THE LATEST MUSIC HALL SENSATION.

Evening Post, Volume XVI, Issue 284, 30 November 1878, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE LATEST MUSIC HALL SENSATION.

« A new gymnast of extraordinary courage and ingenuity has appeared at the Oxford j Music Hall in the person of Leona Dare, described romantically enough as "The Queen of the Antilles." Among the wonderful achievements with which ehe is credited is an ascent in a balloon having suspended to it a trapeze, upon which she executed a series of intricate evolutions at a distance of half a mile from the earth. There is, of course, no possibility of her attempting any suck feat in the scene of her present operations ; yet even hore her proceedings are so marvellous as to make the spectators distrust the evidence of (

their own vision. She is a person of great stature and proportionate size, a fact which makes her operations all the more I remarkable, a light elastic figure being usually deemed essential to a "trapezist." It is by means of a pully and a rope, one end of which she holds between her teeth, that Leona Dare hoists herself to the tra- ! peze. Arrived there she does things that exceed belief. Hanging at full length, and sometimes by one leg only, from the bar of the apparatus with her feet towards the ceiling and her head towards the floor, she holds between her teeth another trapeze, on which a male athlete swings wildly to and fro. Presently her colleague discards the machine, and then, while he seems floating horizontally in the air, as though in the act of swimming, she sends him spinning round and round like a teetotum, she meantime holding in her mouth a hook fastened to the man's belt. These and several similar performances are but few of many feats of what may be termed " dental achletism. " It may be said truly of both gymnasts that they escape by " the skin of their teeth." It is, indeed, says the Home News, sensationalism in excelsis. Derogatory to the dignity of womanhood, and appealing to the most morbid craving after excitement, this exhibition deserves the sternest reprobation. It is rejeoted with the most rapturous enthusiasm by a public which has rejected cockfighting as disgraceful and has learned to regard pugilism with horror.