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engaged in the theater, ballet girls were frequently banned from domestic service, though it was commonly believed that they supplemented their incomes at bachelor parties or as entertainers at all-male clubs.
The women who were willing to participate in the ballet had no experience with the art form. Women were selected for their beauty and their ability to follow simple movement instructions. They were drilled in balletic poses and simple steps that would move them on and off the stage. This method reinforced the American notion that professional dance was superficial and often unexpressive. Dancing masters relied on large group formations and tableaus to hide the coryphées'25 lack of skill. The result was the perception that coryphées were mere spectacle, or “leg shows,” to American audiences. One French ballet master fully understood this American assumption and commented on his female recruits as early as the late eighteenth century: “Give me de pretty vimmens: I don't care, den, for de talent.”26 Other commentary, although less direct, exposed the useless beauty of the American corps de ballet: “Poor half-dressed supernumerary women, now made for the first time in their lives to stand upon one leg, who tottered bashfully and looked as foolish and about as graceful as a plucked goose in the same position.”27 For Bostonians, only social dance offered the discipline of manners and graciousness required in polite society and important for fostering marriages and powerful economic alliances. Acceptance of dance for personal expression, or as a profession, would not come until the very end of the nineteenth century in the midst of a great revolution for women.
Despite Boston's image of itself as a city of intellectual curiosity and cultural sophistication, women had still not acquired the freedom to participate fully in society. Women were bound by restrictions on the body, expression, and education. This early nineteenth-century environment in Boston hardly seemed to offer a foundation for the emergence of expressive dance in the early twentieth century. Yet the need for self-expression and acceptance of the body as beautiful, even spiritual, flourished in just a few short decades. This transition is even more surprising given the fact that professional dance was, at best, a morally suspicious practice in nineteenth-century America. Powerful changes shifted the cultural scene