MODERN DANCING

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 152, 26 December 1923, Page 3

MODERN DANCING

TH E THINGS; THAT MATTE R

IMPORTANCE OF CARRIAGE.

Dancing lessons are very well, so far f, s. r the/ go, declares "R.M."in the Manchester Guardian" Steps are learnt, the correct hold Is taught: men are herded into the. straight and narrow way— Keep your feet close together as it you were walking on a plank," is the first thing the beginner-is told— but how much time and money are wasted on the whole, and how very badly most people dance! Men who have taken a series of' dancing lessons appear to the inspecting eye and bruised feet 01 the woman who danced with them a year ago to produce a variation of steps on a groundwork of ancient sinsbent knees, cramped movements, awkward holds. While many women whose record of instruction is first class still lean one-sidedly on their partners, also bend their knees and cramp a good partner's style by little jerky stops. Xhose who dance in this way may onjoy themselves,' but the awkward movements they produce go far to prejudice non-dancers, and especially . the older non-dancers against modern dancing.' Modern dancing can be. and sometimes is; beautiful; a fox-trot really well dajiced is lovely, as graceful as a waltz and, when some people dance it, quite as stately as a minuet. Why should it not be ? Half the beauty of a dance depends on the carriage bf the dancers, and all the most famous exhibition fox-trotters . hold themselves lithely, straight and yet'not stiff. Steps are not difficult to learn; anyone of average, intelligence could learn all the fox-trot steps that are danced in an hour, and most men who dance often and well are continually inventing new steps of their own,/"or new combinations of old slops. 1 . There are- four things in dancing which make all the difference between a really good and a thoroughly inferior performance, and incidentally between something which is a delight to watch and a gait compared with which a cow in full canter stands for easy grace. Everyone should hold himself well. Men- can bend . forward a bit, but must not crouch over their-partners. Women must not cling to their propellor; he has got to steer them; in and out and round, and he is inevitably hampered by, a head on his srioulder or a drag on his arm. Partners should be close enough together for there to be that slight contact which gives a woman who is a good follower all she needs to know almost beforehand what her partner's next step will be. People who dance very well together touch their knees, 1 and so their feet are perfectly in time; But they never cling, together, and the man never by any chance directs his partner by sudden violent pressure, or uses his arm, and his partner's,' pumpwise, alike as -an aid to and a waving signal of progression. It is fatal to bend at the knees or to keep the feet wide apart—most people do the .former, and it destroys smoothness. They jerk and dip instead of gliding. Steps should be long to be graceful, and this is not only important, but a good deal more difficult to achieve than it sounds. ,As for those who keep their feet apart, they waddle, frankly. Let anyone try moving forward with his feet set wide apart, and he will understand that his aspect from every angle is displeasing. Cramped movements are generally the result of timidity, or a superior frame of mind—that self-conscious attitude which makes a child hesitate to speak French with a French accent amongst its schoolfellows. He or. she can't bear to be conspicuous; even if the result would be desirable. Almost every fault in a bad dancer is \iased on one of these mistakes, and if only everybody could realise how simple, on the whole, they are to avoid, how simple also the steps of modern dances, then the dance teaching profession would indeed languish. . . ...