Distinctions were drawn between public ballrooms, the oldest kind, private or drawing room balls, charitable balls and society balls.
In Regency Paris, the bal de l’Opéra prefigured the public ballrooms that flourished under the Directorate, dominating Parisian life for close to 50 years, a veritable ‘dansomania’. It took place as two seasons, which dictated its geographical location, in the centre of Paris in winter, and in the Faubourgs during summertime. Balzac, in Un début dans la vie, has Georges Marest confess to ‘appreciating a thousand times more the grisettes of la Chaumière in Montparnasse’ than the wives of the Grand Turk [Ottoman ruler]. At the Valentino of the Rue St. Honoré, which opened in 1838 as a concert hall, classical music performances alternated with quadrilles, galops and frenetic dances. Before making a splash at the Moulin Rouge, Valentin le désossé [Boneless Valentin] was dance master at Valentino, Mabille and at the Elysée Montmartre.
The bal Mabille, on Avenue Montaigne was positively pastoral at first, but in 1844 was transformed into an enchanted garden. Lions, lionesses, grisettes and lorettes could all be spotted there. The polka was danced there, and there in 1845, Céleste Mogador introduced the novelty cancan.Concurrently with Mabille, la Chaumière, in Montparnasse was where, in 1845, the polka was first performed, as well as the chahut,a sort of quadrille, and lastly, the Robert Macaire, a saucy variant of the cancan, was invented there. Edged out, first by the ‘café concerts’ and then by music-halls, most of these balls disappeared. The lone survivor at the turn of the century was the Closerie des Lilas, which became the bal Bullier.
