Ballet, Burlesque, and Bold Design: The Allure of The Dance

Most magazines document a time, but some embody it. The Dance was the latter. First published in the early 1920s and flourishing into the 1930s, The Dance wasn’t just a trade journal or a stage gossip rag; it was an exquisite, stylized tribute to movement itself. It captured on paper what most publications couldn’t: the fleeting grace of performance and the hypnotic pull of personality. In doing so, it also became a minor masterpiece of print culture, especially during the shimmering years of Art Deco design.

The origins of The Dance magazine are lost to time, but we do know it was born into an era that adored spectacle. Vaudeville was still smouldering, ballet was taking daring new turns, and “modern” dance was shaking off its corsets. The magazine emerged at the perfect moment - just when the world was starting to look at dancers not only as performers but as icons of modernism, physicality, and style. That shift was reflected in every page, but especially, and most memorably, on its covers.

Printed in rich, saturated tones with bold typography and stylized figures, the covers of The Dance during the Art Deco period were glittering examples of graphic design at its most expressive. There were no apologetic pastels here, no watercolour delicacy - these covers came to impress. They revelled in drama, silhouette, gold-leaf flourishes and exaggerated limbs. Dance wasn’t merely something you saw; it was something you felt. The Dance understood that long before anyone called it branding.

Although she never made it onto a cover, Mata Hari was featured in its pages. She was a Dutch-born exotic dancer who achieved fame (and notoriety) before being executed for espionage during World War I.

And Mata Hari was far from the only notable name to grace the magazine's pages. Throughout its lifespan, the magazine featured stylized illustrations and photographic tributes to the leading dancers of the era, including Anna Pavlova, Tamara Geva, and Josephine Baker.

Pavlova, the epitome of classical ballet elegance, was rendered with an almost religious reverence.

Geva, a drop-dead glamorous Soviet-turned-American actress and ballet dancer, was a perfect fit for a magazine obsessed with beauty, movement, and illusion.

And Josephine Baker - what more can be said? She was Art Deco: wild, modern, subversive, and impossible to ignore. When she appeared on or within the magazine’s covers, she did so with all the jazz-age ferocity of the era she helped define. I’ll write separately about these dancers in coming Newsletters, because they have stories worth hearing about.

Part of what made The Dance’s covers so compelling was their embrace of the Art Deco style at its most luxurious. With angular lines, sweeping curves, mirrored symmetry, and jewel-toned palettes, the magazine's art direction united movement, fashion, illustration, and celebrity into a single, unforgettable image.

And like many beautiful things, The Dance had a relatively short life. It ceased publication in the early 1940s, a casualty of wartime austerity and shifting cultural tastes. As the world turned toward more pragmatic concerns, the stylized dream-world of The Dance no longer held the same cultural sway. But the covers remain. And in many ways, they’ve grown more powerful with time.

Today, genuine covers can be expensive, but they’re still very much sought after by collectors, not just of dance memorabilia but of Art Deco art, theatrical history, and magazine design. Though only intended to promote the fleeting beauty of a stage performance, they’re now considered works of art in themselves, pieces of forgotten glamour made visible again. They’re among the most beautiful covers for a magazine you may never have heard of.

If you’re a dancer or dance-fan, or you simply love Art Deco design at its most stunning, we have a lovely selection of reproductions of this iconic magazine to browse through.

Just go to: https://www.frenchandvintage.biz/pictures-repro-magazine-covers, and see which is your favourite. Or you can visit me in person at Peregian Beach Market, to buy without postage costs. They’re all available as A3 prints.