Lady Hamilton’s Attitudes

Emma, Lady Hamilton was the girl from nowhere, a model and later courtesan who leapt up the ranks of society to become
one of the wealthiest and most celebrated women in England,
a lady, an ambassadress and the lover of Horatio Nelson.

She became famous through portraiture, but most of all, through her
Attitudes, a combination of classical poses and dance moves, all in
white draped dress. As a young mistress in Naples, she combined
her earlier experience in posture in brothels and London shows with
classical references and became the biggest attraction on Europe’s Grand Tour. Royals, aristocrats, artists and writers flocked to watch. Erotic, exciting, beautiful and fresh, the Attitudes
took Europe and later London by storm.

In this beautiful and entirely original performance, Kate Williams, biographer of Lady Hamilton, and Sophie Edmonds, classical dancer and leader of the Lady Greys, recreate Emma’s attitudes. Taking the audience back to eighteenth-century Naples, they invite the audience to join them in Sir William Hamilton’s palazzo and be the first witnesses to the performance that would change fashions in dance, dress, art and theatre. The performance can be adapted to different spaces, and it can also be given a Christmas theme.

Kate Williams’s England’s Mistress: the Infamous Life of Emma Hamilton was a Radio 4 Book of the Week, a Book of the Year in the Times and Independent, and shortlisted for the Marsh/English Speaking Union Prize for Biography, 2005-6. The film is in development.

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