LATEST PARISIAN ABSURDITY

Auckland Star, Volume XXXIV, Issue 230, 26 September 1903, Page 3 (Supplement)

LATEST PARISIAN ABSURDITY

IMITATING THE "NIGGER" CAKE WALK.

Twelve good Parisians and true, toward* one o'clock o.n Sunday morning, June 8, says a correspondent, at the Nouveau O'rque, proclaimed Mdlles. Jeanne and Liua Peres champions of tae cake-walk. The jury included the editors of half a dozen of the liveliest, and consequently the most read, papers in Paris. The l remainder of. the judges were well-known boulevardier;?. Pretty well "All Paris" was present at the contest for the championship. The ladies were in their most exquisite toilets and most blazing diamonds, nnd the men in evening dress. In short, the event was a Parisian sensation. A more peculiarly Parisian function could not, indeed, be imagined. About eighteen couples, some picturesquely dressed, nut most of them in hideous disguises, which were not even amusingly grotesque, went through the contortions of the nigger so-called dance. A selected board of men about town solemnly and conscientiously judged the mad performance, and Paris looked on with delight and eager interest. You could not find so strange a sight in any other city in the world. The band having struck up, a procession of pastry-cooks entered the arena, followed by two nigger infants carrying the cake, and by the competitors walking or prancing two by two. There were authentic niggers in frock-coat suits, all of black, or all of scarlet, a professedly English soldier, with the strongest red coat and the funniest leggings imaginable, a podgy man in khaki, two small Russian dancers, nnd so on, the ladies being generally dressed merely in becoming short skirts and low bodices, while their partners had gone in for the grotesque style.

. Silence was ordered. The president of the jury rose and called upon the first couple. Eighteen times in succession the band played the same cake-walk tune, find each succeeding couple went through the same contortions —side, front, and back ieaps, shuffling and stumbling jigs, and knee to chin prancing, with a few variations. Naturally the real niggers were the only amusing performers, because they took themselves seiiousiy and put sucri delicate dignity into their fantastic marches and counter-marches. When the last couple had shown off an usher announced that the gentlemen of the jury would retire to consider their verdict. After an entr'acte, the president, looking harassed, said that the jury disagreed. 'Have it all over again," shouted the House, gleefully. However, only three couples, Mddles. Peres, both in sky blue, one or the ladies being dressed as a sailor boy, a real and a sham pair of negroes, were requested to give additional perfoimances. in tho midst of these an anonymous lady turned up with an anonymous man to compete, having thought, that the contest would only commence at midnight, and they were allowed to dance. The lady, entirely in white tights, with a hat a yard in diameter, surrounded by falling lace, wnich she kept constantly in front of ncr face, contented herself with creating a sensation in thto way, and made no attempt to execute anything approaching the cake-walk. The excitement she caused, everyone trying to see her face and find o\it who she was, soon subsided when somebody discovered her to be a well-known <lemi-mondaine, and she got no prize. Eventually, the Jury awarding the championship to the two girls in bine, a splendid row ensued.