The prime example of a contagious dance from the Roaring Twenties that played a significant role in the emergence of youth culture is the Charleston. The Charleston dance craze was a phenomenon that sent young people into boundless euphoria and older generations into fear and terror. We are showing two short films and a feature film that deal with the Charleston craze in a humorous way.

In ‘Fatal Footsteps’, comedian Charley Bowers plays, as he almost always does, a young man with a monomania, this time his determination to win a dance competition. He practises obsessively, drawing elaborate dance diagrams on the floor, but his style looks less like Charleston and more like a St Vitus' dance. Sur un air de Charleston by French director Jean Renoir is a surreal, erotic satire in which the world is turned upside down and a local white girl in run-down Paris teaches a futuristic African ethnologist how to dance the Charleston.

In the newly restored feature film Skinner's Dress Suit, the protagonist Skinner has a lowly job that doesn't quite match the image his adoring wife has of him. This exuberant comedy about domestic customs from a bygone era, when husbands went to work and wives went shopping, is nevertheless a delight, thanks in particular to the stars Reginald Denny and Laura La Plante and the motif of infectious dancing that runs throughout the film. In the film's highlight, the two cause a sensation at an elegant soirée with the latest dance craze, the Savannah Shuffle...