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This film clip is a mystery (at the moment anyway). It somewhat resembles a maxixe, but it has samba-like steps throughout. The woman's attire places it around 1914, with the split skirt and headband with a feather. We know that the Brazilian L. Duque (the stage name of Antonio Lopes Amorim Diniz) brought a maxixe to Paris around 1912, but the many descriptions of his maxixe don't quite fit this film clip. Then he returned to his native Brazil around 1922 and brought back a variation of the maxixe called samba, premiering it at his Montmartre club Shéhérazade in the winter of 1922-23. This film clip has a basic step quite similar to Duque's 1923 samba, and performs his cross-steps (later called bota foga) exactly. But this film clip doesn't look like it's from 1923. Could the samba have existed ten years earlier, and this is a couple dancing it? The film is silent, of course, so I added an original recording of the maxixe Amapa, which is exactly the same tempo as their dance. Whe
