Tea dancing, English style

Press, 13 June 1984, Page 15

Tea dancing, English style

By

FRANCES KERRY,

of NZPA-Reuter

In a London room sparkling with gilt and glass, draped with pink velvet and lit by chandeliers, about 100 people sip tea and dance to the tunes of the 1920 s and 19305. The couples of all ages fox-trotting, tangoing, and quick-stepping amid the pot plants could be part of a

film set, but this is the weekly tea dance at the

Ritz Hotel in central London, long established as one of the world’s stylish hotels. “Do you recall when you were seventeen — and the world was just one field of green? . . . That golden spring when you were king and I your wonderful queen?” croons a cabaret artist called Hebe.

In its heyday in the 19205, the tea dance was a soothing combination of English afternoon tea and the contemporary craze for dancing. Revived, it has acquired the appeal of nostalgia. “It’s part of a fashion cycle,” says Gordon Deighton, entertainments director at the Ritz. Since he reintroduced the tea dance to the hotel last summer, the event has been fully booked every Sunday. “London used to be famous for this sort of thing. There is definitely a market waiting for it to be brought back,” he said.

“The cabaret artists love it because it provides their work with a platform which they can’t find anywhere else.”

Hebe, dressed in a low-cut white gown and wearing flowers in her hair, has been singing cabaret for the last 10 years. She likes singing at the Ritz, because “they’re such a good audience.”

“It’s not just old people either. The young love it,” she said. “There’s no romance in modem music, and people need romance.”

A murmur of voices can be heard above the muted sound of Hebe and the bandsmen, in their bow-ties, who play without loudspeakers or amplifiers. “This is the only place where you can dance without being deafened by the music,” said one man, who described himself as “oldfashioned enough to mow the lawn in a tie.” He and his companion remembered coming here 40 years ago. As silver spoons tap against the pink-edged Ritz china cups, waiters replace plates of tiny sandwiches with English tea muffins and strawberry tarts. On every table, by a vase of pink carnations, there is a dance card for the women to fill in the names of their partners for each dance, the revival of an old custom.