Tripping the light fantastic now that was really dancing

Press, 9 October 1982, Page 15

Tripping the light fantastic now that was really dancing

. writes a nostalgic

KEN COATES

Like hundreds of us who attend wedding dances, twenty-firsts. engagement parties, and such-like do's these days. Bruce McKay, aged 49. of Kaiapoi. hankered after the tuneful days of the slow foxtrot, or a lively gypsy tap.

It's not as though Bruce is doddering, senile, or approaching decrepitude.

He, like others, just wondered why dancing always has to be the graceless jiggling it is. to the accompaniment of electronic music, often at a decibel level that makes even the most elementary social chit-chat impossible.

But unlike most of us. who suffer in silence. Bruce decided to do something constructive. Over about a year, he sounded out friends and work-mates.

“Ray Kamo, whom I've known for years, and I had a dance band at North Beach years ago. and we agreed it was time the woodwind and other instruments had a turn, rather than electronic music all the time." he savs.

"We remembered dance music when you could hear yourself think. We recalled our style of dancing, w’hich you seldom see today.

"You're lucky to get a foxtrot at nine o'clock, and then it's all up to 800 decibels from then on."

Over a couple of drinks, someone recalled the long dresses, dinner suits, and balls held at the Winter Garden — and nostalgia came on strong.

Bruce McKay asked himself why enjoyment of the gypsy tap. maxina, destiny waltz, and Valetta Gay Gordons could not be brought back — if only for an evening. “Then back in February of this year, at the birthday dance of my nephew. I found myself up on the floor jiggling around on the spot with a lady I have known for years.’’ he recalls.

"I asked whether she was enjoying the dance. She said, ‘no’. "I asked how she would like to be swooping around the beautiful sprung floor of the Winter Garden to a slow fox-trot.

“She said she would give anything for the opportunity ... so that clinched it for me."

There was no problem over hiring the Winter Garden. or in assembling a band of professional musicians who knew all the old tunes and could play them superbly.

The only unanswered question was — would people buy tickets at $lB a double for the opportunity to trip the light fantastic?

The answer was not long in coming: “A mate said that if I would do it. he would sell 20 double tickets. no trouble.” says Bruce. “Then someone else said he would sell 25 more, and so it went, until I had 30 people lined up, all keen to ask their friends to the ball and keen to sell tickets."

A total of 362 people answered the call of nostalgia by turning up at the Winter Garden one recent evening. There were some concessions to the passage of time

— few men wore dinner suits, when once such an attire, or a close resemblance to it. was a prerequisite for being.admitted.

A dark suit with bow tie would do. Most had never owned such formal wear, and in

Christchurch there is no equivalent of Moss Bros, of London who have many hundreds of suits for every formal occasion for hire. It must be said, however, that many a ball-goer has cause to look back with gratitude to the understanding staff in the menswear department of a certain superior department store in the citv.

Impecunious but "respectable” young men. who ran an account at the store, were allowed to collect a dinner suit “on appro." from the obliging store before the ball, and return it the following day.

"So sorry it did not fit you sir." they would say. with a nod and a wink, looking forward to selling lots of new suits on the strength of the goodwill thus created.

One man had made a scoop purchase for one dollar specially for the occasion at an opportunity shop. “No-one else wanted this suit because quite obviously the trousers don't fit the top." he demonstrated. doing a Charlie Chaplin hands-in-pockets. with his outsized pants. His wife was demurely attired in a long frock that would have done her credit in the heady days of the 1950 s when such creations were the hot topic of conversation among all the women who attended.

Her capacious ball dress, with frills and flounces, also would have been ideal for concealing the bottles and flasks of refreshment, without which no ball at the Winter Garden in those days was considered successful.

Viewed from this distance, the strange and furtive manoeuvre was a hypocritical way of getting around an unpopular and restrictive legality. But it did lend an air of excitement-, almost daring, to ball-going.

In those days the country's puritanical drink laws did not allow alcohol, even beer, to be sold in a dance hall. It was a punishable offence even to b.y.o. Invariably ball-goers would arrive, well-primed, and laden with supplies for the evening secreted about their person. Everyone was frisked at the door. Some liquor was confiscated and thus the law was observed.

BuUany guest who managed to escape the wandering hands of the doormen, and many a pretty debutante did. was hailed as a hero, or heroine, once inside the hall.

There was a limit, after all. in those days to where a doorman could decently look or finger.

Inside the hall, however, lockers for the drink were provided in the tables of alcoves, and glasses were supplied by the management. All was now socially acceptable — even the over-imbib-ing and its often startling effects.

Although Bruce McKay made tentative inquiries, today's management at the Winter Garden was not keen on a token frisking at the door, even for the sake of nostalgia.

There was a well stocked bar inside, though patrons were more interested in dancing than in re-living the more exuberant activities of their youth. The band-leader. George Crow, a former Londoner.

who once ran a popular music programme for the 8.8. C.. described the Winter Garden revival as "fabulous."

He recalls how he and his fellow musicians were asked to start with a Boston Twostep.

"The boys thought that would be inappropriate and no-one would respond.

"But Bruce assured us: I'll guarantee it'."

"So we decided to give him what he asked for as he was paying. We had only played a few bars and the floor was full."

“Drifting and Dreaming." "Spanish Eyes." “If You Were the Only Girl,” "Beautiful Brown Eyes." "The Loveliest Night of the Year” were just some of the mellifluous golden oldies that had matrons, mums, and grannies singing along, gliding.

dipping, and twirling. There was even a "lucky spot" and a “Monte Carlo." Brian Whitehouse, saxophone and clarinet. Ray Parmenter. bass and singer of songs. Murray Griffiths, trombone, and Neil Stringer, drummer — all had played a hundred times before for the Gav Gordon.

Strange how old habits die hard. As the strains of the last bar of music died away. I offered my arm instinctively to a beaming lady whose face seemed vaguely familiar. An old girl friend perhaps?

Then almost as a reflex action, the question came to me: "And where are you sitting?" J led her across the floor in an old-world fashion that has no place today when even to hold a door open for a woman invites the possibility of the tart response:

"What's this? Don't you think I'm as good as you are?" After the supper waltz, the rush for the doors leading to the supper room was familiar — no orderly queueing here. ‘But the feast laid out on groaning tables was less familiar. Looking back, those suppers we were offered 30 years ago. sandwiches and savouries, were pretty plain affairs bv today's standards.

The revival proved there is a hankering for the simpler, slower, and less noisy — at least among a generation which has known it.

Yet perhaps it is all a figment of imagination from the vale of years, a rosecoloured view — especially when one recalls some of the more riotous evenings of yore at the Winter Garden. But the dancing — that was something else.