Virgina Slate wore this top hat with a child-sized tuxedo to perform the “Cakewalk” with her sister Betty at the Portola Theatre in 1919. The “Cakewalk” was a dance that originated among enslaved people to mock the formal dances of high-society slaveholders. Not understanding the mockery, white performers then replicated the dance in minstrel shows. Virgina and Betty were white children and did not wear any kind of blackface makeup for their performance, but the crushed style of the top hat (implying that it is old and worn out) may be a reference to the conventions of minstrel show costumes. The cakewalk is typically done as a partner dance with a male and female role, so Virginia dressed as the gentleman and Betty had a simple white dress to be the lady. The Portola was built in West Seattle in 1919 and had a nautical design and theme. It was used primarily to show movies and had a theater organ to accompany silent films. The Portola was purchased in 1938 and reopened in 1942 as the grand lobby for the much-expanded, Art Deco-designed and renamed Admiral Theatre, whose lobby and front facade were landmarked by Seattle in 1989. Originally with a single auditorium of 1,000-seats, the Admiral was “twinned" in 1973 and became a fourplex in 2017.