Modernization and Dancing in Rural France: From la Bourrée to le Fox-Trot

Abstract

Social history picks up the drumbeat of dancing in both the condemnation and the celebration of popular culture. Listen to the curé of Savigny (Rhône) in 1821, worrying about the peasants' overindulgence: “since they are full of passions, and dancing only enflames these passions, since these meetings never finish without crime, since a single debauched person can infect those who watch him, and since things are said [at dances] which should not be heard, and things are done which should not be seen, it is prudent for priests to oppose dances altogether.” A century later this was the mot d'ordre of his eminence the Cardinal-Archbishop of Paris, who proscribed modern dancing, and also that of the moral pundit of Le Peuple, who called the tango, the fox trot and the shimmy “une sorte de précoce et dangereuse défloration virginale.”