The Dancing Mistress

The Dancing Mistress is a musical comedy with music by Lionel Monckton, book by James T. Tanner and lyrics by Adrian Ross and Percy Greenbank. It depicts the fortunes of a school dancing mistress who is dismissed and finds fortune and happiness in Switzerland. The piece ran in the West End of London in 1912 and 1913, and toured the British provinces in 1914.

The Dancing Mistress was presented by the impresario George Edwardes at the Royal Adelphi Theatre, opening on 19 October 1912. The piece, which followed the same composer's and authors' immensely successful The Quaker Girl, featured many of the performers from the earlier show, including the romantic leads, Gertie Millar and Joseph Coyne. It ran at the Adelphi until 21 June 1913.

A touring company presented the piece in the British provinces, with Adele Crispin, John T. MacCallum and Laura Wright in the leading roles of Nancy, Teddy and Virginie.

At a girls' school in Brighton on the south coast of England, the French mistress, Virginie Touchet, when not teaching French, surreptitiously indulges in an irresistible and ruinous addiction to gambling. She has befriended the young dancing teacher, Nancy Joye, under her wing. When Nancy uses her modest savings to help Virginie out, the latter promises her a huge reward if she wins the enormous cash prize with her latest "investment", a ticket for the Panama Lottery. The ticket wins, but nobody discovers the fact except for Widdicombe, the school butler, who throws over his previous lady-friend, Jeanie, the school's tuckwoman, and pursues Virginie.

Teddy Cavanagh is an aviator. In the course of his travels an Indian woman has given him a strange stone. In its normal state it is green, but when it is brought into contact with anyone who is passionately in love, it changes to red. When Teddy meets Nancy the stone rapidly goes from green to red. The austere headmistress, Miss Pindrop, does not like Nancy, and, finding her teaching her pupils a ragtime dance, she uses that as a pretext for dismissing her. Nancy is offered a post as teacher of dancing at a winter sports hotel in the Swiss mountains.

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