PROFESSIONALS IN A QUADRILLE AT THE MABILLE.
As an exhibition of absurd posturing, it is always a success; as a specimen of dancing, as we understand dancing, it is anything else. But for just once it is amusing. As between seeing it every night and serving an equal time in the penitentiary, I would unhesitatingly choose the penitentiary. The human body is a thing of joy when naturally carried, but you do not want too much of it in the can-can.
The women are, it must be confessed, a trifle freer. They will kick a bystander’s hat from his head, and in some of the movements there is a very free exhibition of leg; that is to say, if the leg be shapely. I noticed that the ladies whose general contour suggested pipe-stemmy support were as modest about their displays as though they had been nuns, and I fancied I could detect a shade of anguish pass over their faces as they observed the shapely proportions of their more favored sisters.
But be it known that the especial dancers, those who do these extraordinary leaps and contortions, are such by profession, who get so much per night, the same as at any other theater. This style of dancing was always in favor in Paris among the people, and the proprietor of the place, finding that it attracted strangers, reduced it to a system. He hires a certain number of dancers, the same as he does his orchestra, and these set the fashion for the citizens who indulge in terpsichorean gymnastics.
You can easily detect the professionals. They come on the floor at regular intervals and do their dreary performance coolly and in a purely professional way, without any more emotion than they would manifest in combing their hair.
I do not know what it might have been in other days, but at present writing it is about the tamest place I know of. I overheard this conversation between two young ladies one morning:—
“Mary, dear, where did you go last evening? I could not find you.”
“Ah, don’t tell anybody, but Mamie, and Charlie, and I, went to the Mabille.”
“Is it good?”