In 1798, the Bishop of Durham rose to his feet in the House of Lords to denounce the pernicious influence of French ballet dancers. His eccentric attack, identifying ballet as dangerous force of political subversion, provoked an outpouring of public ridicule – and genuine alarm amid real government crackdowns on personal freedoms.
This talk will illustrate the radical changes to ballet costuming and dance subject matter that underpinned poor Durham’s upset, and explore ballet-going in Britain after the French Revolution.
Dr Caitlyn Lehmann is a cultural historian specialising in ballet history and eighteenth-century studies. An Honorary Fellow with the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne, she writes regularly for The Australian Ballet and is a former critic for the UK’s Dancing Times. Her research interests include the intersections of ballet, fashion, Romanticism, early circus and dance patronage, with publications exploring topics as diverse as dancing on horseback at Astley’s Circus, ‘snow ballets’ in the late nineteenth century and, most recently, the practice of turning out the feet in polite company in a chapter for Dance and Sociability in the Long Eighteenth Century (eds. H. Burlock, I. Newman & M. Philp, Bloomsbury, 2026). Caitlyn has held the John M. Ward Fellowship in Dance and Music for the Theatre at the Houghton Library, Harvard (2020-21), and was an invited speaker for the ‘Ballerina’ symposium (2020) at The Museum at FIT, New York. In 2025, she was co-organiser of the symposium ‘Haunted? Locating the Spectral in Australasian Ballet,’ hosted at the University of Melbourne.
Your ticket includes tea or Market Lane coffee served before the presentation, and time to browse our exclusive range of books, gifts, and homewares at TJC Emporium.
This event is presented on-site at The Johnston Collection. Please see your ticket for details. NOTE: Tickets for this event do not include access to our house museum, Fairhall. Guided tours of the current exhibition can be booked separately.
This event is supported by The Colin Holden Charitable Trust.
Image: James Gillray, La dance a l’eveque, 1798. Lewis Walpole Library. Farmington, Connecticut.
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