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“Tangos, Maxixes, and Magic-City: Dance Music and Cabaret Culture in Early 20th-Century Paris”

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This session explores the lively world of early 20th-century Parisian dance music, from the cosmopolitan cabarets of Montmartre to the grand Magic-City dance hall. Through a curated program of tangos, maxixes, waltzes, and one-steps—performed by full orchestra, smaller ensembles, and voice/piano combinations—the presentation illuminates how Paris embraced, transformed, and at times resisted these imported dance styles.

Interwoven with the music will be narrative storytelling that contextualizes each piece within broader social, cultural, and musical trends of the era. Audiences will encounter colorful works by composers like René André, Huguet-Tagell, De Rhynal, and Macklin, many of which feature playful orchestrations, distinctive dance grooves, and cabaret flair.

Highlights include audience-participatory shouts during Huguet-Tagell’s raucous “Che!”, nostalgic waltzes evoking the pre-tango salon era, and rarely heard maxixes—the “Brazilian tango”—offering a glimpse into Paris’s transatlantic dance obsessions.

This program offers a new lens on the playful, hybrid character of early 20th-century popular music, revealing how these dance idioms both connected and divided audiences within the Parisian nightlife scene.

*Can be performed with a live performance group, or with pre-recorded audio from prior presentation performance.

Trae Blanco Sophie Benn

Sophie Benn, PhD, enjoys a multifaceted career as a musicologist and cellist. She is an assistant professor of musicology in the Jordan College of the Arts and affiliate faculty in the Race, Gender and Sexuality Studies Program at Butler University, where she teaches courses in music and dance history since 1800. Dr. Benn’s academic investments are rooted in decades spent as a musician and, in the more distant past, a childhood spent in the ballet studio. Dr. Trae Blanco currently serves as Director of Bands in the School of Music at Butler University. His teaching responsibilities include conducting the Wind Ensemble, teaching undergraduate and graduate conducting, and overseeing the band program. Previously, Dr. Blanco has served as the Director of Bands at Murray State University, and the University of Southern Maine; where he was the conductor of the Portland Youth Wind Ensemble, Casco Bay Wind Symphony, and cover conductor for the Portland (ME) Symphony.