Can-can

The Can-can (also spelt Cancan, Can Can) is regarded today primarily as a 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.

In Art

Many composers have written music for the cancan. The most famous music (and probably the most well-known melody from any opera) 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.

Related Topics:
Jacques Offenbach - Orpheus in the Underworld - Franz Lehár - The Merry Widow - Cole Porter - Can-Can - Can-Can - Frank Sinatra - Shirley MacLaine

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

Related Topics:
Ballet - La Boutique Fantasque - Gaîté Parisienne - Jean Renoir - Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec - Georges Seurat - Georges Rouault - Pablo Picasso

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