Gaiety girls, dog and monkey shows, queer cinema, and the modern burlesque revival

While researching a burlesque show that took place at the Halifax Academy of Music in July 1892, I stumbled across a competing performance from the same week that unraveled a surprisingly tangled history of performance, protest, and cultural evolution in the city.

That summer, American comedian George Turner brought his English Gaiety Girls burlesque troupe to the Academy of Music. Their advertisements claimed to introduce Halifax audiences to the exotic “serpentine dance,” a visually captivating movement style that would eventually influence the bump-and-grind of classic burlesque. Stacked directly above their ad in the same newspaper column was one for Rufus Somerby’s Parlour Musee, a variety show at the Masonic Hall, also boasting a serpentine dance performance by a young performer named Bertoto.​

​Turner’s troupe, though popular and provocative, only visited Halifax twice. Their cheeky musical comedies and posters of dancing girls in tights sparked outrage among more conservative corners of society. Despite warm audience reception, their influence in the city faded quickly after their departure.

​Somerby’s legacy, however, took deeper root.
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Rufus Somerby was a seasoned showman, a comedic singer, ventriloquist, and vaudeville manager who regularly brought variety and circus acts to Nova Scotia. Among his most curious contributions was Wormwood’s Dog & Monkey Theatre, a novelty show that, by today’s standards, would not be permitted but was a hit in its time. It is believed that Halifax’s first screening of a moving picture took place during one of these shows, quietly marking the city’s entry into the age of cinema.

​Decades after Somerby’s death, in 1976, his peculiar branding found new life. In the National Film Board building, which also once housed “The Nickel,” Halifax’s first movie house, an independent film collective adopted the name Wormwood’s Dog and Monkey Cinema. The Wormwood’s first official space was built on the third floor of the Khyber Arts Centre, just across from the former Academy of Music, before relocating to Gottingen Street.
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Their Gottingen Street beginnings were in the same building that once housed Cousin Brucie’s, a burlesque theatre that operated during Halifax’s nightlife boom of the 1960’s and 1970’s. After seven years, they moved across the street into the old Vogue Theatre, a building with its own colorful past. In the 1970s, it had briefly operated as an adult movie house called “Eve.” At Wormwood’s, audiences were treated to daring and often controversial films, including work by John Waters. His campy, retro aesthetic would go on to inspire many performers in the neo-burlesque revival of the 1990s and 2000s. The Wormwood cinema was in operation from 1976 until 1997.
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From Gaiety Girls and serpentine dances to vaudeville acts, adult cinemas, and underground queer film, Halifax has always had a surprisingly tangled and fascinating performance history.

Wormwood Cinema  on Gottingen Street 1996. Photographer Unknown

A video clip featuring Woodworm's Dog & Monkey Show is available to watch on Youtube via  user Davekpp. Warning, footage maybe disturbing for some people. Viewer discretion is advised https://youtu.be/YvUHKLBwhD0?si=9p53bXlUX8sJlH52