TAKING OF BASTILLE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 6 September 1939, Page 3

TAKING OF BASTILLE

PARIS DANCES IN STREET. ANNUAL COMMEMORATION. Paris dances in the street on July 14, the annual national holiday, which commemorates the taking of the Bastille in 1789 at the beginning of the French Revolution. About a week before this date, carpenters get busy putting up temporary bandstands, not only before some of; the public buildings and on the largfl open squares of Paris, but at many of the street corners. The biggest bandstands can hold fifty musicians, as at the bandstand before the Hotel Ville, and the smallest, in the working class quarters, just big enough for six bandsmen to squeeze into them among the paper lanterns and streamers of: blue, white and red.

Impatient Frenchmen have to begin k dancing the evening before, and at 9 6 o'clock on the thirteenth the ball is Y opened with a blare of trumpets. The I cafes are given freedom on the nation- fi al holiday to put their tables often 0 completely across the pavement and b covering part of the roadway, and V motor omnibus traffic has to be diverted. Any private cars circulating will c have to wait until a dance is over be- v fore they can pass. On the national > holiday proper, the fourteenth, after ; the military review in the morning in 6 the mile and a quarter avenue of the Y Champs Elysees, dancing begins in the t early afternoon, goes on all evening, with a break for dinner, and then all fr night, and the last couples go home in | the early hours of the next morning. All Paris is illuminated, and in addition to the flood lights throwing up the 1 copper roof and pronze groups of the L Opera against the blue night sky, or $ making toe huge Arc de Triomphe ttw V world’s greatest triumphal arch, look X like an ivory carving, lines of electrio 1 lamps in many thoroughfares stretch 1 irom house to nouse. i The French national holiday is free- 1 and-easy aay for all, and, if you feel so C inclined, you can dance your way (, across the city. The band strikes up I and the young men approach the t young ladies without fear of refusal fl and ask lor the next dance. But all the conventions are carefully observed, ( | and watchiul mama will look re sentmi ~ rf me same young man asks the same young lady for more than two dances J m succession. After a dance or two, some will move on to the next street corner where another dance is being held, and then continue on their hierry A dancing way. Between dances, the dancers sit at the cafe tables and 1 quench their thirst. Meanwhi e the children are letting oft crackers, and f of the older people those wh o do not C step out into the roadway and dance Y for old time’s sake will sit in the back J ground and watch the new generation £ celebrating. . , [, While on the square before the Hotel i de Ville, and before the Opera C° m *’ y que and other public buildings, the or- o chestras are big and the dancers many, t in the outlying districts the enthusiasm is no less before the bandstands formed < of a few planks on which half a dozen , musicians are doing their best In some districts of Pans, where Bretons or Auvergnats live in number s-and ( the inhabitants from the provinces have a tendency to live together-—the I dancers dance their own provincial dances, the Bretons holding hands and hopping round in circles, and the Auv- ; ergnats indulging in curious dances in which there is much stamping of heels y

and swaying of the body. This year’s celebration was more enthusiastic than ever, first because of the hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the Revolution, and because of the six hundred red coat British Grenadiers visiting Paris, who were ixiuch sought after to dance with the daughter of “Mademoiselle from Armentieres” and the whole of Paris.