AT THE PEN’S POINT

Southland Times, Issue 20219, 2 July 1927, Page 13 (Supplement)

AT THE PEN’S POINT

THE MODERN DANCE

(By

Debauchee.

Every now and again someone with a grouch seizes the time-word subject —“The Modern Dance”—and proceeds to say very nasty things about dancers in general and young people in particular. No form of present-day entertainment is subjected to more damning criticism, and in no case is the criticism more open to revision. Take the case of “Sarong.” On his own showing he returns to civilisation after a long sojourn among the natives of the East. He has not danced for years, and proceeds to recommence his social activities where they were interrupted—at the Lancers. He doesn’t care much for dancing, but his move on returning to civilisation is in the direction of a dance hall. And on reentering the atmosphere of his youthful pleasures, he finds that everything has changed. He cannot charge up and down 1 the hall under the license given by the freedom of his old friend the Lancers. There are no Lancers. He cannot enjoy the innocent delights of claret cup because there is no claret cup. He cannot sit out dances, apparently there is no one to sit out with. He cannot do anything he used to enjoy doing. He is out of it. He’s a back number. So he mopes in the corner and looks on, watching everyone enjoying himself or herself to the utmost. He becomes embittered and scowls darkly at the merriment. Why should all those young men —lusty young men—fall on the floor and think it funny? Why can’t he charge up and down the floor in the Lancers, and kick people on the shins, and laugh too? He wanders into the supper room, but there he is still further out of it. The young men are fighting for their supper and fighting for their partners’ supper. Why can’t he have supper without fighting for it? Only the natives he has left behind should be allowed to fight for their supper. Because of their fighting prowess, all the wild beasts in the room have secured their suppers and he has to go without. Oh, curse the dance! No charging up and down the room, no sitting-out, no supper, and no claret cup. He decides to go home, and stalks to the dressing room to find his coat. Hanging beside it is a bulging mackintosh, and from its pocket peeps a bottle. Shades of the claret cup! Dry as a wooden idol, and the only refreshment in the place is that owned by one of the wild beasts. The orchestra is playing "Just a Little Drink.” Ten thousand curses! In a jet black mood he descends the stairs. What would he not give for the old days when one could charge up and down the hall in the Lancers with good old-fashioned sweat pouring off one’s face! Then the claret cup to keep one cool between charges, and the big, thorough supper when one ate like a he-man and loosened one’s belt to improve one’s scope. i Where is that car? The sooner one is out of it all and back with the natives, the better one will be pleased. At last the car is located. Now to get away from the evil place. . . . Wrench. Scrape. Scuffle ...?...!! “Beg your p-pardon. What! Oh yes, this IS my d—, my—my car. No no. Not at all. Yes I am . . Well of all the infernal impudence. A wild beast in his car and a female beast with him! And they’ve left a bottle. Could hear it clinking. Do them good to lose it; it’ll teach them to use other people’s cars. . . . Confound it. They’ve taken the bottle with them.

So home goes “Sarong,” boiling with indignation and after a night of unrest he gets busy with a pen of scorn and condemnation.

First of all he paints in the background of soft soap, assuring the world that his greatest desire is to see everybody happy. He blandly announces his tolerance of youth and plumps his vote for innocent pleasure, and distraction for its own sake. Then comes the hideous contrast —the painting of the picture of evil.

He did not think it at all funny to see lusty young men fall over and send their partners sprawling on the floor. What rubbish, "Sarong”! There is nothing immoral in falling on the floor. Did he never fall on the floor when he charged up and down the room during his Lancers. I used to fall quite frequently in the Lancers. So did others. I've seen perspiring men, yelling like banshees, careering all over the room in the good old-fashioned Lancers. I’ve seen frightened girls whirl from a revolving group of excited people and be picked up severely shaken. I’ve seen dresses torn, and collars ripped, and legs bruised, and a man nursing a foot from which a piece of skin the size of a shilling piece has been removed. All in the Lancers. “Sarong’s” good old Lancers.

And the unsightly Charleston! Well, I “Sarong,” what did you think of the Barn I Dance? How about the Polka, and the , Schottische? Unsightly? Well they were , unsightly. Nothing looked more foolish or futile than a roomful of men and women getting themselves into a state of sticky heat performing the Barn Dance. Why, there was so much exertion in those dances that a person found it necessary to don a special pair of light shoes before entering the hall. And a man was not doing the right thing unless he wore white gloves. Girls were not keen on dancing with a man unless he wore gloves in those not-far-distant days. Do you know why, Mr Sarong? Because they knew that the perspiring, uncovered hand of a man when placed round their waists would make their dresses filthy dirty in no time. To-day a dance is not a bear-garden of leaping, hopping, and sweating fools. One dances quietly. There is no need for special shoes. Any light shoes will do. There is no need for gloves. The dance is a social pleasure; not a trial of strength. [ And the morals of the modern dance. Let’s consider the Charleston. Is it an immoral dance? Danced properly, it is no more a display of limbs than the Polka. In fact, the Polka could be turned into a much more vulgar display than the Charleston. Why blame the dance ? The people who dance the Charleston in vulgar fashion would have danced the Polka with the same suggestiveness. Compare the Charleston with the waltz. Any girl is safer Charlestoning with a half-drunken man than waltzing with him. When Charlestoning one can think of only one thing—the Charleston. Waltzing is easier and offers scope for cuddling that can make the Charleston green with envy. I’ll bow low to “Sarong” if he can kiss bis partner passionately on the lips and gaze into her eyes while dancing the American Charleston. But while waltzing . . .!! Yes, quite so. Then there is the question of fighting like a wild beast for one’s supper. Here I am going to accuse "Sarong” of exaggeration. I have jostled for my supper, I have argued for my supper, and I have yelled for my supper. But I have never fought like a wild beast for my supper. And no other dancer has done so either. Oh, and I forgot to mention that the days i when I jostled most and yelled loudest >

were the days of the Lancers. They were the days when supper at a dance was not supper—it was a good solid meal, shared by men, many of whom had gone without their evening meal in order that they might lo justice to that which was offering. Today the meal custom at dances is dying a timely death. People have no more desire lo s*i down in the middle of the night and stuff themselves with rich foods than they have to perform physical exercises in the Lancers, the Barn Dance, and the Polka. Dances are saner and more sensible. They offer light, breezy recreation with lots of laughter, less prudery, and more open healthy fraternising between the sexes. There is nothing lewd in a leg save, perhaps, to a man who sees one for the first time after a long sojourn in the wilds, and there is much less ogling and comment from the door of the male dressing room to-day than there was in the days when the Barn

Dance-kicking miss revealed her cottoncovered knees to the onlookers.

.The blame for drinking and its dangers cannot be laid at the door of the modern dance. There is drinking—too much drinking—but the remedy lies with the individual, not the institution. In Invercargill there is less encouragement for drinking at a modern dance than there was, say half a dozen years ago. At one time every big dance attended by “The best people” provided a fully stocked bar with a whitecoated barman, n’everything. Boys in their teens spent their last penny on a ticket because they knew that the bar would be there. They didn’t just get “merry.” Many of them used to get properly drink. If the moral result of individual drinking to-day is a bad one, what must it have been in those Invercargill days when the bar beckoned all evening and it was the correct thing to drink?