France’s tea dancers defy stereotypes of older age – photo essay
One day when I was an art student in Paris, I was having a coffee with a friend at the brasserie La Coupole. La Coupole was famous years ago for organising thés dansants (dancing teas), where people would gather in the afternoon to dance and socialise. Nowadays, thé dansants are a bit more scarce, and mostly attended by older people. As we sat there, a very chic old lady, quite elegant, came to talk to us. She told us she’d come to the thé dansants every Sunday. She loved to dance and she’d also meet lovers!
A queue at the reception for a tea dance at the Roaljorero in Monteux. Created in 1974, a thé dansant was organised there several times a week. The family nightclub, named after son Roland, Albert the creator, mother Josette and daughters Régine and Roselyne, attracted many people from the region
In recent years the dance hall was less crowded, and after Covid it permanently closed its doors in July 2022
René, 82, and Huguette, 84, at the Manoir thé dansant in Bailleul, close to Lille, in the north of France. Founded in the 1970s, it is a family business run by brothers Jean-Charles and Fred Houvenaeghel. Every Friday there is a tea dance from 8-11pm, before the venue becomes a nightclub, and there is a thé dansant every Sunday afternoon
It was almost 15 years ago, and that image stuck in my mind. I have been interested in older age and its perception in society for quite a while. Maybe the reason is that my parents are 10 to 15 years older than most people from my generation’s parents. This seems to have opened up my perception of age. Then I moved to New York, where I lived for seven years, and Asia, for two years, where I met quite a lot of extravagant, dynamic seniors, very integrated into society. The idea to do a project about those people had been growing for years.
Claudine Touitou is a regular at the Chalet du Lac, Napoleon’s former hunting lodge in the Bois de Vincennes. She can be found at the thé dansant on Saturday afternoons and Monday afternoons. Her reasons for going dancing: a challenge to the forbidden (‘before, it was good people who danced’), passion, meetings. She also has a desire to please (the dancers and herself) and to seduce
Lili, 71, at the Chalet du Lac. After an operation at 62, she started taking salsa lessons with a friend, then discovered the Chalet du Lac. She loves the accordion: ‘It’s light, it’s a party. Dance and music, it makes you forget all the pain.’ Her husband doesn’t dance, so she goes to dances alone, making sure to change partners regularly, ‘otherwise he falls in love’
Jacki Audureau, 83, at a thé dansant at Chalet du Lac. He learned to dance at four years old with his mother and attended his first balls at about the age of six. It was common to dance at home with his 11 brothers and sisters
When I moved back to France, I was immediately struck by a very reduced general view on seniors. When the Covid-19 pandemic hit, seniors suddenly stepped into the spotlight. Two main reactions emerged: the empathic one (“let’s protect the elderly, they are fragile”) and the annoyed one (“we don’t want to stop living because of the old”).
Scenes from the Chambly thé dansant, in Oise département, which is hosted by Pascal Rossi, known as DJ Pascal Pous’1
Ageing is often represented as a weight, or stereotyped greatly. Lives are becoming longer, but getting older keeps a negative connotation. This does not only come from the young, it can also come from the seniors themselves. I can see it through my mother’s view and her friends’, for example: ageing terrifies or disgusts them. All they see is an unavoidable decrepitude.
Gisèle Le Boulanger, 75, at home. Originally from Brittany, she learned to dance from her uncle. She started going dancing regularly to forget her problems, then she developed a taste for it
Le Boulanger at the Duplex thé dansant with her new boyfriend. She has been attending the Duplex in Paris regularly for about 15 years and she met her boyfriend there
Obviously, getting older can be difficult for some, but it does not have to be. I decided to go to meet seniors who haven’t stopped living because they are older. Some of them dance, others work, do a lot of sports, or fall in love – desire is still here. Often, society’s paternalist view tends to limit the opportunities. Certainly our envelope changes and transforms itself, but its beauty is only a matter of perception. If fire is still burning, there is no reason to stop.
Alice Lopez, 81, at home. Originally from Landes, she started dancing at 14 with her parents. She has been attending the Duplex thé dansant for 40 years. Right; Brigitte Bourban, 66, at home. She attends the Duplex thé dansant, close to the Champs-Élysées, almost every Sunday and Monday afternoon
“Thés Dansants” in France was a starting point and a first chapter. The project aims to introduce a part of society that we know little about but that concerns us all. Now I would like to extend it to other interests that we don’t associate with an older age in France, as well as to other countries.
A scene from the Balajo dancing tea. This thé dansant, one of the oldest in Paris, takes place every Monday