Festive enjoying atmosphere and black stockings are all going by too fast for your blurred eyes. Fun kicks bustle in the air. The cheerful music makes that world bright and colorful. The dresses are lifted up to the ceiling, men are clapping and applauding. And can-can movements – all these legs circling, high kicking, shaking of the skirts – that could spice up your life. By the way, Russian ladies adore this dance because of its quarrelsome character and challenging movements. Today is the 21st of October and more than 150 years ago, in 1838 the Can-can was performed for the first time.
The Cancan dance is treated now as a music hall dance. When appeared, the can-can was usually performed by a chorus line of women dancers (though men dancers existed as well – they demonstrated their athletic skills). Can-can dancers usually wore black stockings, flimsy rustling petticoats, pretty bonnets, bustier, feathers and high heels. Dancers’ bare legs above the stockings seemed scandalously challenging look! In fact, the word Can-Can originally meant “Scandal,” or “Edge”, since the dancers usually performed it on the edge of the stage. Because of the public nudity, the can-can dance had to be regarded pretty erotic and scandalous for those times. Suggestive and provocative can-can movements and dance elements (as high kicking and lifting the skirts up) completely conflicted with the current public morals. The can-can shocked the audience grown in atmosphere of strict social morality. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, the famous French painter, created numerous posters and paintings about can-can dancers; he is considered to be an author of saying “La vie est belle, voila le quadrille!” (It means “life is beautiful, here comes the can-can!” in English).
Today the can-can dance is considered to be a very important part of world cultural heritage. Have you ever wondered that the earliest evidence of can-can dancing was found on a mural fresco in ancient tomb in Egypt about 2500 BC? La Goulue, the well-known Queen of Montmartre, made her name world-famous because of performing brilliantly the can-can. The Moulin Rouge might have lost a part of its charming glory without can-can performances. Can-can dancing usually requires the excellent qualities of rhythm and balance, brilliant physical conditions and a certain dancing skill, so performing this is quite difficult.