Can-can

Can-can

The can-can (more correctly not hyphenated, as in the original French: cancan) is regarded today primarily as a physically demanding music hall dance, performed by a chorus line of female dancers who wear costumes with long skirts, petticoats, and black stockings, harking back to the fashions of the 1890s. The main features of the dance are the lifting up and manipulation of the skirts, with high kicking and suggestive, provocative body movements.

The Galop from Jacques Offenbach's "Orpheus in the Underworld" is the tune most associated with the can-can ( [http://www.nurisite.com/midisonly/internacional/cancan.mid a somewhat simplified form] ).

Origins

s—later a popular feature of the cancan. At this time, and throughout most of the 19th century in France, the dance was also known as the "chahut". Both words are French, "cancan" meaning "tittle-tattle" or "scandal", hence a scandalous dance, while "chahut" meant "noise" or "uproar". The dance did cause something of a scandal, and for a while, there were attempts to repress it. Occasionally people dancing the cancan were arrested but it was never officially banned, as is sometimes claimed. Throughout the 1830s, it was often groups of men, particularly students, who caused the most outrage by dancing the cancan at public dance-halls.

As performers of the cancan became more skilled and adventurous, it gradually developed a parallel existence as entertainment, alongside the participatory form, although it was still very much a dance for individuals and not yet performed on stage by a chorus line. A few men became cancan stars in the 1840s to 1860s, and an all-male group known as the Quadrille des Clodoches performed the dance in London in 1870. But women performers were much more widely known in this period. They were mostly middle-ranking courtesans, and only semiprofessional entertainers—unlike the dancers of the 1890s, such as La Goulue and Jane Avril, who were highly paid for their appearances at the Moulin Rouge and elsewhere. The female dancers of the Second Empire and the fin-de-siècle developed the various cancan moves that were later incorporated by the choreographer Pierre Sandrini in the spectacular " [http://www.chanson.udenap.org/textes_divers/french_cancan_introduction.htm French Cancan] ", which he devised at the Moulin Rouge in the 1920s and presented at his own Bal Tabarin from 1928. This was a combination of the individual style of the Parisian dance-halls and the chorus-line style of British and American music halls (see below).

Performance

The cancan is danced in 2/4 time, and is now usually performed on stage in chorus-line style. In France in the 19th century the cancan remained a dance for individual entertainers, who performed on a dance floor. In the United Kingdom, the United States and elsewhere, the cancan achieved popularity in music halls, where it was danced by groups of women in choreographed routines. This style was imported into France in the 1920s for the benefit of tourists, and the French Cancan was born—a highly choreographed routine lasting ten minutes or more, with the opportunity for individuals to display their "specialities". The main moves are the high kick or battement, the "rond de jambe" (quick rotary movement of lower leg with knee raised and skirt held up), the "port d'armes" (turning on one leg, while grasping the other leg by the ankle and holding it almost vertical), the cartwheel and the grand écart (the flying or jump splits). It has become common practice for dancers to scream and yelp while performing the cancan, but this is by no means essential.

Perception

The cancan is now considered an acceptable part of world culture, and often the main feature observed today is how physically demanding and tiring the dance is to perform, but it still retains something of an erotic buzz for many. When the dance first appeared in the early 19th century, it was considered little more than a scandalous activity that young people indulged in, similar to how rock and roll would be perceived later on. In the mid-19th century, when the dance was emerging from the working-class dance-halls into the mainstream, it was thought extremely inappropriate by "respectable" society. [The film "Un Quixote Sin Mancha" (1969) features a woman of this period being tried over the custody of her child on the grounds that her career path as a dancer is not an appropriate one for raising a child, and not because of her pay. Upper-class characters in the film even hesitate to pronounce the dance's name. Other films set at this time also show how the cancan was regarded with disapproval.] In the late 19th and early 20th centuries the cancan was viewed as much more erotic because the dancers now made use of the extravagant underwear of the period, and the contrasting black stockings. They lifted and manipulated their skirts much more, and incorporated a move sometimes considered the most cheeky and provocative—bending over and throwing their skirts over their backs, revealing their lace-covered behinds. [see Moulin Rouge as well as the category this article is in]

In art

Many composers have written music for the cancan. The most famous music is French composer Jacques Offenbach's galop infernal in "Orpheus in the Underworld" (1858). Other examples occur in Franz Lehár's "The Merry Widow" (1905) and Cole Porter's musical play "Can-Can" (1954) which in turn formed the basis for the 1960 musical film "Can-Can" starring Frank Sinatra and Shirley MacLaine. Some other songs that have become associated with the cancan include Khachaturian's Sabre Dance and the music hall standard Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-ay.

The cancan has often appeared in ballet, most notably Léonide Massine's "La Boutique Fantasque" (1919) and "Gaîté Parisienne", as well as The Merry Widow. A particularly fine example can be seen at the climax of Jean Renoir's 1954 film "French Cancan".

French painter Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec produced several paintings and a large number of posters of cancan dancers. Other painters to have treated the cancan as a subject include Georges Seurat, Georges Rouault, and Pablo Picasso.

Appearances in other media

*In Super Mario Land for Game Boy, the tune that plays for Mario's invincibility is primarily the Can-Can.

*In The Faces' 1973 release, Ooh La La, Ron Wood sings, "The Cancan's such a pretty show / They'll steal your heart away / But backstage, back on earth again / The dressing rooms are grey".

* Offenback's tune has appeared in commercials for ShopRite's "Can-Can Sale," albeit slightly modified and with words added. (The commercials feature animated dancers similar to those in the poster shown above.)

Currently continuing edited versions that use new digital technologies, but retain the basic structure. [Berenguer González, Ramón T. "Can Can" Classics Version". 2007-6923838 Legran Studio Composers "I Love classics" Album]

The groundbreaking German musical pioneers Can used the Offenbach tune twice in their eponymous album "Can" in 1978. The first rendition, titled _EFS no. 99: "CAN CAN"_ is part of their ethnological forgery series, songs which are performed using the idiom of a particular culture. Usually that means non-Western traditional folk music (Japanese Shakuhachi, Turkish Dervish, Gypsy guitar, Afro-Asiatic mouth harp etc) but in this case it's a Tin Pan Alley/Moulin Rouge/cabaret style being explored.

The second use of the tune ("Can Be") is performed in the manner of 1970's Wendy Carlos electronica.

External links

* Legran Studio Composers, [http://soundclick.com/share?songid=6627458 "CAN CAN Classics Version" Mp3·] , 2007-6923838 Legran Studio Composers "I Love Classics" Album", Published with the permission of the owner of rights.

Notes

Memory of La Goulue;"Moi,La Goulue de Toulouse-Lautrec" Edit.Publibook.Paris 2008.


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