THE FIVE-STEP.

Northern Advocate, 28 June 1924, Page 10 (Supplement)

THE FIVE-STEP.

NEW ALTERNATIVE TO THE FOX-TROT. There has appeared Jon. thti'edge of the reason a new dance, tho iive-step, which has interejting possibilities.. It is n dance with four step.?, separate and distinct, which can'be varied, as can fox-steps; and, danced in 6-4 time, it Las a rhythm of its own. The dance time is the simple one ds*. one-two, one-two-three —which is the basic time of the fox-trot, as it was originally crciit-cd by the Vetnon Castles.

This new dance will no,t rival the foxtrot or squeeze the waltz from its narrow foothold on the d;uiee programmes of to-day, states a writer in the "Sunday Observer." And this is because there are, at present, two types of new dances. One type «\inis definitely at replacing the fox-cot; it sets out to be something simpler, more delightful, and more catchy than even the universally popular fox-irot. All the dances in this category to date have failed and completely. They have not even gained a footing on dance programmes and the dance Bands have not even taken the trouble to flay their accompanying ;nusic over in Tehearsal. Tho second typo has for its more modest objective the gaining of :i place on the dance programmes where it may appear two or three

times in an evening's daner- —a measure which people will danc.., not because the music sets their shoulders swaying and heads nodding and feet tappng, but just because it affords a momentary and pleasant enough variation from the tyrannous fox-trot.

The Blues is such a tlanc< j , and the new Five-Step may become one> too. The most interesting possibility the latter uance appears to hold is that of ousting the slow and er.mbersome Blues;; for the Blues, after \ season's trial, is wearing very thin, and in many places is no longer played. In those clubs and dance rr-staurants where it is played three or four times in tbe nightly nine-till-two programme, only c quarter or a fifth of the people present take the floor for it. At private dances it is scarcely over played now; at hunt and county b\lls never. It is essentially r-.n over-slow, ungraceful dance; and only excellent, practised, well-built (lancers can look well doifig its hesitant, sluggish steps.

A couple dancing the new dance the othc: night told me that they had acquired it in one \ery short lesson, and attributed thi*. to the fact that the general dance style is very similar to that of the fox-trot, although, as I have noted, it has a distinctive rhythm. They danced it easily, witli a gliding motion, and long steps. It Is, one imagines, capable of development, as the origin:il fox-trotVurned out to be; and whe i the world h. dancing 'hampions, Miss Barbara Miles and Mr Maxwell Stovrort, demonstrate it shortly, they will no doubt set .» style and standard of lire to dancers.

Whether or not the bulk of the dancing public will take to this new dance, even as a substitute for the Blues, or as .1 fifth dance on the programmes, remains to be seen. One can enly hazard p.. guess, for dances ar.' strange things; and the moods of the dancing public less easily gauged than ?. butterfly's precise flight across a field of flowers. In Paris and on the Eiviera they dance as often as the fox-trot the four-step tango,, a simpler and more alluring dance than either Blues or Five-Step; yet two seasons' hard work failed to put that dance over here, and it it: now never seen in British .ballrooms.