It’s time to take your seats, the show is about to begin…
Stepping into the spotlight at The Fan Museum in Greenwich is the new exhibition “In Performance: Fans of Theatre, Music and Dance”.
This exhibition is a celebration of the performing arts and features a variety of fans, including those that portray them, fans used in different kinds of performances and fans mass-produced for purposes such as the tourist trade.
In Performance is showing from now until Saturday 31 May 2025.
The fans take centre stage in this exhibition; you will discover fans from a vast range of the arts and those that come from far-reaching corners of the globe.
You will find fans used for and inspired by traditional Japanese Noh Theatre, palmette fans that evoke Indonesian shadow puppet theatre (“wayang”), and carnet du bal (“dance cards”) from Europe made into fans, often including a pencil or stylus.
The notion of using a fan as a “dance card” is then extended towards the end of the 19th century, by turning a fan into a type of “autograph book”.
One such “autograph book” or “signature fan” displayed in the exhibition includes the signatures of Sarah Bernhardt (1844-1923), the late 19th and early 20th-century French actress, and Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924), the Italian composer, whose world-renowned works include La bohème (1896) and Madama Butterfly (1904).
As performance stretches its arms out past the velvet curtains of the theatre and into the cinema’s projection booth, stars of the silver screen also feature in the exhibition, highlighting the historic evolution of performance from the stage to film.
The depictions of Clark Gable as Rhett Butler and Vivien Leigh as Scarlett O’Hara feature on fans printed to mark the 50th anniversary of the 1939 film Gone with the Wind, and a romantic cameo of Colin Firth’s Mr Darcy, of the 1995 BBC Series Pride and Prejudice, gazes out from a fan aptly titled “The Devoted to Darcy Forever Fanclub Fan”.
Whether it be dance, theatre or music that sparks your interest, all are explored in this new exhibition at Greenwich’s The Fan Museum.
Dates: Showing until Saturday 31 May 2025
Tickets: Adult £5, Child (7-16) or student £3 – order online or purchase at the front desk upon arrival
The Fan Museum, 12 Crooms Hill, SE10 8ER
