The Performing Body in Musical Hall and Variety Theatre: Ambiguities and Blurred Boundaries.

This chapter explores the use of the body in the performance of music hall and variety theatre acts. It focuses on dance, acrobatics and drag performance drawing on both serious and comic or eccentric performers. All of these acts generate and rely on ambiguity which blurs the way in which the performances can be interpreted by the audiences who would have been impressed by the physical and performative skill on display but who may also have been amused by the eccentricity of some of the performances. In creating their performances, the dancers, acrobats and drag performers tested what was acceptable to the middle and upper classes and in their ambiguity challenged the audience’s perceptions of both skill and gender and therefore made them more than passive spectators.