Emotional Dancing

I know this is rather soon to be posting again, but I wanted to put this up before I forgot. I went to Helen Beedle's piano recital today, and a few of the songs had dances choreographed to them in the style of social dancing. Watching the dancers do an Argentine Tango, I actually somewhat understood the objections that I've been reading so much about lately. This is not to say that I agree with the objections (I vehemently do not), but the Argentine Tango is an extremely sensual dance, which goes against everything that the Reverend Straton and so many others believed in. It was interesting to me to see the difference between the Tango and a Waltz that was performed as well; while both were beautiful and romantic, they expressed themselves so very differently. The Waltz spoke of companionship and time spent together, where the Tango expressed a passion that is often associated with the first blush of a romance. Both seem so different from modern dancing, which seem more about the lust than the emotional attachment. I'm not sure what this says about changes in society, but it is at least an interesting contrast.

The Dance of Death

The Dance of Death was originally a medieval myth: that all the dead who had been killed in the wars or by the black plague would rise as skeletons from their graves, tempting the living to join them in dance. All those who danced with the dead would lose their lives as well. Reverend Straton used the phrase Dance of Death when speaking of social dancing to recall this myth, which had a certain significance right after WWI and the flu epidemic. Reverend Porter also called social dancing a Dance of Death, but with different reasoning behind his claim. He associated social dancing with sexual promiscuity, referencing James 1:5 ("When lust is conceived, it bringeth forth sin; and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death."). Social dancing was viewed as promiscuous largely because the dancers change partners often, but also because of the 'intimate' dance styles, which often had couples dancing cheek to cheek. These reverends, along with many others, truly believed that dancing was a path towards eternal damnation. If the social dances of their time (tango, waltz, swing...) were considered to be of the devil, how would they react to modern dancing?

Racism on the Dance Floor?

I am currently reading Satan in the Dance Hall, and was particularly struck by the racist aspect of some of the objections to social dancing. Ragtime and jazz originated with blacks, and there seems to have been a strong objection to dancing to this music simply because it was 'African,' and had driving beats, which were considered indecent by many moralists. There seems to have been a movement to set 'respectable Americans' apart from the rest of the world - both on the dance floor and off. Prohibition was another aspect of this movement, and became tied strongly to the anti-dancing movement, as many clubs during Prohibition had both dancing and alcohol. As Lewis Erenberg wrote in Impressions of Broadway Nightlife, "Prohibition thus represented an attempt by urban, rural, and small-town Protestants to establish the hegemony of their familial values over the expansive values associated with a more cosmopolitan urban life." This seems to apply to dancing as well, as one of the principal fears was that young girls would be 'corrupted.' There were many unsubstantiated claims that young girls were being lured into dance halls and eventually abducted and sold into 'white slavery' as prostitutes. The fear of sexual promiscuity among young people and racism seem to be tied closely in this case, going back many years to first impressions of natives of the Americas and Africa as sexually promiscuous - partly because of their 'wild' dancing. I may attempt to find Rev. Straton's book The Dance of Death, as I am curious about his reasoning for condemning social dancing.