DANCE ROOM SCANDALS

Greymouth Evening Star, 20 June 1923, Page 5

DANCE ROOM SCANDALS

— O A REFORM MOVEMENT. TEACHERS’ INDICTMENT. (Australian and N.Z. Cable Association.) LONDON. Juqe 19. At the annual conference of- the British Association of Dancing Teachers, the president said that he. wondered how much longer the art of dancing was to be prostituted. Young people were, degraded and the country shocked by the repeated tragedies due to granting dance licenses to fashionable hotels, restaurants, or glittering wine palaces, with mad musicians, whose lack of taste was only exceeded by those for whom they piped. Social and dance functions must be purged of the vulgarities introduced by the°clubs, wine sellers ,and carnival organisers’. Legitimate ballroom dancing did not require such meretricious aids as ballrooms, toys and childish amusements. The so-called subscription dances demanded stricter parental supervision and inquiry, or the. return of the chaperon would become, a necessity. Simultaneously with the British dancing teachers’ protest, comes the announcement that the. Internale Congress, Paris, failed to arrive at a simplification of .the present methods. The new dances offered for the study of experts, include, the. Frisco, which many declare adorable. An-

other is a Czecho-blovakian dance which is comprised of old and modern dances, and is asured of success. Others are the Mississippi, which is a valuation of the one. step originating in Copenhagen, the modern valse and the Riviera. It is certain that jazz, fox trot, java and tango are utterly out of date..