Birth of the Chorus Girl was a New York show staged in 1897 by Merry Maidens Burlesque. In the archive of performing arts posters at the Library of Congress, the earliest appearances of what would become "chorus girls" seem to occur about 1870.
The 1890s showed increasingly synchronized poses and gestures as chorus girls became essential theatrical allurements. Stylized pictures of chorus girls (in leg-revealing tights) proliferated.
