Париждік Апаш биі

Parisian dance

Apache (a. paʃ), or La Danse Apache, Bowery Waltz, Apache Turn, Apache Dance and Tough Dance is a highly dramatic dance associated in popular culture with Parisian street culture at the beginning of the 20th century. The name of the dance is pronounced ah PAHSH, not uh PATCH ee. In fin de siècle Paris young members of street gangs were labelled Apaches by the press because of the ferocity of their savagery towards one another, a name taken from the native North American indigenous people, the Apache. The dance is sometimes said to reenact a violent "discussion" between a pimp and a prostitute. It includes mock slaps and punches, the man picking up and throwing the woman to the ground, or lifting and carrying her while she struggles or feigns unconsciousness. Thus, the dance shares many features with the theatrical discipline of stage combat. In some examples, the woman may fight back.

In 1908, dancers Maurice Mouvet and Max Dearly began to visit the low bars frequented by Apaches in a search for inspiration for new dances. They formulated the new dance from moves seen there and gave to it the name Apache. Max Dearly first performed it in 1908 in Paris at the Ambassadeurs and Maurice in Ostend at the Kursaal. A short while later, in the summer of 1908, Maurice and his partner Leona performed the dance at Maxim's, and Max Dearly made an even bigger impact with it, partnered with Mistinguett, in the Moulin Rouge show, La Revue du Moulin. Mistinguett described the dance as, "an alternation between caresses and struggles, brutality and sensual tenderness."

The music most associated with the Apache dance is the "Valse des Rayons" from the ballet Le Papillon, composed by Jacques Offenbach in 1861. An arrangement by Charles Dubourg, titled "Valse Chaloupée" was used by Mistinguett and Max Dearly when performing the dance at the Moulin Rouge in 1908. Other arrangements of the same waltz soon followed, including "L'Amour de L'Apache" in 1909, arranged by Augustus C. Ely. An early example of original music composed for the Apache dance is "Valse Apache," composed by Fernand Le Borne for the 1908 silent film L'Empreinte ou la main rouge in which Mistinguett and Max Dearly performed the dance. The sheet music for L'Empreinte contains several cues to the movements in the Apache dance.