THE YALE BLUES

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 86, 10 January 1928, Page 16

THE YALE BLUES

RETURN TO POPULARITY. Last season —Black Bottom. The season 'before—Charleston. To-day—Blues. Tho bules is old. of course. We were dancing it in 1921. But it was strenuously denounced, it pased quickly, and probably n6t olio half of to-day’s dance public have ever danced it. For the past four years very few blues records have been made, and the bands have seldom played a blues. A slow, dragging fox-trot, with the inelodv well emphasised or well broken up (there is no happy medium), and a jerky rhythm creeping through—that host describes the blues (writes Patrick Chalmers in the Daily Mail). Most couples execute it in an orthodox way with long, slinky strides, but some experts introduce most effectively various steps of their own which suit the rhythm arid relieve a certain monotony.

The musis, slurred, quaint, ruffled, without the'insistently lively note of tho ■fox-trot, is played a quarter slower than the fox-trot music; ajid in my opinion the best pieces are those in which the melody is emphasised. The dance style that this queer rhythm induces is a languorous, swaying one’, without the wriggles, shimmies, and exaggerations characteristic of the parent Negro dance. This is important, because young dancers not accustomed to the blues are— when it was with us last—apt to jazz it, throwing in nods and shrugs and ungraceful tricks of arms, shoulders, and feet. It is not an easy dance—no slow dance is. Perfect balance is needed, and a sure and graceful carriage, a neatstenpinc foot and a perfect sense of blues time. The man must avoid a certain temptation to lean forward and to fling his feet about instead of controlling them as precisely as in the tango; and the girl must lie cnrefnl to hold hersc'f well, slightly back from the waist, still from the waist up. and close to her partner. Legs and feet most be moved from hip, not knee, and the body kept springily.poised. 'l’he bines comes most piquantly lietween a lively fox-trot and a dreamy waltz.