A Decade of Brilliance: Dance Theatre in Late-Eighteenth-Century Philadelphia.

PHILADELPHIA (Pa.); PENNSYLVANIA

The article focuses on dance theatre and dance companies in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the late eighteenth century. The Philadelphia stage, having become an accepted and even much appreciated institution in the Colonial period, managed to survive the austerities of the War for Independence, but it nearly had to go underground in the aftermath of that conflict, when anti-theatre laws were reinforced by the newly independent Pennsylvania legislature. A victory for the stage was achieved in 1789. At the decade's opening, the Old American Company was the major professional troupe performing on the Philadelphia stage.