Madame Hilligsberg

Marie-Louise Hilligsberg (c1765/70?–1804) was a French dancer whose performances dazzled the London public in the last decade of the 18th century. She trained in Paris with the great dancer and choreographer Gaëtan Vestris and first came to London in 1787. She joined the King’s Theatre making her first appearance in Dec 1787 in Noverre’s ballet ‘Les offrandes à l’amour’. Hilligsberg was primarily associated with the King’s Theatre though she also performed at the Pantheon and occasionally at Covent Garden and Drury Lane. After the 1802–03 season she moved with her husband to France and began to style herself the comtesse de Beaumont. However, her retirement was brief. She died in January 1804 probably, it was thought, as a consequence of the ‘extreme exertion which she had invariably used in her profession’.