The French Cancan dance is an eight-minute performance facing the audience, during which dancers measuring 5’7” tall lead the dance to a piece of music by German-born French composer Jacques Offenbach (1819-1880).
It’s an art that requires Parisian cabaret dancers to have balance, flexibility, acrobatic ability and rhythm.
They have to be able to do the splits and perform impressive moves like the “port d’armes”, the “cathedral” and the “military salute”.
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec | At the Moulin Rouge, the Dance, 1889-90 | Philadelphia Museum of Art
Frenetic music, twirling petticoats, surprising acrobatics… the dancers of the Moulin Rouge know the art of the CanCan.
It’s a true phenomenon, but it hasn’t always been as it is now.
It was a famous dancer known as La Goulue who established the definitive rules, which were then passed on orally until Nini Pattes En L’air (Nini Legs in the Air) decided to start a specialist school teaching the explosive quadrille.
"Orpheus in the Underworld" and "Orpheus in Hell" are british names for "Orphée aux enfers", a comic opera with music by German-born French composer Jacques Offenbach (1819-1880) and words by Hector Crémieux and Ludovic Halévy.
The opera is a lampoon of the ancient legend of Orpheus and Eurydice.
Fifteen years or so after Offenbach's death the galop from Act 2 (or Act 4 in the 1874 version) became one of the world's most famous pieces of music, when the legendary Moulin Rouge and the Folies Bergère adopted it as the regular music for their Can-Can, an extravagant parade of sumptuous costumes and colorful characters that come together in an exceptional spectacle..
The story of the French Cancan dance dates back to the 1820s.
At that time, the quadrille was the dance performed at public balls in the capital.
To the beat of original compositions taken from operas and ballets, couples indulged in this five-figure dance.
Men quickly took over, dancing disorderly figures for several minutes as a way of letting off steam.
The name of this revisited dance?
The chahut, meaning uproar or commotion.
Paris in 1850 was buzzing with excitement.
Theatres, comedy shows and public balls were booming. Some time after the emergence of the chahut, daring Parisian women decided to take up the frenzied dance as an outlet.
At these events, one dancer made the news.
Celeste Mogador, star of the Bal Mabille, set Parisian hearts aflutter with her unpretentious quadrille. She was an instant hit!
10 years later, Charles Morton, the inventor of the modern Music-Hall, presented this surprising dance on the Oxford stage.
He renamed it the French Cancan because it came from France and caused a stir.
Soon after it appeared in Oxford, the socially aware dance was banned for being too daring.
In the city of Paris, however, the popularity of the quadrille now known as the French Cancan was growing.
The reason?
The incredible cancan dancers of the Moulin Rouge. In 1889, these linen maids of Montmartre Hill took the stage to the astonished gaze of the audience.
For them, the cancan was a way of challenging the established order.
Some of them became iconic figures.
The French Cancan shows in the lavish Moulin Rouge cabaret became more and more popular.
So popular that in 1955, Jean Renoir decided to make a film based on those shows.
The result was the film French Cancan, with Jean Gabin playing the role of Danglard. | Source: Moulin Rouge®
