BLOOMER GIRL: "CIVIL WAR BALLET"

MUSIC by Harold Arlen, LYRICS by E.Y. Harburg, BOOK by Sig Herzig and Fred Saidy, DANCE ARRANGEMENTS by Trude Rittman

“Civil War Ballet” in the 1944 musical Bloomer Girl continued to develop de Mille’s concept of dance intensifying and furthering the plot in musical theater. One year after Oklahoma!, de Mille’s choreographic vocabulary for this work demonstrated an evolvement into a more contemporary dramatic language that was found in some of her later dramatic ballets, such as Fall River Legend. “Civil War Ballet” depicts the women who have been left behind while their husbands went off to fight in the Civil War and who bravely kept the homestead running. The ballet ends with the homecoming of the soldiers who survived and the heartbreaking reality of the absence of those who did not return.

Bloomer Girl. “Civil War Ballet.” Photo Credit: Unknown