From waltz to lambada: Dances that parents considered obscene, but children still danced selflessly

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Waltz or cancan? Tango or foxtrot? Rock and roll or lambada? Find in each pair an indecent dance that would disgrace the gray hair of the parents of unlucky dancers. If you know well the history of the last two centuries, then do not hesitate to choose all six dances and add a couple more from yourself. For example, matchish and charleston. What was terrifying in these youth dances of other generations? The adults did not hesitate to explain what it was.

Paired cancan

Kankan, thanks to the nightly variety show from the films, we do not associate with anything decent at all. After all, this is when a crowd of women throws up their legs, demonstrating their underwear, and violently waves their skirts to the beat of the music. In fact, the cancan was originally a pair dance and was derived from one of the quadrille figures. In this figure, the dancers threw up their legs - who is higher. Basically, of course, the gentlemen tried, the ladies were strongly constrained by the fear of showing off their underwear. The movements of the young men began to turn into an almost vertical twine.

Many girls also wanted records, and soon dance costumes were invented, which perfectly protected the pantaloons with any swings. The arsenal of young men was supplemented with jumps in a handstand, a lower split and even a wheel. The dance became completely independent, something like a competition was organized on it. At the evenings, where couples were sophisticated in acrobatics, there were a lot of strangers onlookers who tried to catch the moment when the lady, perhaps, still flashed underwear. Precisely because girls excite such desires and fantasies, many parents considered the dance obscene and forbade it to their daughters.

What we know as the French cancan - that very display of linen from the stage - emerged as an imitation, a reflection of the aspirations of many men. But it also requires excellent physical shape and stretching to perform. It is not enough just to raise the hem of the skirt.

Tango and matchish

For some time they were promoted as Argentine and Brazilian tango - sellers of music in the style of matchish (mashichi) and teachers of this dance hoped by comparison with a competing style to attract more buyers and students. But in fact tango and matchish are not even related to each other. The differences are noticeable even in the music - the matchish is danced to the march.

It's generally difficult to deal with the matchish-mashichi; rather strange interpretations of it spread outside Brazil. But they all bore a pronounced eroticized character, and in all there was a movement when the gentleman took a step with his foot between the lady's legs, touching, as far as possible through several layers of clothing, her thighs. In general, debauchery.

During tango, as the Europeans saw him, the lady had to hang on the gentleman, clinging to him with her whole body. The idea of tango as a radically obscene dance led to incidents when in the United States they tried to sue a teacher of a more technical, but quite authentic version of Argentine dance for corrupting minors, and when the teacher showed the dance right in the courtroom, the prosecution decided that they were being shown some kind of fake tango …

Foxtrot

It is difficult to say why the syncopated dances invented at the beginning of the twentieth century, including the foxtrot, did not please the public. The partners in them "hugged", of course, but by modern standards - very modestly. Rather, adults were embarrassed by the speed and some sharpness of movements. Not a dance, but wild dances.

Waltz

Emperor Paul, who was very fond of ordering and prohibiting, among other things, forbade the waltz as an obscene dance. And he was not alone in his gaze. The waltz at the end of the eighteenth century became fashionable, but how it shocked the priests and parents! Just think, the gentleman hugs the lady, and their legs seem to intertwine in motion! Even during the first ball of Natasha Rostova, many adults at the ball saw not an innocent girl in an eternally young waltz, but a girl who dances something dubious, perhaps with the aim of being hugged by a man.

When the cross-step waltz appeared in the early twentieth century, it incorporated some of the movements of trendy syncopated dances and even tango. And again he became semi-decent.

Rock'n'roll

In the USSR, dance was considered undesirable as fashionable in the West, in the USA - as the brainchild of "black" Lindy Hop, in Europe - simply because the girls spinning this way and that sparkled with their underwear (unless they wore breeches instead of a skirt, which was also shocking). If for the cancan girls had to sew special skirts, then for rock and roll - to pick up panties.

Lambada

During Perestroika, young Soviet citizens learned lambada, pair and solo (solo actually did not exist, but if there was no pair, then the one who wanted to dance could not be stopped). Mature citizens were very worried if such dances would lead to early pregnancies and prostitution. According to the canon, during the performance of the dance, the legs of the gentleman had to go along the legs of the lady, and the stomachs of the partners should be pressed against each other, or at least be as close as if they were pressed against.

But only the bravest danced like that. The rest kept the half-pioneer distance. Although lambada was danced in other countries, but the USSR, out of love for it, seems to have been among the leaders.

And fans of passionate dancing should definitely watch the sensual tango under the incomparable voice of Julio Iglesias.