Guys!!! Please help me out!! Important!

[ilan]

Hey everybody!
I am trying to find a specific dance and I really need your help!!!

I have no idea if it is a type of dance or it is pure improvisation between 2 people.
I saw it couple of years ego somewhere i don't remember.......i think at the end of some film.
It looks like a "couple is breaking up"!!!! All along the dance a guy is pushing the girl, grabing her by the hair and dragging her while she is on the floor(after being pushed by her loved one),......on the girls side she is slaping him on the face, ripping his shirt, trying to walk away and he is grabbing her arm and pulling back next to him......e t.c. All the dance it goes "back and forth" between them.

I know it sounds a little strange.... It's hard to explain, but it is a beautiful dance. The music was tango i think....BUT DON'T know for sure, dont wanna confuse more!
If somebody understands me and knows what I'm looking for
PLEASE tell me the name of the dance or style , how can i find it, where ???????

Thank you

 

[etp777]

Welcome to DF, ilan.

Sounds like some kind of showdance/cabaret (and a bit disturbing, onlyhaving this description to go by), but doesn't seem familiar. Hopefully someone else will recognize it.

 

[jennyisdancing]

Hey everybody!
I am trying to find a specific dance and I really need your help!!!

I have no idea if it is a type of dance or it is pure improvisation between 2 people.
I saw it couple of years ego somewhere i don't remember.......i think at the end of some film.
It looks like a "couple is breaking up"!!!! All along the dance a guy is pushing the girl, grabing her by the hair and dragging her while she is on the floor(after being pushed by her loved one),......on the girls side she is slaping him on the face, ripping his shirt, trying to walk away and he is grabbing her arm and pulling back next to him......e t.c. All the dance it goes "back and forth" between them.

I know it sounds a little strange.... It's hard to explain, but it is a beautiful dance. The music was tango i think....BUT DON'T know for sure, dont wanna confuse more!
If somebody understands me and knows what I'm looking for
PLEASE tell me the name of the dance or style , how can i find it, where ???????

Thank you

Sounds like a French dance called Apache - that's pronounced Ah-POSH. (Completely unrelated to Native Americans). It was popular in the '20's and '30's but I saw it done more recently on a reality dance show called Step It Up and Dance.

I found this old movie clip - is this the style you are looking for?

 

[ilan]

Thank you for reply.
It is close to what I'm talking about, but the music was smoother,slower and no words.
It was more contemporary i guess. But the movement was close to this dance.

 

[gracie]

Kinda sounds like Jonathan and Valentina's showdance from OSB!

 

[Steve Pastor]

(Completely unrelated to Native Americans).

In 1902 Authur Dupin used the term, “Apache”, to describe a certain subculture of the lower classes in Paris France. (Tickner, 83) The Apaches were a group of gangs who emerged out of urban Paris and that committed crimes of great violence that were in turn covered heavily in bourgeois newspapers. This name has two possible sources stemming either from the writings of the French novelist Gustave Aimard from the mid to late 19th century or from the novels of James Fenimore Cooper that were popular and influential in France during this time. (Tickner, 255) Both Cooper and Aimard shared a common interest in the form of the adventure novel and more pertinent to this essay, depictions of the American Wild West and the Apache Indian. The Apache became, for French literature a symbol for the modern, although the Apache depictions that were popular during this time are largely a construction of French society with very loose, if any, relation to the actual American Indian tribe.
http://dancehistory.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=691
But to my knowledge, Cooper, who died in the 1850s, wrote of the frontier northeast (New England). The Prairie, in which "Hawkeye" aka Natty Bumpo, Deerslayer, etc, is an old man, is set on the prairies, not in the Southwest where the Apache were. But, maybe he wrote something I haven't heard about.

 

[newbie]

It may have been a choreographed scene, designed only for the movie. Like, there is no name for the dance with one man and one hat rack, and yet... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pjlrrMvdtw

 

[atk]

I may be thinking of something else, but there I believe that there is an actual partner dance where the stated goal is for the man to hurt the woman (and prolly vice versa). I don't think I've heard the name of it for about 20 years, and I'm quite sure it was demonstrated in a movie - possibly something like an Addams Family movie.

 

[I-Man]

Thank you for reply.
It is close to what I'm talking about, but the music was smoother,slower and no words.
It was more contemporary i guess. But the movement was close to this dance.

This entire topic is a very interesting trivial pursuit question. But considering how the dance appears so "violent", and even more so, is not commonly performed outside of movie depictions....

why were you so interested in finding out the name of this dance? Morbid curiousity, I take it?

just wondering.

Give us some more hints! Do you remember the movie stars in this film you saw? Or the title of the movie you saw with this scene in it?

If you knew around what year this movie came out, you can try searching for "dance" movies which came out during that time period. Or perhaps even an imdb search...

 

[I-Man]

Off topic:

This entire discussion reminds me of that argument over what style of dance is depicted in the closing dance sequence of the original "Dirty Dancing" movie. Gosh I have read so many arguments on other forums about what they are actually dancing in that scene. I think the latest consensus I saw was that it was supposed to be a "mambo".

But personally, I just always assumed it was nothing more than a choreographic piece unique made for this movie, and which doesn't necessarily stay within the bounds of a specific dance style.

 

[Bella]

Not gonna lie, a bit disturbed reading this description... Anyway, few pros on Dancing with the Stars used hair pulling/dragging in their Paso Doble choreography.

Hey everybody!
I am trying to find a specific dance and I really need your help!!!

I have no idea if it is a type of dance or it is pure improvisation between 2 people.
I saw it couple of years ego somewhere i don't remember.......i think at the end of some film.
It looks like a "couple is breaking up"!!!! All along the dance a guy is pushing the girl, grabing her by the hair and dragging her while she is on the floor(after being pushed by her loved one),......on the girls side she is slaping him on the face, ripping his shirt, trying to walk away and he is grabbing her arm and pulling back next to him......e t.c. All the dance it goes "back and forth" between them.

I know it sounds a little strange.... It's hard to explain, but it is a beautiful dance. The music was tango i think....BUT DON'T know for sure, dont wanna confuse more!
If somebody understands me and knows what I'm looking for
PLEASE tell me the name of the dance or style , how can i find it, where ???????

Thank you

 

[TemptressToo]

I don't know if you saw "Step It Up and Dance" on Bravo, but they had a very neat apache.

 

[Apache]

Thank you for reply.
It is close to what I'm talking about, but the music was smoother,slower and no words.
It was more contemporary i guess. But the movement was close to this dance.

I got all excited that I finally had an excuse to talk about the dance I took my DF name from, but everyone here pretty much covered the basics about Apache and gave examples.

However what I think you saw was probably a special routine or choreography with a lot or exaggerated Apache elements. Others in this thread have mentioned Apache elements used in latin dance performances. I have seen on youtube them used in different Swing dances as well.

However like I-man said we would need better descriptions of the music, context and dance in order to figure what exactly you saw.

Slightly-Related: Maurice Mouvet along with his partner Florence Waltron were amazing dancers of their time period and the "Apache" was the dance that made them known. On a personal note, I often feel a lot of inspirational dancers like them or even Vernon and Irene Castle get forgotten these days.

 

[DWise1]

I hate to concur that it does sound like Apache. In movies and cartoons from the 40's (what would usually be shown between the two movies when I was a kid), it would usually be presented as part of the floor show at a cafe or cabaret. I seem to recall one movie being about Americans on vacation in Paris and they saw an Apache for the first time and had no idea what to think. The woman would be dressed in a short skirt and fish-net stockings and the man would have a thin moustache, be wearing an archetypical long-sleeved t-shirt with broad horizontal stripes; thinking back, the impression I have is that she's a prostitute and he's her pimp. The scene usually opens with him leaning against a lamp post smoking a cigarette, a pose that he returns to a few times when he thinks that she's had enough. I even remember the music, a single accordian (could be why he thought it sounded like tango music) playing at a constantly changing tempo that would suddenly speed up and play in staccato bursts matching his striking her or throwing her around (like a rag doll in the cartoons).

Doesn't sound very appealing. Though I think that the show on one cruise included a short Apache, though in this one she ended up beating him up.

PS
From Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_(dance):

The dance is very brutal to the woman, and sometimes said to reenact a "discussion" between pimp and 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. In some examples, the woman may fight back.

It offers Offenbach's "Valse des Rayons" (AKA "Valse chaloupee") as being commonly associated with the dance; iTunes was no help in confirming my memory.


But my dance partner loves the Apache. But in that case, it's a swing dance move also called the "Texas Tommy" or "the arm-breaker", wherein I lead her through a swing-out (or whip for Westies) and I swap her right hand from my left hand to my right behind her back.


PPS
Jennyisdancing's movie clip link verifies the music as "Valse chaloupée". I guess the styling on it the I remembered had to have been from a cartoon version.