Adelaide Herrmann was born Adele Celine Scarsez in London in 1853, to a Belgian family. She was drawn to performing as a young girl, and found work with the Kiralfys, a Hungarian dance troupe. Her early success was with a “velocipede” act, where she performed maneuvers and acrobatics while riding a bicycle around the stage.
After she teamed up with Alexander Herrmann and the two were married, she brought her skills and artistic taste to his performances, most notably with her beautiful Serpentine Dance, an imitation of the famous Loie Fuller. After Herrmann’s death, Adelaide continued in vaudeville with a spectacular act of sleight of hand and illusions, performing into her 70s.
