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Saxophone accompaniment.
"The East Indian Juggler," "A Spanish Dancer's Conception of 'The Spring Song,'" "The Cameo Waltz," and "The Garden Variety."
Her act is divided into four special dance numbers and Miss Payne has wisely chosen her themes for the various dances. Her opening number allows the special velvet drop in one to part and show her seated up stage on a box dressed in Oriental costume. The dance is called "The East Indian Juggler." In this number she attempts to juggle two rubber balls and dance gracefully at the same time making this dance a colorful affair and attractive. Her second number is perhaps the best and called "A Spanish Dancer's Conception of 'The Spring Song,"". In "two" a special spread fan painted on a drop is shown and this drop is raised to show her posed against a drop upon which a large vase is painted. She is dressed in orange net with black wig and trimmings and to the strains of "The Spring Song" goes through a rhythmic set of movements. The tempo of the music is interrupted time and again to allow the interpolation of some Spanish strains and Miss Payne stomps her heels and clicks them to the ground, as done by those who have made this style of Spanish dancing popular. The idea is excellent and its reception would have been much bigger elsewhere as the number seemed over the heads of the audience at the Audubon. A number by the saxophonist slowed things up. 'The Cameo Waltz" shows Miss Payne dressed in white new and wig, standing in a blue spot light which reflected the pose in relief. She gracefully glides into a routine of neat dance steps which are picturesque. A jazz number is directed by the woman leader in the orchestra and the curtain parts again for a dance called "The Garden Variety" in which she first appears as a pumpkin up against a drop painted to show various vegetables. The costume is discarded to allow her to wear a beautiful abbreviated dress of silver and green and go through a routine of difficult eccentric dance steps. A slight suggestion of the "shimmy" and some new steps was interrupted by her going off stage to fasten her costume which must have become loosened. She returned a moment later and resumed the dancing and to the melody of several Rube numbers closed the act with her well known high kicking. Miss Payne has a beautifully dressed and staged act but it needs a rearrangement of the numbers now employed or something stronger than the eccentric dance at the finish. As a dancing single, however, the act is there
Source:
Variety, 53:8 (01/17/1919)