Art and nature join'd : Hester Santlow and the development of dancing on the London stage, 1700-1737

The thesis deals with the dancing career of the English dancer-actress Hester Santlow (ci 690-1773), from her debut in 1706 to her retirement from the stage in 1733, with particular reference to her influence on the development of dancing on the London stage through her repertoire of entr'acte dances and her work with the dancing-masters John Weaver, John Thurmond, and Roger. The early eighteenth century was a significant period for the development of dancing. On the London stage, new forms and genres of entr'acte dances were introduced as well as two new afterpiece genres, the 'dramatic entertainments of dancing' of John Weaver (the first independent theatre works to tell a story through dance and mime alone with no spoken or sung text) and pantomimes. The thesis focusses on Santlow's repertoire of entr'acte dances, those of her dances recorded in Beauchamp-Feuillet notation, and her dancing roles in both 'dramatic entertainments of dancing' and pantomimes. In order to analyse and interpret her entr'acte and notated dances, the style and technique of early eighteenth-century dancing is reviewed, and the forms and genres of dancing on the London stage in the early 1700s are defined. For the assessment of her aflerpiece roles, Santlow's own career as an actress and the careers of several of her contemporaries, in particular the dancers and dancingmasters with whom she worked most closely, are investigated. The thesis argues that Hester Santlow made a significant contribution to the developments in dancing on the London stage during the course of her career, and that the most important of these developments, the 'dramatic entertainments of dancing' of John Weaver, could not have been produced for the London stage without her.