Grizzly Bear

The pas de l'ours, first known by its English name grizzly bear, is a couple dance that emerged in the United States around 1910 and achieved international popularity until the outbreak of the First World War. Its name refers to a stylized and parodic imitation of the swaying gait of a grizzly bear, as well as to the close embrace of the dancers and movements likened to the animal's paws. Performed to ragtime music, the pas de l'ours belongs to a group of early 20th-century American animal dances that shared a taste for fantasy and marked a departure from established social dance conventions. Characterized by syncopated movements, improvisation, and a playful tone, the dance quickly attracted a wide audience. At the same time, it provoked controversy: critics associated its movements with moral laxity, viewed animal imitation as a form of regression, and, in some cases, called for restrictions or bans on public performances. Such reactions were often reinforced by claims that the dance originated in African American communities of the San Francisco underworld. As a result, the pas de l'ours was frequently described as vulgar, a label that sometimes carried racial connotations. From 1911 onward, several songs by Irving Berlin, notably The Dance of the Grizzly Bear and Everybody's Doin' It Now, played a significant role in popularizing the dance.¶

The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Grizzly Bear (dance)”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence.¶

Grizzly Bear is early 20th-century dance style, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition.¹¶

The source record links this tradition to 1 external register, which can be verified through the citation.¹¶