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Showgirl

Female performer in a theatrical revue

Female performer in a theatrical revue

Note

female stage performers

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, 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.

History

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.

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. 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.

The first casino on the Las Vegas Strip to employ dancing girls as a diversion between acts was the El Rancho Vegas in 1941. Showgirls with expensive costumes were presented in Las Vegas in 1952 at the Sands Casino for a show with Danny Thomas. 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. 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.

Revues with showgirls

  • Ziegfeld Follies (New York)
  • Tropicana Club (Havana, Cuba)
  • Cabaret Red Light (Philadelphia, US)
  • VIVA Cabaret Showbar (Blackpool, UK)
  • The Fabulous Palm Springs Follies (with showgirls aged 50 to 80) Paris
  • Folies Bergère
  • Le Lido
  • Moulin Rouge
  • Paradis Latin Las Vegas
  • Folies Bergere at The Tropicana
  • Jubilee! Bally's
  • Dita Las Vegas (Horseshoe Casino)
  • Splash (Riviera Casino)
  • 90 Degrees & Rising (Dunes Casino)

References

References

  1. [[:wiktionary:cocotte#French]]
  2. (27 May 2024). "Bouwmeester Revue".
  3. Merrill, Jane. (2018). "The Showgirl Costume: An Illustrated History". McFarland.
  4. "History of Showgirls".
  5. McClary, Susan. (March 2023}} by the nineteenth-century French author [[Ludovic Halévy]].{{cite book). "Georges Bizet: Carmen". Cambridge University Press.
  6. Gioia-Acres, Lisa. (2013). "Showgirls of Las Vegas". Arcadia Publishing.
  7. Mary Manning. (15 May 2008). "Las Vegas Showgirls: Show and (a lot to) tell". [[Las Vegas Sun]].
  8. J.D. Morris. (13 June 2016). "Celebrating the Las Vegas showgirl: An icon lives on in one group's evolving passion project". Las Vegas Sun.
  9. Shteir, Rachel. (2004). "Striptease: The Untold History of the Girlie Show". Oxford University Press.
Info: Wikipedia Source

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theatrical-occupations variety-shows dance-occupations showgirls entertainment-occupations gendered-occupations
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