History is made at night

In 1935 the International Workers' Music Olympiad, an anti-fascist festival, was held at Strasbourg in France close to the German border...

Santa Maria, Brazil, 2013 'Sixteen people will face criminal charges in connection with a deadly fire at a Brazil nightclub in January...

In 1944 the Nazi occupation of Paris was in its last deadly phase. The RAF was bombing the city's railway stations and the Resistance wa...

In A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens describes a gathering of the wealthy in pre-revolutionary France: 'But, the comfort was, th...

'The dance can reveal everything mysterious that is hidden in music, and it has the additional merit of being human and palpable. Dancin...

In 1933, the photographer Brassaï (real name Gyula Halász, 1899–1984) published Paris de Nuit (Paris by Night), a remarkable photographic ...

The day before the national celebration of the storming of the Bastille in pursuit of liberty, the French government today passed a law bann...

Georges Bataille, The Sacred Conspiracy , 1936 'It is time to abandon the world of the civilized and its light. It is too late to want t...

Merce Cunningham (1919-2009) "I don't work through images or ideas. I work through the body... If the dancer dances, which is not t...

On this day in 1871 (the 16th May) there was a unique party in Paris during the days of the Commune . The occasion was the destruction of th...

Tom from Vamos a Bailar: Salsa in Cardiff and Around steps up: 1. Can you remember your first experience of dancing? Dancing to a rhythm’n’...

Benjamin Péret (1899-1959) was active in the Surrealist movement from its formation until his death. Among other things he edited at one sta...

Au Petit Rocher (also known as Chez Dinocheau after its owner) was a popular tavern/restaurant frequented by Parisian 'bohemians'...

The credit crunch clearly hasn't hit the world of super-rich art collecting - last week Danseuse (above), a 1915 painting by the Futuri...

I have posted here before on the French writer Colette (1873-1954). Her novel The Vagabond, first published in 1911, is a fictionalised acc...

The Joseph Rous Paget - Fredericks Dance Collection at the University of California consists of 'approximately 2,000 original drawing...

'O Douceurs, ô monde, ô musique ! Et là, les formes, les sueurs, les chevelures et les yeux, flottant. Et les larmes blanches, bouillant...

Is there ever a time when it's not OK to dance? Of course there have always been priests telling people not to dance on sabbaths, but wh...

Last week I went to the launch of Here We Dance, at Tate Modern . The exhibition aims to look at 'the relationship between the body and ...

This chronology of raves, clubs and policing was compiled from the dance music press at the time ( Mixmag , Muzik , Eternity, DJ etc.). Much...