CHARLESTON.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 5 March 1927, Page 17

CHARLESTON.

AS IT SWEEPS ENGLAND. The Charleston has been popular for months (says a "writer in an English paper). Only during the last few weeks has it become a disease. I call it Charlestons. Here are a few of many symptoms of Chari estonia which have come my way in the last week or two: A young woman breaking into a Charleston step as she walked in tweeds and brogues over the downs; a tall woman doing, abstractetdly, a little Charleston step as she looked into a Bond street shop window; three page boys doing a quiet Charleston in a corner of an hotel foyer; a Charleston ball at which 3500 people, including one of the King’s sons, danced; another mammoth Charleston ball at which, between 2 p.m. and 2 a.m., over 10.000 people danced.

A society girl doing an exhibition solo Charleston at a private dance in Mayfair; programme girls surreptitiously Charlestoning, back against the wall of a theatre; factory girls doing a sort of group Charleston as they poured out of the work gate. Last night, travelling into the country, I was disturbed while reading in

the Pullman car. A strange, monotonous drumming sound from the corridor: It was the attendant whiling away the time doing the Charleston. And yet people say that “no one is really interested in the Charleston.” And for some time people back from New York have been saying that the Charleston has been dead "in its original home for months.

The Charleston died in New York because a ban against it was enforced in most of the dance places. It was prohibited because it was a nuisance—en-

tirely unsuited, with its kick-up side step and non-progressive backward-and-forward movement, to a crowded ballroom.

New York never knew the flat Charleston, which is just a staccato walk to the Charleston rhythm—with no kickups, foot twists, cross-overs, or stamps. The invention of the flat Charleston has saved the dance here. It wiped out at a stroke the kick and the nonprogressive movements, and so got the ban lifted in practically every dance restaurant, club and dance palace where the Charleston originally was prohibited. No one begins to understand this Charleston who regards it as an eccentric dance in which one flicks one’s feet, about and does weird things to one’s knees. There is only one way to understand it: Listen to Charleston music, either “straight” Charleston pieces or a Charles-toned fox-trot. ! Presently you hoar the' irresistible boat in the music. When you can pick that beat out you can change without pause or jerk from fox-trot, to Charleston, and back again, and you can Charleston “solo.” You may also fall a victim—although this is problematical— to the prevailing epidemic. For this thing is not a dance at all; it is a rhythm.