TWO HUNDRED YEARS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 20 May 1939, Page 4

TWO HUNDRED YEARS

HISTORY OF DANCING. The shorter Oxford University Dictionary defines a ball as a dance or dancing, a social assembly for the purpose of dancing.’ The ball of Mr Samuel Pepys’ day .was certainly a merry affair, depending largely on the ‘good sack posset,” the excellent supper, and ‘good musick playing'—on one occasion that worthy gentleman only paid his violinists £3. It was usual for these merry events to last until the early hours of the morning, and, according to Pepys’ wife, were expensive; this was one of the few occasions that Samuel agreed with his wife, but, he says, ‘it is but once in a great while, and is the end for which,. in the most part, we live, to have a merry day once or twice in a man's life.’

“In the days of good Queen Anne ‘the social assembly for the purpose of dancing’ was inclined to be a trifle noisy,” relates Thomas Gray, 1739. “On this particular night, after the company had had supper they commenced singing after which they danced singing ‘a round,” then somebody suggested violins. Musicians acquired, minuets were held in the open air to be followed by country dances and so on ‘till four o’clock next morning, when the gayest lady there proposed that such as were weary should get into their coaches and the rest of them should dance before them, with the music in the van; and in this manner we paraded through the principal streets of the city, and waked everybody in it.” Time marches on. Today, two hundred years after, the modern ball, attended by adults who know how to properly conduct themselves is the height of respectability.

And so, two hundred years after Mr Thomas Gray’s hectic night out, comes this year’s Military Ball—the 21st June precisely—which, in the capable hands of a select committee, promises to be an ever greater success than the successes of previous In the words of the great Diary-writer ‘one of the nights of my life spent with the greatest content; and that which I can. but hope to repeat again a few times in my whole life.’ Watch this paper for further news of the Military Ball.*