| Orchestra or Band | Corelli Windeatt's Orchestra,
Pipers and Drummers of the Scots Guards |
| Set List | Valse: 'Nights of Gladness',
Valse: 'Die Schonne Risette',
One-Step: 'Cotton Bales',
Valse: 'Rosenkavalier',
Valse: 'Fancy Dress',
One-Step: 'I'm a Very Good Girl on Sunday',
Valse: 'Destiny',
Tango: 'La Seduccion',
'Highland Schottische',
Valse: 'Little Grey Home in the West',
Maxixe: 'Araguaya',
Valse: 'Summer Glory',
Valse: 'Versailles',
One-Step: 'Get Out and Get Under',
Valse: 'Fall of the Day',
Maxixe: 'Amapa',
Valse: 'Jeune',
One-Step: 'In My Harem',
Valse: 'Blue Danube',
One-Step: 'You Made Me Love You',
Valse: 'Minster Chimes',
Valse: 'Verschmahte Liebe',
One-Step: 'Pullman Porter's Parade',
Valse: 'Betrothal',
Valse: 'Cerise',
One-Step: 'King Chanticlere',
EXTRAS
Valse: 'Two Lovely Black Eyes',
One-Step: 'Opium Den',
Tango: 'Venus'.
RENDEZVOUS
Peepshow,
The Jesters,
Aunt Salley,
The Wrestlers,
Punch and Judy,
The Greasy Pole,
Apple Ducking,
The Pieman,
The Ballad Singer,
The Morris Dancers,
The Zany,
The Dancing Bear,
The Piepowder,
The Posture Master,
Jack Pudding,
Cock Fight |
| Performance Notes | Founded in 1891 The Chelsea Arts Club is a members club for artists, which for 50 years from 1908 held an annual costumed New Year's Eve ball, which was an infamous part of London's social calendar. After two years at the Royal Opera House the extravagant ball proved so popular it moved to the Royal Albert Hall where it stayed until 1958. The balls attracted media attention with their lavish theatrical sets, multiple orchestras, raucous midnight carnivals and balloon drops and crowds of up to 10,000 socialites, bohemian artists, actors, and ordinary Londoners in elaborate and often scandalous fancy dress dancing until 5am.
Each year a theme was chosen such as Egyptian, Dazzle, Noah's Ark, Prehistoric and Sun Worship around which guests could create flamboyant costumes. London art schools participated by decorating huge carnival floats, which were driven around the auditorium floor and which, at the stroke of midnight, would be destroyed by revellers. The balls were well-known for reports of public nudity, drunken displays of affection, fighting and unadulterated fun. In the vastness of the Hall with its gas lit corridors, curtained boxes and dark staircases naughtiness was the order of the day.
Similarly to the annual Lady Malcolm's Servant's balls (1930-1938) these events were a safe space for the queer community to meet and express themselves with unbridled creativity and little inhibition. There were no scrutineers denying entry or undercover police. LGBTQ+ party goers could feel (relatively) free to be themselves without the scrutiny and surveillance they underwent in their daily lives. For many men especially they could wear drag, dress outrageously, and socialise unashamedly while never appearing to be anything out of the ordinary.
It was New Year's Eve 1958 that was to be the final Chelsea Arts Ball at the Royal Albert Hall. As well as minor damage to the building fabric, a partygoer dispatched a smoke bomb that exploded on the dance floor and ultimately became the straw that broke the camel's back. The Chelsea Arts Ball was asked to take out insurance indemnity against further damage to the Hall and they didn't return. The Ball has returned three times since - in 1984, 1985 and 1992 - although the elaborate costumes and floats didn't make the return trip. The extravagant, eccentric originals remain part of the history of the Capital's social calendar.
"The Chelsea Arts Club's annual fancy-dress ball is always great fun. True, there are not usually so many theatrical people present as at the Three Arts Ball; and it cannot be denied that theatrical people do know how to make things go. But, then, so do the artists; and all that is young and jolly in art-studentship and practise, all that smacks of "the Quartier" in London, all that enjoys being absurd and merry when it is not furiously at work, has settled of late years firmly at Chelsea, and centres in the Chelsea Arts Cub. And this year, as if to show that it is not "decadent", or "foreign", or any other of such unpleasant things, the spirit of Chelsea chose of the keynote of its fancy-dress ball the old England from which it is sometimes supposed to be so alien. The Chelsea Arts Club probably shrank from the colour of the Union Jack ("Oh, South Kensington!" as they say in Patience); but, in these days when bright colours are all the vogue, much can be artistically done with red, white, and green; and red, white, and green made the scheme of decoration of this old English fair at the Albert Hall, and coloured lights played fantastic changes on the scene, and coloured air-balloons shed a soft radiancy. The rendezvous round the edge of the ballroom were placarded with strange and humorous signs of old English import, painted by modern English artists.
The supper, too, was old English. The procession of yeomen and cooks, who made the circuit after the trumpets had proclaimed the prearranged moment, bore in hand (or, rather, on tables) not only the boar's head, but a venison pasty of the kind eaten by King Richard II., another kind of pasty "with bubleyjocks, as they doe them in Yorkshire," "potatoe cakes with perfumed plums," and many another noble dish of ancient English lineage discovered in old books. The bearers did not sing the old song: "Caput apri refero, Resonans laudes Domino":
The boar's head in hands I bring,
With garlands gay and birds singing.
I pray you all, helpe me to sing,
Qui etis in convivio;
but there are many ways of saying grace and if the company did not sing, they danced and supped with a will.
THE DANCING AND THE DRESSES
The dancing was not old English, We did not have "Sellenger's Round", nor "Oranges and Lemons", nor even "Sir Roger de Coverley". And though, as the public had been warned, "the expiring Tango" only appeared twice on the programme (and one of these was a mere "third extra"), the invading Maxixe was honoured with two performances, and there were not less than eight one-steps. That left room for 16 waltzes and one Highland schottische, wildly danced, after its prelude by Scottish pipers and drummer.
Indeed, it was well worth while to "sit out" frequently, just for the fun of noting the beauty or the happy absurdity of the costumes. Though the fair was old English, the dresses might be anything you pleased, and fancy expressed itself in the queerest ways. The good idea of couples coming dressed alike is spreading; and the most amusing and effective pair last night were a gentleman and lady wearing bright blue wigs and loose jackets and trousers made of what looked like the very latest and most "futurist" design for window curtains. Another pair wore orange wigs and skirts; a party of eight came in pink and white stripes, and a merry band of a dozen or more of both sexes were dressed alike all in white. There were, of course, the usual imitations of M. Nijinsky; and cats were a favourite subject. They looked unabashed at Kings in crimson or in state robes, and no King ever had a more curious and motley set of subjects than last night's dancers.
But it was not till nearly midnight that the ball begun to make its mark as the oddest and merriest of its kind. From the roof some hundreds of air-balloons and air-filled animals came falling softly, to be torn to pieces by the raised hands of the surging crowd below. Strange animals - a giraffe, a horse (or mouse), and an elephant - walked the floor, and an Umgeni rocked and heaved over the parquet ocean, weighed with nine scarlet-clad desperadoes. There was no end to the nonsense but that put by time."
(The Times, 5 March 1914)
The theme was Old English, with costumes of any period and cloaks to be worn.
World premieres of One-Step: 'I'm a Very Good Girl on Sunday', Valse: 'Summer Glory', One-Step: 'Pullman Porter's Parade'.
Programme cover designed by Frederick William Leist (21 August 1873-20 March 1945), Australian artist. |
| Related Archival Material | Programme (RAHE/1/1914/11),
Handbill, (RAHE/6/1914/2)
Illustrations (RAHE/9/1914/1) (RAHE/9/1914/2) |