THE TANGO.

Dominion, Volume 7, Issue 1945, 31 December 1913, Page 7

THE TANGO.

The tango, o[ which so much has boon heard, was recently lionmuv;' i,itlt au

address by M. iiichcpin, tile French aca- . dcinician, tn mi audience <>i' Ladies.' 51. Rlchcpin adduced the testimony of Pindar, Homer, Plato, Socrates, and Sophocles as cxjxments er as practisers of llic dance, and claimed to prove the antiquity of the tango I'rosii ill tho British Museum and from tlte tiuhs of Thebes, Ho made reference to a duno ing master from Cadiz who tanglrt tfeo tango in ancient Knme. while the modem tango came from Spa«iah America. Tiia speaker protested against the charges that the tango was indecent, and that it ougi.it to be condemned or account of its tow origin. {.)<■; himself liftd seen the tango danced by princesses who were models of distinction, while, on the other hand, lie had long J, K° "seen tiio incipid polka and the respectable lancers danced in a way—to employ tho language of one of his ilUisi'-'i-yus predecessors—a fa ire rnup;iv dos singes." Xor could he condemn Uie tango on account of its origin, since live graceful old .Court dances of France, includm;! the minuet and gavotte. had .developed from dances of rude peusanlry in Brittany and I'oitou. where the dinc-<-r.i clattered on the ilonr willi their salwts. The popular bourreo was stiii danced in Amergne, and even in IVris, to the music of the musette, and ivaa perhaps more complicated in its movements than the tnugo. He also protest* ed against- the. conception that there was anything effeminate in darning, and he represented the. Spartans as stretching their muscles iiv dancitip; the I'vri* hie 011 the moriiin,"; of Thermopylae. sad the great Oonde mnkins his musketeer;? escalade the wills of toidit 10 the musk of J'jiilli's violins. At -Austertilx, too, the Sites played "the" French to victory with the air of a rigodon. And did not tho young Athenians patriotically dancn all night tiirouph the streets and squares after tlio first rojjrcsentatioa ol tlie "Persao" of Aeschylns?

Somo critics seow t'o omnmlor itrc tango in iwvo I>w>« a llicme umvotUiy of tJu> dicnily of tlin histitut-o, and tJwv maliciously siolo that only font- of M. llichnpin's rolksunnw of Hip Aoadowio Frnncaisft tfwnglit it voriti while to be present.—"Thc> Times."