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Show I! - ! I lit Hid ... VI -:7Vl&'"-'4i" Wwi- vU-i Jms Too? 77iese Comely English Girls Learned to Make Their Shapely Legs Behave With Such Surprising Nimbleness ' I aic? Grace aic? the Precision of Clockwork TRAINING sixteen sets of girlish muscles to work as one, teaching thirty-two leg3 to do the most astounding stunts with almost the precision pre-cision of clockwork all this may sound like a not very difficult task, but just you try it oncel Ask John Tiller, the veteran London instructor in stage dancing, if it can be accomplished in a few weeks or months. Ask any of the hundreds of girls whom he haB taught how many years it took them to become proficient enough to win a place in one of his dancing units. John Tiller, now past middle age, has devoted the better part of a lifetime to the work of developing girl dancers No other man eeems to understand so thoroughly thor-oughly just how to build and train the muscular power which a girl needs for the most strenuous kind of stage dancing. danc-ing. This is why his dancing academy always has all the pupils it can take care of and why theatrical managers the world over are so eager to give places in their productions to Tiller-trained Tiller-trained girls. The Tiller academy in London is no rapid-fire school where girls may enter in the spring and emerge in tho fall thinking they know all there is to know about dancing. Training there begins when a girl is ten years old, and it is often five years, and sometimes ten, before be-fore she is considered fit for a place in one of the Tiller troupes. Even then her muscles continuo to be under the close supervision of this master mas-ter of scientific physical development. . He prescribes what she shall eat, how many hours she shall sleep and what exercise ex-ercise she shall go through every day to keep her muscles pliable and under perfect per-fect control. Two troupes of Tiller girls are now appearing in this country, each of them consisting of sixteen girls. Mr Tiller j'll.Jj i came over with them, saw that they were properly housed and attended their final 'J,, rehearsals. Now he is back in London, raising a new crop of dancers to delight the world's theatergoers. While playing in New York the two l j troupes of Tiller girls occupy the whole of a small apartment house. Four of j'lj , the girls share each flat and take turns j U) , at the work of housekeeper In Mr. Til- S j t kr's absence each troupe has to take or-' or-' ( ' dcrs from a girl captain, herself one of the sixteen dancers. whose pictures are shown dn this page is Miss Rena Todd. She is lHi iff younger than some of the fif- Oty teen "daughter" whom it is her V J L'J?'- duty to mother in accordance .-.'' ' - with Mr. Tiller's noveMdeas, and T vx she admits that the task is no ' Looking after ver small chil- Ye1 SpHli certain things and generally ad- : .li vising them as to the way they w -V shall live that, as every mother L.- tZHHi knows, is a tremendous ZjMWW ', ' 'tffljjKBBBBtiSL job. Instead of small chil- L fiBg dren, Captain Todd has fif- Yet these fifteen SjW U young women must be gt ' f held to a course of i .'. M f 1 i i y f j it training in many wayB k. m J more rigid than that r - which profes- i'0$T f - s i o n a 1 athletes i I If. preparing for an ' 1 . r important match. j i-ffi?r?''?5,.. 3 It would be a . ' j - ' ; ) task impossible ' s without what , . I Captain Todd . j '.. I ' . ' calls "team !; f work," and that "fiifiy ' r . . .' ' r jut i is something to x which the girls U are trained from vg the minute they begin preparing Two of the dancer, ready for the round of golf which for tfaeu profes- forms part of their daily exercise programme sional career. I aptain Todd is not "hard boiled." She is a fair and sympathetic boss but one who stands for no "monkey business" busi-ness" Acting in strict accordance with instructions from Mr. Tiller, she is the sort of boss with whom no girl would ever dare plead to be excused from the regular morning drill and exercise rehearsal re-hearsal because she happened to be out late the night before. Luckily the captain is not bothered with any of the petty jealousies that mar tho private lives and spoil the public performances of so many dancers. The slightest assertion of individualism is never allowed in a Tiller troupe. The rule is for each girl to work as hard as ever she can and have for her sole aim the success of the entire sixteen. American chorus gHs are notorious for always striving to kick just a wee bit higher than the blonde on one side or the pretty brunette on the other. That's one reason why there are no American dancing units as successful as those trained with such infinite pains by John Tiller. From the moment when a girl enters the London academy she is taught to submerge all her ideas of individual success and work only for the triumph of herself along with her fellow dancers. Co-operation is the watchword and all selfish motives are barred. Girls who think that the life of a stage dancer is all ease from the time when the production in which she is appearing scores an emphatic success would havo a rude awakening if they were in one of the Tiller troupes. The training of these dancers is something that is never finished. The more nearly perfect their public performances seem the harder they have to work. Promptly at 10 o'clock every week-day morning these sixteen girls report for an hour and a half of intensive dancing practice. Captain Todd says that they literally "tear their dances into pieces" at these rehearsals and then reconstruct them. It is thus that they are able to provide so many novelties for the public. - - .... ..Jx&Tj.snm&-- A squad of the scientifically trained dftndaf girls whose education for the stage bena whe" they were ten yeart old and ':Vvv who have lived ever tbee under the most rigid system of diet, ' J exercise and regular hours. PJP3i meal, with meat, three or four vepU. hies, a salad and some light dessert Cp. y w '4n5a 9 tain Todd insists on her charges eating s an abundance of vegetables and silsdi, whether they care for them specially or There is no set hour for going to bad jfi but the girls are usually so tired aftaf ; "j their strenuous night's work on tht : .v . j stage that they want to go early. Cipi ' HgL MMl ain Todd permits them to accept vary few after-theater supper invitations, and AiT when they uu they have to be careful MtHMfM what they, cat and drink. It's early ts j - j led and early to rise for the Tiller girls, One of uitli plenty of fresh air, exercise and 'J 2 the exercises good, whole orre food. Only such i it-the it-the 32 legs cime can keep them in the trim their take every , k demands. morning. The average weirht of Captain Todd B) f. ""- and her fifteen 'daughters' is 115 B The dancers practicing, with the aid of one lone man, the "Wheel Dance" which is by no means as easy as it looks Every girl is appointed a committee of one to pick flaws in every other Tiller Til-ler girl's dancing. If May, for example, notices Ethel rising on her toes at the wrong place in a certain dance, she tells her so in very plain English. And so strong is the spirit of co-operation In the troupe that Ethel will try to correct her mistake without tho slightest ill feeling feel-ing toward tho one who called her attention atten-tion to it. Besides the daily dance practice, there is a regular schedule of other exercise and a system of diet which has to be followed as closely as if the girls were professional athletes in training. Special Spe-cial breathing exercises devised by Mr Tiller are gone through every morning. morn-ing. A certain amount of outdoor exercise, ex-ercise, preferably golf or tennis, is also insisted upon. Tho Tiller dancers arise at 9:30, and after their breathing exercises have a breakfast of tea and toast. Lunch, a very light one both summer and winter, is served at 1 o'clock At 4 o'clock there is tea in true English style. The dinner comes at 6:30, and is a good, substantial r ; 1 B A S " ' ' three or four of ft, them we l;l. around 12 0 3 P u n d s . Misi W' Todd weighs, is jB Knvjish term i' nology, 7 stona I pounds, which means in Amef" - ica, 111 pounds. One stone is tnl English equivalent equiva-lent of fourteen pounds. Elsie WoodsD is rather proud of the dtstine I tion of being th tallest girl il J this troupe. But all the girls art 1 about the sstt j height sad tit I d i f f er ene b- 4 tween tallest B 8ie and DoHf Evans, the 3trf 3 Pickford of tfc 4 i. l a troupe, in matter of two or tnree inches. Thera art h: only four pronounced blondes among tM slxtoen girls. Not one of the girls is married, or j oven engaged to be. "You know," M Captain Rena Todd, in diseasing Wj prospects of romances, "we've been I Ws, America only a few weeks and bar m. met virtually no gentlemen outside ol thOM in the company with us. But I never can tell what will happen whs- I we're better acquainted. "Personally I like American men i ' mensely and shouldn't feel tho lest w upset if some nice American boy be interested in one of us Really, I English-American romances nre ra jolly-" hs ft Experts in physical development have studied these scientifically train dancing girls are agreed that the ,j j who win? one of them for his bride he getting an unusually fine ?Pec,rten Wr vigorous young womanhood '..'.3 dents of heredity will Wtch wit ' m, terest to see what kind of children girls eventually bring into the ft |
