The CanCan Dance: History and Photos of the High-energy, Physically Demanding Dancers of the 20th Century

The cancan is one of the most recognizable dances in history — a blur of petticoats, high kicks, and roaring crowds. Born in France, it became a symbol of rebellion, entertainment, and physical daring. Its exact origins are murky, but the trail leads back to the public dance halls of Paris in the early 19th century, where a social dance called the quadrille was the main attraction.

The quadrille was a structured set dance performed by four or more couples. Its final figure allowed dancers to let loose — arms swung wide, legs kicked high. That final, freewheeling moment is where the cancan is believed to have broken free and become its own thing. One entertainer who helped push things further was Charles Mazurier, a popular performer from the 1820s known for performing the grand écart, a dramatic jump split that would become one of the cancan’s defining moves.

From the very start, the cancan was considered scandalous. Women in 19th-century France wore open-crotch pants beneath their skirts, and a high kick revealed exactly that. The act of lifting a leg high into the air — when women were not even supposed to be seen out of breath or show their ankles — was a direct challenge to the social rules of the time. It was labeled “disreputable,” and the closeness between dancers and their audiences broke every expectation of Victorian-era propriety.

In the 1830s, cancan dancing at public dance halls was largely performed by men — particularly students who used it as a form of energetic, irreverent fun. It was not yet performed by a chorus line. Instead, individuals took the floor and improvised. As the dance grew in popularity through the 1840s, professional male performers emerged. An all-male group called the Quadrille des Clodoches even took the cancan to London in 1870. But it was women who ultimately became the dance’s biggest stars.

La Goulue was one of the most famous cancan dancers of the 19th century. Performing at the Moulin Rouge in the 1890s, she was bold, commanding, and utterly unlike anything audiences had seen before. Her regular partner was a man known as Valentin le Désossé — Valentin the Boneless — named for the extraordinary flexibility he brought to his performances. Another major star of the era was Jane Avril, whose style was more refined but no less thrilling. By the 1890s, dancing had become a viable full-time profession, and these performers were genuine celebrities.

The Moulin Rouge, which opened in the Montmartre district of Paris in 1889, became the spiritual home of the cancan. Tourists from around the world traveled to see what was being called the most wicked dance on earth. The reputation was partly theater — accounts from the time note that the cancan performed at places like the Bal Tabarin was considered far less risqué than what was being done on American stages — but the mystique drove enormous crowds regardless.

The Bal Tabarin in Montmartre drew crowds of Americans and Europeans eager to witness the infamous dance firsthand. Early photographs from around 1900 show dancers in full costume — layered skirts, black stockings, and garters — performing in front of packed houses.

The physical demands of the cancan were serious. Performing the grand écart — a full split jump — required strength and flexibility that took years to develop. High kicks had to be sustained through long sets, and dancers performed multiple shows each week. The Folies Bergère and the Moulin Rouge both featured full chorus lines by the early 20th century, blending the individual showmanship of the Parisian dance hall tradition with the disciplined line formations borrowed from British and American music halls.

By the 1910s and 1920s, the cancan had spread well beyond Paris. It was being performed in Berlin variety theaters, London cabarets, and New York stages. The dance that had once been suppressed was now a standard feature of entertainment programs across the Western world.

The choreographer Pierre Sandrini played a key role in shaping the modern cancan. In the 1920s, he formalized the French Cancan at the Moulin Rouge, and in 1928, he brought his signature style to his own venue, the Bal Tabarin. His version merged the free-form individual flair of the original Parisian hall style with the tight, synchronized chorus-line format that music hall audiences in Britain and America had come to expect. The result was a polished but still explosive spectacle.

The cancan also found its way into classical ballet. The choreographer Léonide Massine incorporated a cancan-style dancer doll into his 1919 ballet La Boutique Fantasque, performed at Covent Garden in London. Alexandra Danilova, one of the most acclaimed ballerinas of the era and a member of the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, took on the role in subsequent productions through the 1920s and 1930s.

By the late 1930s, the cancan had become a fixture of theater productions across Europe and America. London’s Prince of Wales Theatre hosted the Folies de Can-Can, a full production built entirely around the dance. Chorus lines appeared in Broadway shows, Cotton Club revues, and cabarets from New York to Berlin.

During World War II, the cancan continued to be performed even close to the front lines. In 1944, a trio of French women danced the cancan for American GIs stationed in the rear echelon of an infantry unit in France — a vivid reminder that the dance had become not just entertainment, but a symbol of French cultural identity.

The postwar years brought a full cancan revival. Paris venues like the Bal Tabarin and the Moulin Rouge reopened to eager audiences, and new stars emerged to carry on the tradition. Josephine Baker, already an international icon, performed the cancan in the Bal Mabille act. French cabaret dancer Gaby Bruyère built her career as a cancan specialist and was planning an American tour. The dance was back — louder, higher, and more popular than ever.

The early 1950s were a peak period for the cancan’s international reach. London stages hosted Parisian troupes regularly, and the dance appeared everywhere from coronation-year cabaret shows to TV rehearsals at open-air pools. In 1953, the TV Toppers performed the cancan at the Oasis Pool in Holborn. That same year, cancan troupes appeared at the City Varieties Music Hall in Leeds, and the Bal Tabarin sent its dancers on London engagements.

In 1954, the cancan hit the West End in a big way. Cole Porter’s musical Can-Can opened at the Stoll Theatre in London, with Gillian Lynne as lead solo dancer. The show also ran at the Coliseum with a full cast of cancan performers. That same year, French director Jean Renoir released his film French Cancan, starring Françoise Arnoul, which dramatized the founding of the Moulin Rouge. Back in Paris, the Moulin Rouge dancers staged a public event outside the Grand Palais to kick off the ‘Crusade of Prudence 54.’

The mid-1950s produced some of the most iconic cancan photographs ever taken. Dancers at the Moulin Rouge, the Folies Bergère, and various London nightclubs were documented in full performance. One of the most recognizable figures from that era was a dancer named Régine, who performed regularly at the Moulin Rouge and appeared in several widely published photographs showing both her solo work and her place within the larger troupe.

By the late 1950s, the cancan had firmly planted itself in American popular culture. Nightclubs in New York’s Latin Quarter featured regular cancan performances, and Hollywood took notice. The 1960 film Can-Can, based on Cole Porter’s Broadway show, starred Frank Sinatra and featured Juliet Prowse in the role of Claudine — a performance that brought the dance to a global film audience.

The 1960s brought new revues and new stars to the Moulin Rouge stage. In 1964, Jean-Pierre Charnas headlined the new revue Frou-Frou alongside a full company of cancan dancers. The Folies Bergère continued its own long-running cancan tradition. And in 1965, four Moulin Rouge dancers took a break from the stage to pick grapes in the vineyards on the Butte Montmartre — the same hill where the cancan had first taken hold nearly 130 years earlier.

The Bal Tabarin, one of the original homes of the cancan in Paris, gave its final performance in 1966. A photograph from just before closing night captures the dancers on stage in full costume — a last document of a venue that had showcased the dance for generations. The Moulin Rouge and the Folies Bergère carried on, but the Bal Tabarin’s closure marked the end of an era for the dance’s founding venues.

The cancan continued to be performed in schools, community theaters, and amateur productions throughout the 1970s. Sixth graders in Arvada, Colorado staged a can-can chorus line for a centennial project in 1976. Junior high students in cities across the United States practiced the steps for school performances. The dance had traveled so far from the scandal-soaked floors of 19th-century Paris that it had become a fixture of children’s entertainment programs.

The cancan even made an unlikely appearance in a 1975 agricultural promotion, when four dancers — Biba Brookman, Diana Regal, Robbie Hart, and Nicky Billiyard — performed to promote Brittany cauliflower arriving in Britain during a mild winter. It was a far cry from the Moulin Rouge, but it showed just how embedded the dance had become in public life as a shorthand for spectacle and celebration.

At the professional level, the Moulin Rouge remained the gold standard. A Moulin Rouge dancer performed the cancan at the Royal Variety Show, attended by Queen Elizabeth II, in a final rehearsal that drew intense media attention. The international Radio Exhibition in Berlin featured television ballet dancers performing the cancan as late as 1989. The dance that had started as a scandalous improvisation in a Parisian dance hall had become one of the most enduring performance traditions in the world.