THERE was a time when men did the cancan - and some still do.

Several sites suggested men danced the cancan.

According to the Texas Siftings, "he” danced the cancan.

This was quoted in the Oxford English Dictionary.

I wonder how many times "he” did it

There also was a time when women, well...

The Collins says of cancan: "The can-can is a dance in which women kick their legs in the air and shake their skirts to fast music”.

When the dance first appeared early in the 19th century. it was considered a scandalous dance. Some people still consider it scandalous, even though not as scandalous as when it first appeared.

In the mid-19th century it was thought to be extremely inappropriate by respectable society.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries the can-can was viewed as much more erotic because the dancers made use of the extravagant underwear of the period, and the contrasting black stockings.

They lifted and manipulated their skirts much more, and incorporated a move sometimes considered the most cheeky and provocative.

Let me tell you the story.

The dance was once forbidden, during a time when women weren't supposed to show their ankles, or their underwear.

The cancan, spelling as in the original French, is a high-energy dance which became a popular music hall dance in the 1840s, continuing in popularity in French cabaret to this day.

Originally danced by both sexes, it is now traditionally associated with a chorus line of female dancers.

The main features of the dance are the high kicks, splits and cartwheels.

The Infernal Galop from Jacques Offenbach's Orpheus in the Underworld is the tune most associated with the can-can.

The name can-can may be derived from the French scandal. However, the dance was also referred to as the coin-coin　and this may have become corrupted into cancan. In its early days, the dance was also called the chahut (French for noise or uproar).

The cancan is believed to have evolved from the final figure in the quadrille, which is a social dance by four couples. The exact origin of the dance is unknown　

The dance was considered scandalous, and for a while, there were attempts to repress it. This may have been partly because in the 19th century, women wore pantalettes, which had an open crotch, meaning that a high kick could be revealing. Occasionally, people dancing the cancan were arrested, but there is no record of it being banned, as some accounts claim.

Throughout the 1830s, it was often groups of men, particularly students, who danced the cancan at public dance-halls.

As the dance became more popular, professional performers emerged, although it was still danced by individuals not by a chorus line.　A few men became cancan stars in the 1840s to 1861 and an all-male group known as the　Quadrille des Clodoches performed in London in 1870

However women performers were much more widely known. By the 1890s, it was possible to earn a living as a full-time dancer and stars such as La Goulue and Jane Avril emerged, who were highly paid for their appearances at the　Moulin Rouge and elsewhere

The cancan is now considered a part of world dance culture. Often the main feature observed today is how physically demanding and tiring the dance is to perform, but it still retains a bawdy, suggestive element.