The present era of ball-room dancing may be said to have commenced in the early years of the Twentieth Century. It was not until then that dancers began to cast off the cramping influence left behind by the autocratic Victorian dancing masters and to feel a desire to be able to give some little expression of their own—individuality in their movements. The gradual passing of the old valse, in which one mechanically revolved like a teetotum, into the variation, most unfortunately named the Boston, was the first outward evidence of the birth of a new spirit.
Undoubtedly the wonderful daneing on the stage of Mordkin, Najineki, Pavlova, and the other Russians drew the ball-room dancer's attention to the soulless nature of his own dances and helped to crystallize in his particular sphere the spirit of unrest which was even then eating its way through the world. It must always be remembered that the ball-room is a part of the great world and that it is immensely affected by what is going on outside.
The arrival of the one step was an easy matter after this revolt against autocracy and exactly corresponds with the coming of the Bolshevik after the Great pila the early one step we can trace whole ata of Trotekys, Lenins, and other revolutionaries, which were known in our drawing-rooms as the Bunny Hug, the Turkey Trot, and the Judy Walk.
Tue FAILcre or THE TANGO.
The exotic tango waa then experimented upon as an instrument by means of which the dancer hoped to translate into movement @ little of his personality, but this, like tea round hole, failed. The tango very attempt to put a square peg
is useless as a Satisfying dance except when danced by the Latin races. It utterly fails to interpret the ideas of the Anglo-Saxon.
Then came the War, and the men on 14 days' leave let themselves go in the newly-introduced fox trot.
With the arrival of the Armistice our ball-rooms were crowded to overflowing with hundreds of young men who had "picked up'? dancing during their periodical brief leaves from the trenches or the training camps. More than ever was licence given to the individual dancer fashion his dances as the fancy pleased him. Dips, twinkles, and other quaint movements abounded, and, though our dancing was always clean, it was decidedly grotesque and selfish.
But, after all, truth must prevail fu the end, even if for a time madness stalks abroad, and the more sober dancers began to realize that, although they might cast off the authority of the dancing master, they must not altogether jettison technique.
Sraxs or Berrer TuiNos.
A meeting of prominent teachers was held in London last year, who,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.