Dancing with “le sexe”. Eroticism and exoticism in the Parisian reception of tango (1907-1914)

In the years leading up to World War I, Paris served as the epicentre for the international dissemination of the tango: the city’s aristocratic and high society provided a privileged space for the tango’s social endorsement. The ensuing dance craze known as “tangomania” led to a heated polemic, opposing partisans and adversaries of this new foreign dance with its troubling sexual overtones. This is at any rate how the tango was perceived by many of its contemporaries – at the crossroads between the two principal aspects of its reception: eroticism and exoticism. These two aspects are, in fact, closely intertwined. This article investigates how the construction of the public image of the tango in Paris rendered feasible the (re)appropriation of the tango well beyond the French capital, and ensured its long posterity, something that, in many respects, still pertains today.