"Suddenly bursts forth the rich, voluptuous cadences of the cancan, against which French nature is powerless," wrote an American visitor to the Mabille cabaret in the 1860s. "The dancers plunge into the passionate dance with a fury that fairly astonishes you. Such dancing, such embracings and coquetry, such entire surrender to the sensuous influence of the music!"

This quote comes from "Cancan!," the first history of the dance, by English writer David Price. He traces the cancan's origins back to the 1830s, when amateurs danced the chahut, a wild, spontaneous polka, at working class public bals. Three decades later, the girls were throwing their skirts about and flashing what one writer called "the sensuous seething of their frilly and beribboned underwear."

The cancan's golden years were the 1880s and '90s, when the cabarets of Montmartre lead the world. This is the moment forever frozen in the collective imagination, thanks to the famous posters of Toulouse-Lautrec. Many feature cancan dancers, from the sophisticated Jane Avril to the vulgar and outrageous La Goulue and her male partner, Valentin-le-Désossé (Valentin the boneless). These soloists were as famous as our movie stars, and danced for royalty.

With its aggressive sexuality, the cancan was a shocking spectacle. The enthusiasm of the women dancers appalled many viewers. Like the bicycle and the bloomer, the cancan was a liberator. The First World War ended the cancan's golden age. Jane Avril grew old gracefully, but by the '20s, La Goulue could be found overweight and hungry, selling matches outside the Moulin Rouge, where she once danced for Edward, Prince of Wales (he laughed when she asked him if his old mother,  Queen Victoria,  was still alive). She died a drunkard in 1929.

In the meantime the cancan was being ritualized and formalized. It was still a staple of Paris nightlife, but the passion and spontaneity were eeking away. Price quotes one old man who was unimpressed by the Lido show in the 1950s, comparing it to great days of the Bal Tabarin. "Perhaps it is not the loss of the Tabarin which I mourn," he sighed, "but the loss of my youth."

issue: December 98/ January 99

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