A DANCING WINTER

Hokitika Guardian, 14 December 1920, Page 3

A DANCING WINTER

STYLE RATHER THAN STEPS. . By Phillip J. S. Richardson, Editor of “The Dancing Times.” i Twenty-five years ago the young man f of the period had to be dragged to a t dance; to-day it seems just as natural to him to wind up his evening with a s “hop” as it does to dripk his after-din- 1 ner coffee. * £ Dancing, in fact has ceased to be a v “.boom”; it has become one of the ordinary affairs of life which one takes t for granted, I After-dinner coffee was perhaps a bad a similie to Use for that is generally charged for; on the other hand, there is ? a strong tendency in London to-day to ? throw .dancing in with the meal. Arrangements are being made on a colossal scale to welcome the enormous army of dancers who are just commencing the season’s campaign. t The biggest hotels no longer hire out ] their ballrooms for special subscrip- f tions and private dances, but throw < them open, free, for the benefit of j those who have dined or supped in their , restaurant. They send to New York , for the best exhibition dancers they can ] discover to amuse their guests. In spite of all these free dances, dan- , cing runs a,way with a lot of money. , for tho man who dances to-day wants' , to dance frequently. The dinners are expensive, the wines exorbitant, the , taxicabs not cheap, and the price of ( clothes leaves mo without an adjective. , A little saving, however, is effected by ' reason of the fact that except on the most formal occasions, the dinner jacket (without gloves) is permissable, and all dancers hope that this custom may be continued. 1 “Dora” (the Defence of the Realm Act) is proving herself a hit of a nuis- ] ance to dancers because she still insists on sending them home to bed at | half-past twelve. All clubs and hotels j come under this rule, but though still a trouble, it is not so difficult as :t used to be to get occasional extensions to 2 or 3 a .m. “Dora” does not apply if the premises are unlicensed, and if the dances are “privato subscription dances,” with a hostess; then they may he carried ,n until the small hours, to the great ad-

vantage of the very large theatrical element who would otherwise have but few opportunities of dahcing for more than half an hour at a. time. The dances this winter will be the foxtrot, the one-step, and the valse (hesitation) in this order of popularity. Theire' will) be a big tendency to keep them very smooth and quiet; to eliminate “freak” steps and also .all steps that are not progressive (that is, steps that do not progress round the room in the usual line of the dance). The “Spanish Schottische” *and the “New Tango,” both immensely popular, may lie said to be sitting on our doorstep waiting to come in. Hundreds have learnt them, but nobody likes to be the first to dance them. In a few days, on October 10. at the Jfnfiormali Conference iof Teachers of Ballroom Dancing v the teachers will make up their minds which of the very few tango steps now danced in France will be adopted in this country. The secret of good, dancing this winter will l>e summed up in the phrase “Style and. Rythm rather than steps.”