Montez, Lola (1818 - 1861)

Photograher unknown: Portrait of Lola Montez, c. 1855

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Born Maria Dolores Eliza Gilbert in Grange, Co. Sligo, Ireland, Lola Montez came to Australia in 1855, sailing from San Francisco on the Fanny Major on June 6. Her first engagement in Australia was in Sydney where she presented Lola Montes in Bavaria, a burlesque written by the American C. T. Ware. After a series of performances of this and other works in Sydney she moved on to Melbourne and Adelaide. In 1856 she was triumphant in the Victorian goldfields where the appreciative miners would shower the stage with gold nuggets during her performances.

Her most famous act was the Spider Dance, which provoked a furore in most Australian newspapers whenever it was performed. One Australian newspaper account described the dance as follows:

'The full perfection of her frame was revealed as she swung gracefully to the centre of the stage, and paused for a moment. She made it appear evident that she was entangled in the filaments of a spider’s web. In a dance step, she portrayed that she was more and more confused as the fibres wrapped themselves about her ankles. The music slowed as she discovered a spider in her petticoat, which she attempted to shake loose; then she discovered other spiders, and examining her skirts, she shook them to reveal even more spiders. The fight against the spiders became more and more hectic, as she danced with abandon and fire, and at the conclusion she had succeeded in shaking them out upon the floor, where she stamped them to death … the audience was held spellbound, and somewhat horrorstruck, but when the dance ended, the applause was thunderous; and as Lola Montes addressed her audience after numerous curtain calls, bouquets were showered at her feet …'

The Sydney Morning Herald thought the dance was ‘the most libertinish and indelicate performance that could be given on the public stage’. In Melbourne the season was hurriedly terminated when the possibility of a court case loomed.

Montez returned to America in 1858 on board the Jane E. Faulkenberg. Her various liaisons, reckless activities and salacious dancing in Australia ensured that the legend of her visit lived on for many years. Both the Spider Dance and Lola Montes in Bavaria were performed by various other entertainers in the years after Montez left, and her name and image were used in musical compositions created in Australia in the nineteenth century. In the twentieth century the Montez visit to Australia inspired a musical comedy, Lola Montez, that focused on her time in Ballarat, Victoria. With music by Peter Stannard, lyrics by Peter Benjamin and book by Alan Burke it premiered in Melbourne in 1958. Later that year it was taken up by the Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust who presented it in a major production in Brisbane, directed by George Carden. It was also staged by other smaller groups throughout the following decades.

Bibliography:

Edward H. Pask, Enter the colonies, dancing: a history of dance in Australia, 1835-1940 (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1979), pp. 30-38.

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Research Materials

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Other resources

Find more about Montez, Lola in:

• Internet - Google
• Articles - New York Public Library Dance Collection
• Pictures - Picture Australia