Paris being on my mind this week, I was reading through a 1919 dance-themed issue of a French satirical magazine that, in typical French fashion, combined silly essays and cartoons. Issue #204 of La Baïonnette (The Bayonet) was published in Paris with a cover date of May 29, 1919, and issue title "Numéro Spécial: Dansomanie".
The issue doesn't contain any specific descriptions of steps, and the illustrations are often caricatures, though there are a few relatively straightforward ones, including the one at left (click to enlarge) in which the only humor is in the reactions of the pianist and spectators. It is not, on the whole, particularly useful for detailed dance reconstruction, though it's great for historical fashions. But this sort of social satire provides a useful clue as to what is popular by the targets it picks. And apparently in the spring of 1919, the two most popular dances in Paris were the foxtrot and the tango.
Along with the dance itself being caricatured liberally in the illustrations, the phenomenon of the foxtrot's popularity was also the butt of many of the jokes. It featured in the centerfold, a scene of dancers with two older women conversing off to one side entitled Le cas désespéré (the hopeless case) and captioned, in part:
...madame, elle n'a pas se trouver un mari! Si elle ne se marie pas avec le "fox-trot", je ne sais ce que j'en ferai.
My translation:
...Madame, she has not yet found herself a husband! If she doesn't marry the foxtrot, I don't know what I will do.
Some of the humor in the magazine is a little obscure to me, but I loved one particular essay, "Au Pays de la Danse" (In the Country of Dance). I'm not going to transcribe a whole page of French here, but a loose translation of the introductory material is that there is a lovely land, the Country of Dance, beloved by the gods, on the coast of Normandy. It is bathed by the waters of the Mediterranean and the sun dispenses its "glorious rays", even if the orangeade is a bit expensive.
The capital city is, of course, Fox-Trot. The boston and the tango are but vague sub-prefectures and the maxixe has disappeared from the map. Archeologists have lately found the remains of the waltz and the quadrille.
You can see how satire is useful for tracing the popularity of particular dances!
After some dubious racial humor comes the best part: a day in the life of a citizen of Fox-Trot, which will sound hilariously familiar to anyone who has ever attended a dance festival. It contains all the essentials (dancing, eating, and changing clothes) plus weird dreams of flying foxtrot and intruding polka. I'll give the original as well as my translation:
Journée d'un citoyen et d'une citoyenne de Fox-Trot: Lever à dix heures. De onze heures à midi repetition dans la chambre d'hôtel à l'aide d'un miniscule phonographe facile à emporter en voyage et bien commode pour les exercices. Déjeuner. Fox-Trot dans le hall. One steep [sic]. Courte promenade. Thé. Fox-Trot. Gâteaux. Fox-Trot. Changement de costume. Potage. Fox-Trot. Truite saumonée. Fox-Trot. Tournedos. Fox-Trot. Petits pois. Fox-Trot. Glace. Fox-Trot. Fruits. Fox-Trot. Tisane. Fox-Trot et plus rien ne contrarie le Fox-Trot jusqu'à minuit. Chambre d'hôtel. Phonographe. Revision et corrections. Reproches et critiques réciproques. Sommeil troublé de rȇves voltigeants: Fox-Trot aérien dans l'espace, au son d'une musique mystérieuse jouée par un nègre ailé. Un cauchemar: le polka est imposée par ordre supérieur. Réveil, ouiverture [sic] des rideaux.
My translation:
Day of a male citizen and a female citizen of Fox-Trot: Rise at ten. From eleven to noon, practice in the hotel room with a tiny phonograph, easy to take on trips and very convenient for exercise. Lunch. Fox-Trot in the lobby. One step. Short promenade. Tea. Foxtrot. Cakes. Foxtrot. Change of clothes. Soup. Foxtrot. Salmon trout. Foxtrot. Beef tenderloin. Foxtrot. Peas. Foxtrot. Ice cream. Foxtrot. Fruits. Foxtrot. Tisane. Foxtrot and nothing but the foxtrot until midnight. Hotel room. Phonograph. Revision and corrections. Reciprocal reproaches and criticism. Sleep disturbed by fluttering dreams: aerial foxtrot in space, to the sound of mysterious music played by a winged Negro*. A nightmare: the polka is imposed by higher order. Wakening, opening of the curtains.
I have a couple of old dance week t-shirts with a schedule much like that one, minus the dream sequence, on the back. Plus ça change...!
What we learn of dance fashions in 1919 from all of this: the fox-trot was enormously popular. The one-step had a token presence. The tango and the boston (a form of waltz) were still around, but the maxixe was gone. The waltz and quadrille were not just dead to fashion, but buried. And being forced to polka was a nightmarish fate.
The entire magazine issue is available online at the Bibliothèque nationale de France. It's particularly entertaining if you read French, of course, but many of the cartoons are funny even without completely understanding the captions. The chaos caused by a bad dancer in "Monsieur Puc apprend le fox trot" (Monsieur Puc learns the foxtrot) requires no linguistic skills whatsoever!
*The exact translation of nègre is tricky; the meaning in France in the early 20th century seems to have been somewhere between Negro and n----r on the offensiveness scale.
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