More than just a dance: a social phenomenon

In the mid-19th century, the term “cancan” referred to a “quadrille”, a kind of square dance. It drew its inspiration from the lives of laundry-women, who had a mischievous habit of proudly flashing their clean petticoats, and gave rise to a popular dance, a way for working-class women to express their rejection of authority - in other words, a harmless provocation. From the 1860s, galvanized by the popularity of this dance, also known as the “chahut” (uproar), the music halls of Paris decided to turn it into a show.

Soon everybody who was anybody in Paris could share in the art of petticoat-swishing and lace-clad derrière-flashing. The leg was kicked as high as possible to reveal a tantalising glimpse of stocking-top, along with all manner of contortions and acrobatics, set to the furious rhythm of Offenbach’s music, which largely contributed to the success of the French cancan and the reputation of the Parisian cabarets.

The fascinating suppleness of the dancers, legs sheathed in black stockings and suspenders, their dizzy cleavage and the sound of those characteristic yells as they tripped the light fantastic - all this gave these queens of entertainment an image that was far from that of shrinking violets. So it was that, in the Guide des plaisirs de Paris, published at the end of the 19th century, the cancan dancers were presented as “an army of young ladies who are there to dance the divine Parisian “chahut”, as its reputation requires […] with a flexibility when they kick their legs into the air that suggests a moral looseness of a similar degree…”. The phenomenon even crossed the Atlantic to the saloons of the Far West, for the great pleasure of the cowboys. Ah, those Parisian girls!