DANCES FOR THE SEASON

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 114, 11 February 1928, Page 18

DANCES FOR THE SEASON

Charleston and quick-fox-trot, waltz, new tango, one-step, and blues . • . these are making up the dance programmes this winter, with Charleston and blues in first favour. 'The most intriguing item in the list is the blues (savs an' English paper). For the last four seasons bands have been quickening up the fox-trot until the dance public has split into two schools —those who like the quick-time fox-trot, which facilitates Charleston steps, and those who do not care for the Charleston rhythm and peppy movement, but prefer the smooth old gliding fox-trot done to a time several bars a minute slower. Now the blues, lilting, graceful, langurous, and smiling as the southern sun of its home, has returned to provide a solution. It was the rage before the Charleston was heard of here. Hie Charleston craze swept it out. Many thousands of younger , generation dancers have never done it; so that it is, in a sense, the season’s dance novelty. Despite the simplicity of its steps, it is not an easy dance. Perfect balance and poise are needed, and that sense of time that comes only with practice. . It is the younger social set that make the dance fashions now. Their whims are law, and clubs and professional dancers and academies, who used to dictate, now observe and follow. Hence dances in the public and semi-public places,. as in the private ballrooms of the fashionable world, are much shorter, and everything is done to give the spice of variety. Already we have three breaks in each dance—pauses just long enough for you to separate, applaud for. more, and weave in again. Soon it may be four. The vogue for exhibition dancers and single cabaret turns is reviving. Full-length cabaret shows, like private cabaret dinners, at which one is entertained from the caviare to the coffee, are beginning to be voted too much of a good thing.

To preserve mint for winter use, wash the leaves well, drain, chop, and put them in wide-necked bottles. _'l lien cover them with vinegar ana an airtight covering—tissuepaper dipped in white of egg or milk does excellently. When the mint is required for use, add a little vine gar, and sugar to taste.