DETERMINED DANCING

Dominion, Volume 16, Issue 171, 7 April 1923, Page 15

DETERMINED DANCING

SEVEN HOURS AT A STRETCH Two energetic people in a Northumberland ballroom, have just danced together for seven hours on end, and thereby, it seems, beaten a record of six hours and forty minutes which was less recently established in Paris, states the “Al'anchester Guardian.” “1 could waltz with you for ever!” is a compliment which must have been often paid by an enthusiastic swain of the old days; but here is something which suggests that what was once a piece of flattery is on- its way to becoming a physical possibility. It reflects a prodigious change in tho customs of the ballroom. In one way it testifies to a changed convention. There would have been very little point in aiming at a non-stop run of this length in those distant days when to claim four dances with tho same partner was almost tantamount (at any rate in tho eyes of the ohaperon who has now pretty well vanished) to a proposal of marriage. But in our present complicated stage of civilisation a man may dance from one end of a programme to the other, with tho same partner without committing himself to anything but a confession that he has reduced himself to a specialist who is afraid to break new ground lest it reveal his unsuspected incapacity. But, quite apart from a changed convention of this kind, the news from Northumberland suggests a great change in the nature of ballroom dancing. Clearly, the modern dancing must be much less strenuous than the old. Even the hero of that once celebrated ballad, “You should see me dance the polka” would have thought twice about attempting to display his favourite spectacle for seven hours on end. The lady in Mr. Kipling’s story, who left her partner with the conviction that she “danced like the shadow of a leaf in a light wind,” would have scarcely sustained that image at the end of a five hours’ waltz. And a set of lancers that had repeated itself for only half that time could have been counted on to leave even a jockey appreciably reduced in weight. Yet we are informed that the Northumberland performers were comparatively fresh at the end of their fox-trot exhibition. It does rather tend to confirm the opinion that repose rather than audacity is the keynote of modern dancing. Some years ago there were horrified protests at the prevalence of “negroid gesticulations.” It would need a. good savage to keen up negroid gesticulations for seven hours at a stretch.

KEEP THE OIL-CAN HANDY. Oil is most useful in the household, for it saves time and temper in many directions. A little oil on the wheels or the carpet sweeper will make it. r.un more easily. Oil on the wood-house door hinges will prevent the damp coating them with rust, likewise tho chicken-house door, and the garden roller will not squeak so distressingly if treated with a lavish supply of oil when it is in use.