Tango and London
Chapter 1 of 4 · 1900–1918
Tango teas
The Sunshine Girl, the Savoy and a Punch cartoon.
The Strand · Soho
The worldwide explosion of tango as a dance was set off by the premiere in London, in February 1912, of the musical comedy The Sunshine Girl, which included a tango number danced by George Grossmith Jr. and Phyllis Dare.1 The show started a wave of "tango teas" organised by high society.1
The Savoy began dinner dances in 1912, laying a dance floor in the Thames Foyer just in time for the tango boom of 1913.2 By 1 November 1913 a Dutch newspaper could write that London had caught the tango fever.3
The satirists noticed. In March 1914 the Dutch press described a recent cartoon in the London paper Punch, in which the Spirit of the Dance is seen yawning as the Tango goes away.4
What happened, and where
No placed, sourced line for these years yet.