ABSTRACT
It is 1903, a year after the black American dance, the Cake-Walk, arrived in Paris and immediately became as popular a dance as the Charleston would be in the Roaring Twenties. From the circus to the music-hall, the Cake-Walk attraction was de rigueur. On the outskirts of Paris, at the Jardin d’acclimatation, Ashanti villagers were providing an equally popular attraction. On November 8, 1903, a review in the Courrier Français of the floor show currently at the Moulin Rouge defends the genre of the Grande Revue, accused of incessantly repeating itself. The “grotesque or charming dances” where the art of “voluptuousness” reigns is the principal element there designed to give Parisians an hour of “pure pleasure.” The pretty legs, splendid decor, and lighting may be trivial, light entertainment (léger), but they represent a specifically Parisian art. This art is epitomized by the Moulin Rouge, and the Moulin Rouge is known the world over by blacks, whites, Asians, 80 year-olds and virgins: “It’s a subject of conversation in Tchad and in Tanganyika.” But that’s not the only glory of the café-concert: the Moulin Rouge actually contributes to the cause of colonialism! “You can be sure that at this very moment, heroic … explorers, feverish and tired, deep in the darkness of Africa and among the grimacing blacks, see in their dreams the lights and gracefulness of the
Moulin Rouge rising on the infested swamps. And these strong men find in these trivialities an influx of courage … The raised skirts contribute a little, just a little, to discoveries a little more important than the revelation of pretty legs.”1
