Dancing Time

Otago Witness, Issue 3830, 9 August 1927, Page 6

Dancing Time

DANCES WORKED TO DEATH.

A GENERATION OF FOOT-WAGGLERS.

By

Maxwell Stewart,

World’s Champion Ballroom Dancer, 1924-25-26.

(Copyright.—Fob the Otago Witness.)

XX. The Black Bottom, which seems to have coms-do stay in spite of (or perhaps because of) the storm of abuse that has been showered upon it by those who have never seen it danced, raises an important consideration for dance lovers who take the trouble to think. | Here is another dance, the charm of which lies entirely in marking a certain rhythm. Like the Charleston, it is a leg dance which concerns itself very little with the interpretation of rhythm into graceful movements of the whole body. It should give us to think if we are not to lose sight of more graceful, if less fashionable, dances. It is useless to try, even if one wished, to pit oneself against a craze: but it is well to trace tlie way in which a craze can impoverish our dance ideas if it is ill-directed. We have now in our ballrooms four distinct types of rhythm, those of the waltz, the fox trot, the Negro, and the Spanish dances. There is a danger in having a number of varied dances. Inevitably the most popular, or some slight modification of it, will be performed to all the numbers. The result of this in nearly every

case is the speedy fall from favour of the dance in question. We often fail to get the best out of a dance because wo run it to death. Since the whole object of including several kinds of dances in a programme is to avoid monotony, it is a poor outlook for dancers if each fresh dance to which they lose their hearts brings them only a different sort of monotony. We are all tired of complaining of the people who fox trot to the waltz. Just at present the same people are busy dancing the Charleston to the music of the fox trot. Who can tell that they will not soon be Black-Bottoming to the tango! By all means let dances influence each

other and develop ■ but to let them swamp each other, as so many do, is merely stupid and destructive. Many people now dance the Charleston who cannot dance anything else. They have either forgotten the other rhythms, or in some cases have never learnt them. If the Black Bottom is to be next season’s rage, we shall have two season’s running during which a big proportion of dancers will have lost sight of dancing as embodying graceful movements of the whole body. In two seasons a great many young people take up dancing. In their keenness they come most easily under the sway of the prevailing fashion. They I are in danger of being a generation of I leg-wagglers, not dancers. In America I sec that one of broadcasting ideas is to tap out various dance rhythms over the microphone in illustration of»a lecture. This is rood, but it tends to emphasise the present-day tendency to think of rhythms as such rather than the importance of rhythmic and graceful movements which constitute dancing.

It will be difficult to present an idea of dancing as a whole on the wireless until we have television. It could be done on the kinema. A series of 5-minute films in which some expert analysed the types of movements in different dances would be a pleasins as well as a profitable idea for a kinema producer. . It is probably true to say that 80 per cent, of modern dancers have not the least conscious idea of the difference between rhythms. We have a variety of rhythms already at cur disposal in the ballroom if we care to use them. If dancers take the trouble to analyse these varieties in the dancing of acknowledged experts they will have a vista of pleasure opened before them, and will perhaps be more content to make the best of what they have instead of always crying out for something new.