Dances For The New Year

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 18922, 25 January 1936, Page 10

Dances For The New Year

TN dancing, :is in most Other things', there is really nothing new undor tlic sun. What may be a novelty I" Loudon may bo boringly familiar in the African jungle and vil ''' vors'i. Changes which cause occasional sensations in our ballrooms usually turn out, on investigation, to be only an eccentric variation of something we have scon or heard of before.

All this is apropos of a demonstration of the "coming" steps by Joan Morris and Go mid Clare til the Margaret .Morris Institute, in London, last month, when this graceful couple performed in a manner which made the onlookers qui to ill with envy.

This year there are to be two mam innovations. The Charleston (though dead these six years) is revived and in its new form will be a hybrid of the old Charleston (the lugh-kieking variety), and the later "tiat " Charleston. Thus it will contain the typical Charleston turn of the foot but will not include kicking. The reason, said .Mr. Clare, for this revival was a desire in bring at least a little smile to what lie called the faces of the gloomy English dancing men and w m. \\ " haw all seen those faces- the faces nf the very earnest, ''so very 'good type of dancers who actually make more false steps to the square yard than tliev would care to hear about.

A Conservative Rumba. The other big change is in the Rumba, which is no, longer to be the tight "bear-hug" that it has been till now, but is to be danced with the "female partner" held at the full ex tent of the man's arm, leaning on hi" bent wrist. As demonstrated it has the lull swings and curves of a Viennese waltz rather than the familiar wriggles of the Rumba, and so should appeal to those of us who pride ourselves on being ultra-conservative.

Lest we should die of ennui. -Mr. Claie has introduced a. new step of his own to enliven the quickstep, still the staple diet of every dance fiOOV. He calls it an "eight-step" because of the eight quick little movements which are its characteristics. M is a quaint and fascinating manoeuvre that is certain to become popular among the few dancers capable of learning it.

But, when all is said and done, we are not so much in need of new dances as new dancers— new dancers who arc imbued with the spirit of dancing ami what, if we were French, we would call jnie de vivre. There are few spectacles so gruesome, mournful, and conducive to pessimism as a London ballroom in full swing. Foreign visitors invariably view it with goggleeyed incredulity. "But, what wouia you.' The English are mad, is it not?" That is what they ejaculate.