GYMNASTICS FOR LADIES IN 1885

New Zealand Listener, Volume 5, Issue 123, 31 October 1941, Page 44

GYMNASTICS FOR LADIES IN 1885

N Tuesday evening of last week, the ladies’ class of the Gymnastic Society gave a display to an audience of ladies only, and the parents of the pupils. The sight was a very pretty one. A brisk march was played on a grand piano placed in the gallery, and the master, wearing his white dress, led in a little army of girls dressed all alike in crimson Garibaldis, short grey skirts trimmed with scarlet braid, and black shoes and stockings. They spread over the hall and went through the "free exercises." First, the arms are stretched out straight till the finger tips of each all but touch the finger tips of her neighbour; then they are whirled round high in the air, The second time they were varied by a slight jump and a stoop forward, like a diver’s movement. In most cases the girls’ movements were extremely elegant, and many onlookers discovered for the first time how graceful a woman is, untrammelled by corsets and train, and free to run and leap. The attention of the audience was then attracted by one of the ladies climbing the rope which hangs from the centre of the roof, fifty feet high. All the girls learn rope-climbing, but this one, Miss Foster, is the only one at present who goes right to the top of the rope. She remained a little while at the top, looking completely at her ease, with one hand behind her back, to the great delight of the audience; and then slid slowly down.

-(from

The Lady

1885)

VERY time a woman puts on her clothes she is challenging the male sex. That explains why she takes so long over her toilet. But is it so long considering the gravity of the occasion? A nation takes five years to re-arm, a woman does it in a couple of hours.C. Willett Cunningham in " Feminine Fig-leaves."