ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the particular relationship between the symbolic opposites and the representations of women in the music hall ballet. It demonstrates in relation to the ballet girl and the ballerina, the moral image of the dancer was binary. The differing perceptions of dancers accommodated the need for the Victorian male psyche to categorise women as either chaste or impure. In order to raise the status of the ballet, Stewart Headlam had to improve the disreputable moral image of its performers. The dancers' apparent sexual accessibility was directly linked to their profession. A defence of the dancing profession was made by one of its practitioners, an itinerant stage dancer who trained partly in ballet but who was never a member of a house company. Other contemporary evidence in which the dancers' self-perception may be ascertained through the voice of others is in relation to the distinction made between dancers of the ballet and the pantomime dancers and show girls.
