Ode to Danseressen van de Revue | Dear dancers

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Dear Dancers,
 

My wife owns a photo from 1967 of when you danced at the Snip & Snap Revue '67-'68. It is from the program booklet of that revue: 'Thirty years Snip & Snap Revue: Congratulations Toi Toi Toi'. You were the 'Carden Dancers', George Carden (1914-1981) was the choreographer. The booklet states that he "was found willing to put together the annual jigsaw puzzle of color and movement for this anniversary edition as well. The revue had been causing a furor at Amsterdam's Carré Theater year after year since 1938 and was still drawing full houses in 1967. Remember? The revue also went into the country, with a bus leaving from Museumplein, to Rotterdam, The Hague, Enschede, Groningen and Heerlen, among others. With overnight stays in the farthest cities. Look, here you are!

A wonderful photo that beautifully captures the illusions of the entertainment industry of the time. Your names were listed (often not the real names!): Yvonne Dolores, Jessica van Olden, Barbara St.Clair, Cindy Peters, Cynthia Dominique, Henny van Poelgeest, Mischa Heijnis, Judith Harms, Eufje Lindeboom, Ilse Zweers, Marjan Dijkstra, Eileen Snap. Twelve cute, cheerful girls, dressed in feathers, adorned with a decorative band in their hair and long earrings, encircled with chains.

My friend at the time (now my wife) is standing there. She remembers that she had to appear in a photo studio in the morning, was handed fake jewelry there, hair had to be in a bun with an ornamental band around it. That's how the photographer wanted it, no doubt after consultation with the creator, composer and producer of the revue, “the old Slees,” as you often affectionately called the boss of the revue, René Sleeswijk. There was also a young Sleeswijk, Hans, the boss' son, but you didn't think much of him.

You can clearly see that each face has a different expression, from cheerful, to solemn and heavenly, and also that you all look in different directions. As if you had something particular to express. I think Sleeswijk insisted on this. He liked dancers in the revue. He wanted “ordinary” girls with a cheerful individual look. Something distinctive. It didn't take much effort to look so cheerful, my wife remembers. Especially the earrings led to hilarity. She doesn't remember whether you were instructed to look in different directions. According to her, it came naturally. Twelve young women, some already close to thirty, but most of them still young, my wife was twenty, Eileen was not much older, Judith and Yvonne were about twenty years old. I knew all of you, a few well, others I got to know better because they came to blow out in the nearby Café Van der Laan after the show. That's where I always waited for my wife. With some of you we kept in touch. Even now.

You came from all over. A couple (three, including my wife) had attended the Rotterdam Dance Academy, a few others the Nel Roos Ballet Academy in Amsterdam. Still others had trained in England. All twelve of you knew that the work as a dancer wouldn't last long; you do it until you're thirty-five at the most. Maybe after that you could still work at the revue as a sketch actress or as a leader of the dancers. In 1967, Diana Floodgate, former revue dancer, was your “captain. She took care of rehearsal arrangements, clothing and general business. Young you were, but professionally so almost old, already on your way to a new career.

But in this picture, something else applies: Ladies and Gentlemen, this is Revue! About the Snip& Snap Revue I wrote a novel in 1999, De Revue, some of you have read it, I know. A dancer played a big role in it, but in retrospect I think I didn't highlight your contribution to the revue enough. The novel was too self-centered, I think now. With this letter I am trying to make up for something. Your contribution to the revue was important, Sleeswijk knew that, you were a great expense, on which he did not economize anyway. But you were not supposed to be in the foreground. No interviews, no reports in the show pages at that time. No attempts in reviews to place your work within the framework of an old tradition of vaudeville theater.
 

You, the dancers of the revue, the queens of entertainment, had to make do with a single comment (“good show ballet”) in a review. With this letter, I make an attempt to snatch you from oblivion forever. Some of you have passed away, others will read this letter. Let's hear something, write me what you think.
 

No attention is usually paid to revue dancers in reviews and memorial books. Nor, for that matter, to other employees that the theater industry has to rely on: the technical staff, the dressers, the light operators. Only the stars get attention. In the well-documented standard book 100 Jaar amusement in Nederland (1987), Jacques Klöters writes almost nothing about these or similar dance groups. Only this: 'Sleeswijk built a revue around them (he meant Willy Walden and Piet Muyselaar) with lots of girls, good helpers, beautiful sets and good music.'
 

But these 'girls,' that is, you, had a life of your own, you were committed, you lived for it, you had social dreams, you were aware of the social upheavals of that time ( the student revolt). And after the revue came another life. One of you studied theater history and became a dance critic for the NRC. Another started a dance school in the United States. Yet another went to work in her husband's business (contractor) and one worked for years in a small theater show. My wife went to art school and is now a visual artist. I searched the site “Theatrical Encyclopedia” for all your later careers. Not much could be found. Characteristic of appreciation. Where did you guys go? What else happened?

In reflections on the world of entertainment, you are “dressing up” that were meant to evoke in the audience feelings of unreachability about and desire for a “different life,” a dreamed life. An erotic world of dance and glitter. You had to capitalize on illusions. What it meant to be watchable over the years, night after night, in front of thousands of people, always remains unsaid. The feeling of playing a part in the dream world of mostly men must have weighed on you. During the intermission of this revue, dancers (including my wife), had to hand out cigars to the audience. Agio Tips. She got money for that, fun was not being so close to the audience. I smoked Agio Tips for years to come. Performing seven times a week in Carré, on Sunday there was a matinee. Only Monday was a day off. Every Thursday morning you were paid in an office next to Carré. Two hundred guilders a week. The dancers at the National Ballet earned less, my wife knew.
 

In literature, revue dancers, vaudeville dancers, dance girls, cancan dancers, always play a dubious role. Typecasting is your part, half or whole prostitutes, seductresses, “bad women,” that's you, that's your role. Writers capitalize on the audience's confusion about the difference between your role on stage and in the “real” world. They often conceive of the stage world as metaphors of the “real” world, where badness and deceit and illusions rule. You are, in novels, set pieces in a drama. You are unreliable, adulterous, diabolical, you bring men to the abyss with your dancing. To be playthings in a man's gaze, that is your role. Writers like Gustave Flaubert, Heinrich Mann, Emile Proust and Emile Zola helped bring these clichés into the world. And they still function in current literature and in theatrical performances. Interpreters of men's dreams. I know of one important and striking exception. The novel Apollyon (1941) by F. Bordewijk (1884-1965). In it he pays extensive attention to a female dance troupe in the London entertainment scene. With him there is no mention of the familiar clichés. He shows the women in their daily concerns and activities, he speaks highly of their dancing skills with which they had great success in the London vaudeville world. They are heroines.
 

Just as you are heroines in this letter.
 

With heartfelt greetings
 

Kees `t Hart