Ray Batchelor adds, 16th March 2017:

According to the original source [link below], a website selling old things or things which look old, “This appears to be a re-issue of a 1920’s-30’s postcard…. or perhaps made to appear so. Clearly marked on the back as of 1982 vintage. Interesting postcard and subject.”

The site shows the reverse of the postcard, and yes, the actual piece of card would seem to be from 1982. However, I suggest the image itself is old, not least because of the hair and make-up, especially of the figure furthest from the viewer. The Jean Harlow eyebrows, the “Marcel wave” or similar all look right and would be troublesome to reproduce for an image in the 1980s – indeed, hardly worth it if the prime market were pornography. Original postcards like this are collected, but do not now and I suspect did not then in the 1980s attract such high prices as to make it worth going to all that trouble with 1982 women in order to  reproduce it.

Secondly, are they dancing tango? Well they could be. As Birthe Havmøller remarked in recent correspondence with me, “We may argue that they are dancing tango because the both turn their face in the same direction, facing forward in a close embrace, which you don’t do in any of the traditional European dances as far as I know. – I wonder if you would do it in a quickstep in the 1920s, similar to the way it is done now in a ballroom quickstep performance even though the embrace is different to the modern ballroom embrace?”

A further reason to suggest tango is its greater erotic notoriety compared with the other dances mentioned which suits this pornographic image perfectly.

Thirdly, what evidence is there that the original image was Italian? None. The national attribution of the website where this copy was found relates to this 1982 copy, rather than to the original image. A Google Image search failed to identify the image at any other source indicating origin.

Gonzalo Collazo believes: “The image is out of copyright.”

The image url:
https://www.rubylane.com/item/160319-5035/1982-Italian-Nude-Dancers-Lesbian-Overtones