Tango and Paris

In the early years of the 20th century dancers and orchestras from Buenos Aires travelled to Europe, and the first European tango craze took place in Paris.¹ The French Wikipedia says young Argentine bourgeois, on their formative journeys, introduced the cosmopolitan Parisian society, always on the lookout for novelties, to a dance of the dives and gambling dens.² Film had found it earlier: in 1905 Alice Guy made Le Tango for Gaumont, a two-minute documentary of a tango in the patio of a Spanish residence, hand-coloured with stencils and now in the public domain.³⁴

The dancer Casimiro Aín had already gone to Europe in 1901, to England and then Paris.⁵ In 1913 he and his wife boarded the steamship Sierra Ventana and landed at Boulogne-sur-Mer, then Paris.⁵

The dance was controversial for its perceived sexual overtones, and by the end of 1913, the English article says, the dance teachers who had introduced it to Paris were banished from the city.¹ On 1 December 1913 a Dutch newspaper reported that Richepin had protested against the charge that tango was indecent and must be condemned for its low origin.⁶ By 24 January 1914 the same press reported that Cardinal Amette, Archbishop of Paris, had forbidden tango and other lewd dances to the faithful.⁷