THE ENGLISH STYLE

Greymouth Evening Star, 14 November 1936, Page 13

THE ENGLISH STYLE

IN BALLROOM DANCING “The English,” a Danish writer and architect who is also an authority on London, said to me the other day, “are supposed to be blind to their smaller excellences, but I never could have believed them so blind as I find them in one respect,” says a writer in the “Manchester Guardian.” “I mean on their ballroom dancing. Do you know that English ballroom dancing sets the fashion for the whole Continent, that the Continental teachers come to England to learn the new steps, and that many people, like myself, interested in dancing make a point when they came to London of visiting your ‘palais de danse’ to see the ‘English style’? “The more prosperous English have not even heard of this English style. All they know is their hotel dancing, on those abominably cramped floors, the same in every hotel in the world. Do you know that the long, gliding movement of the English style is supposed to be the most beautiful style in ballroom dancing yet invented?” It is true that, while the ordinary travelling Englishman is a byword for bad dancing, the clerks, typists, and artisans who frequent the London “palais de danse” have set the fashion for ballroom dancing everywhere except in France and the United States. The first of the “palais,” the Hammersmith Palais de Danse, was opened in 1919, followed soon by the palais at Birmingham. These palais are the homes of the English style. To see it at its best one must visit the Hammersmith Palais, the palais at Cricklewood, or the Astoria on a night when a demonstration is being given by a leading pair of professional dancers. Dancing at these palais is not just fun; it is as serious as tennis, cricket, or golf. Indeed, it takes the place of such games for the frequenters of the palais, who compete for prizes much as other people do at Wimbledon or St. Andrews. In 1921 a pictorial daily organised a great competition for amateur ballroom dancers. Since then there have been more and more, now regularised mostly by the Imperial Society. Ballroom dancing, in fact, has become highly competitive. “Go as you please,” was an apt description for dancing here until 1920, when the “Dancing Times” called an informal meeting of teachers, the result of which was the formation of the ballroom committee of the Imperial Society of Teachers of Dancing.

“NATURAL MOVEMENT” This committee, turning the “Go as you please” foxtrot into what is called a “natural movement” dance, evolved the English style now so sedulously copied in other countries. It also put ballroom dancing under the centralised control of the professional teachers. There had, of course, been teachers’ societies before; but they had been many and disunited and had dealt only with the steps of “sequence” dances. Now there are rules and a

standardising control; because of it the English style has been evolved, as a single style. The English style remains to be explained. Every palais has a large flooi’ that seems the larger by contrast with the cramped spaces of the West End “dine and dance” room or night club. It is the vogue for such cramped spaces that has taken “real” dancing from more prosperous people and put it in the palais, for the first thing about the English style is that it needs plenty of space. It is a style of easy, unforced movement, which must never be jerky. It is a long, steady glide, much as in skating, not depending for its attraction on stunt steps —indeed, the teachers discourage them —but on its steady flow and its slight variations in rhythm. Thus the test of the ballroom dancer has become the slow fox trot, which of all

English-style dances should be the smoothest, and which least admits of codifying. But the other post-war dances, of any continuous popularity — all of them have come from the United States —have also gone through the mould of the English style, and have emerged as something restrained and graceful. It even takes the jerks out of the Charleston—now revived—and the rumba, certainly devitalising somewhat such “rhythm” dances, but giving its own long graceful lines in compensation. The effect of the English style has been this: previously dancing teachers at the start of a season (in July) would go to Paris to learn the new steps. Now one Paris teacher who had some 200 such foreign visitors annually has only six. The rest come to England. The countries most affected by the English style, are on the whole, those nearest to England. Denmark, Germany, Norway have all copied the style and the competitive element of English dancing. Denmark was the first influenced and is the closest rival, because ballroom dancing is treated there now with a methodical seriousness beyond anything here. There are annual or more frequent competitions with English teams, and more recently with the Norwegians. There dancing is not confined to one class of person but is common to all, and to learn dancing is truly like going to school. The prospective pupil must choose between a course of “sports” dancing and social dancing, according to whether he wants to be a “the dansant” dancer or a real dancer. The sports dance (the name is a light on the attitude to it) is for real dancers; for sports dancers are the competitions and the prizes. Norway is a recent convert to the English style. Sports dancing only is taught, though with less (than the Danish method. Holland too is keen, though there the teachers discourage competitions; they think they make for cocksureness and hence for more teachers. The South African interest is shown by the fact that £ GOO was offered in order to get a British teacher to demonstrate at the Johannesburg exhibition. There, it is said, the general standard is as high as here, though ,the best English are better than the best South African dancers or anyone else. Indeed, the only countries where there is ballroom dancing unaffected by the English style are the United States and France; the United States because it prefers the wilder Negro rhythms, France because it will not give way to the new leader. Now the dancers go to the palais not to the West End. But in a curious way this English-style dancing has begun to affect more prosperous people—as a health restorer. The teachers say that an extraordinary number of their pupils are elderly people who take up dancing purely for exercise, and who realise more and more the pleasant effects of the controlled, unforced movements of the English style. They begin dancing as a cure and go on with it for pleasure.