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The Tiller Girls were among the most popular dance troupes of the 1890s, first formed by John Tiller in Manchester, England, in 1889. In theatre Tiller had noticed the overall effect of a chorus of dancers was often spoiled by lack of discipline. Tiller found that by linking arms the dancers could dance as one; he is credited with inventing precision dance.[citation needed] Possibly most famous for their high-kicking routines, the Tiller Girls were highly trained and precise.
John Tiller's first dancers performed as 'Les Jolies Petites'. He originally formed the group for the pantomime 'Robinson Crusoe', subtitled 'The Good Friday That Came on a Saturday', in 1890 at the Prince of Wales Theatre, Liverpool. From this were founded the Tiller School of Dancing and the Tiller Girl troupes. The number of troupes grew to dozens, and their fame spread around the world.
The troupes were all slightly different, but within each troupe the girls were matched very precisely by height and weight. Individuality within the troupes was discouraged in favour of a strong group ethic. The Tillers performed as resident dancers at the Folies Bergère in Paris, the London Palladium, the Palace Theatres in Manchester and in London (as the Palace Girls or Sunshine Girls), the Blackpool Winter Gardens, on New York's Broadway, where Tiller had a dance school, and at hundreds of other theatres throughout Europe and the United States. One Tiller group, the Pony Ballet, earned success in the U.S. in musical comedy and vaudeville, performing from 1899 to 1914. In a 1911 newspaper interview, Beatrice Liddell, the leader of the Pony Ballet, described the Tiller school of the late 1890s as having a boarding school facility in Limehouse, Manchester, where girls aged five to ten were taught academic subjects as well as dance, to gauge their aptitude for dancing. Promising students graduated to Tiller's Covent Garden, London, facility.