelly in 1932, performed at the Folies Bergère and Le Lido. By the 1950s there were permanent troupes of Bluebell Girls in Paris and Las Vegas and touring troupes that travelled around the world.[4]

Dancers from the revue show Jubilee! in 2005

The first casino on the Las Vegas Strip to employ dancing girls as a diversion between acts was the El Rancho Vegas in 1941.[6] Showgirls with expensive costumes were presented in Las Vegas in 1952 at the Sands Casino for a show with Danny Thomas.[7] Initially opening and closing for headline acts, sometimes dancing around the headliner, showgirls later moved on to being the main attraction and stars of the show. During the 1950s and 1960s showgirls performed in every hotel and casino on the Las Vegas strip. Competition between casinos led to increasingly lavish shows and costumes.[4] Major shows of the late 1950s included Donn Arden's Lido de Paris show at the Stardust, Jack Entratter’s Copa Girls at the Sands Hotel, and Harold Minsky’s Follies at the Desert Inn. Minsky introduced topless showgirls and these were then incorporated into The Lido de Paris, a show that ran for 31 years.[8] The popularity of showgirl shows in Las Vegas slowly declined after the 1960s, with all of the major shows closing by the early 21st century.[4]

Revues with showgirls

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Virginia Biddle, Ziegfeld Follies showgirl, by Alfred Cheney Johnston, 1927

Paris

Las Vegas

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Dancer (1924) by Pierre Carrier-Belleuse

Films