Society Dancing

The period 1870 to 1920 in England was witness to a revolution in social dancing. Where once London Society waltzed genteelly and exclusively around the opulent ball rooms of its private mansions and palaces, the rising, wealthy middle classes now tangoed and foxtrotted across the new dance floors o [...]
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The period 1870 to 1920 in England was witness to a revolution in social dancing. Where once London Society waltzed genteelly and exclusively around the opulent ball rooms of its private mansions and palaces, the rising, wealthy middle classes now tangoed and foxtrotted across the new dance floors of the city's fashionable hotels and restaurants. New York not Paris became the anticipated source of dance fashion, the individual Victorian dancing master was ousted by new organizations of dance pedagogy, and the artificially fashioned and constrained body of the old aristocratic order was supplanted by the natural, free body of the modern English ballroom style. Drawing on newly researched archival material, this book investigates changes and continuities in social dancing among Britain's social elite. In the process, it raises issues of movement socialization, class and gender, national identity, self-expression and cultural leadership that resonate across the wider dance culture of modern Britain.