1920s–1940s
ccording to writer and Parisian nightlife aficionado Maurice Sachs, the first dance halls opened in Paris one hundred years ago, in 1921. During the First World War, social evenings and dances were not considered proper for young women to attend, but it wasn’t long before the nightclub made its appearance. Up until that point, popular balls were held in Montmartre or Montparnasse for the bourgeois and aristocrats, but the dance hall ushered in a new era in which women could safely venture out alone and with no judgment. Sachs writes in : “A real dance hall has red lacquered walls, orange and blue lanterns; chiaroscuro and hurried hands; on the left, tango orchestra, on the right, a jazz band: piano, trombone, saxophone, drums, and shell cymbals.” By 1925, there were more than
