FROM DANCE TO ROMP

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 59, Issue 4185, 13 September 1939, Page 9

FROM DANCE TO ROMP

DANCING TO DESTRUCTION. The modern dance is becoming a romp that is threatening, in a literd.l sence, to bring down the house. It ill started with “The Palais Glide” half a dozen years ago. It was in ittelf a stately enough step, and when done in strict unison by three or four couples with linked arms it was almost is completely divorced from rough "horse play” as a minuet or a coiit try dance. But high spirited young people soon take it in hand and hit up the speed and emphasised the stamping until it developed into a boisterous affair. The play “Me and My Girl,’’ which still continues its incredibly long run in London, contributed the much noisier Lambeth Walk, which from China to Peru has swept the world off its feet. The Chestnut Tree has since surged on to the dance floor, and again emphatic and regular stamping is part of the fun.

The joke is not, however, shared by the dance hall proprietors, whose floors in many cases were not built to absorb the heavy shocks to which the new dances subject, them. At the First Avenue Resturant, London, it has been found necessary to relay the floor at considerable cost. The new floor is equipped with devices designed to withstand this abnormal wear and tear, and, like those in the newer dance halls, takes unflinchingly the strain of stamping feet that precedes the triumphant yell “01.” But the modern vogue for dancing is by Up means practised only in modern dance halls. Particularly in buildings whose lower floors serve other purposes the stamping and tramping sometimes threatens to set the whole place rocking to its destruction, until a distressed manager entreats his guests t 6 break step on the principle of the military regulation which forbids it infantry column to keep steps in crossing a bridge. Perhaps the solution will be found in the arrival of a now dance. “Bcottips a Daisy” transfers the shock of concussion from th" floor to the hinder rotmded end of one’s partner. Less dignified perhaps, but at the same time less destructive!