Lucia Cormani was a 19th and early 20th-century Italian ballet dancer and one of the founders of the Royal Academy of Dance.
Her name appears on posters of ballet performances in Berlin, Brussels, St Petersburg, Guatemala, Boston (1883) and New York City (1884).
Because of her tall muscular frame, Lucia was several times cast as a "travesty dancer" (a woman dressed as a man) -- for example as a male pirate chief in the ballet "Algeria" in 1887, and as a sorcerer in "Enchantment."
In 1923 the association began a series of Annual Matinées; ten of Cormani's students participated in the premier performance, dancing a tarantella.
Her collected letters are in the London Theatre Museum and there are dozens of photographs of Cormani in the National Portrait Gallery.