Worlds of social dancing: Dance floor encounters and the global rise of couple dancing, c. 1910–40 9781526156266

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Worlds of social dancing

STUDIES IN

POPULAR CULTURE General editor: Professor Jeffrey Richards

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Already published Dancing in the English style: consumption, Americanisation, and national identity in Britain, 1918–50  Allison Abra Christmas in nineteenth-century England  Neil Armstrong Healthy living in the Alps: the origins of winter tourism in Switzerland, 1860–1914  Susan Barton Working-class organisations and popular tourism, 1840–1970  Susan Barton Leisure, citizenship and working-class men in Britain, 1850–1945  Brad Beaven Leisure and cultural conflict in twentieth-­century Britain  Brett Bebber (ed.) Leisure cultures in urban Europe, c. 1700–1870: a transnational perspective  Peter Borsay and Jan Hein Furnée (eds) British railway enthusiasm  Ian Carter Railways and culture in Britain  Ian Carter Time, work and leisure: life changes in England since 1700  Hugh Cunningham Darts in England, 1900–39: a social history Patrick Chaplin Holiday camps in twentieth-century Britain: packaging pleasure  Sandra Trudgen Dawson History on British television: ­constructing nation, nationality and collective memory  Robert Dillon The food companions: cinema and ­consumption in wartime Britain, 1939–45  Richard Farmer Songs of protest, songs of love: popular ballads in eighteenth-century Britain  Robin Ganev Heroes and happy endings: class, gender, and nation in popular film and fiction in interwar Britain  Christine Grandy Women drinking out in Britain since the early twentieth century  David W. Gutzke The BBC and national identity in Britain, 1922–53  Thomas Hajkowski From silent screen to multi-screen: a history of cinema exhibition in Britain since 1896 Stuart Hanson Juke box Britain: Americanisation and youth culture, 1945–60  Adrian Horn Popular culture in London, c. 1890–1918: the transformation of entertainment  Andrew Horrall Inventing the cave man: from Darwin to the Flintstones  Andrew Horrall Popular culture and working-class taste in Britain, 1930–39: a round of cheap diversions? Robert James The experience of suburban modernity: how private transport changed interwar London John M. Law Amateur film: meaning and practice, 1927–1977  Heather Norris Nicholson Films and British national identity: from Dickens to Dad’s Army  Jeffrey Richards Cinema and radio in Britain and America, 1920–60  Jeffrey Richards Looking North: Northern England and the national imagination  Dave Russell The British seaside holiday: holidays and resorts in the twentieth century  John K. Walton Politics, performance and popular culture in the nineteenth century  Peter Yeandle, Katherine Newe and Jeffrey Richards

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Worlds of social dancing Dance floor encounters and the global rise of couple dancing, c. 1910–40 Edited by

Klaus Nathaus and James Nott

manchester university press

Copyright © Manchester University Press 2022

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While copyright in the volume as a whole is vested in Manchester University Press, copyright in individual chapters belongs to their respective authors, and no chapter may be reproduced wholly or in part without the express permission in writing of both author and publisher. Published by Manchester University Press Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 1 5261 5625 9 hardback First published 2022 The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Front cover – A scene from the Chinese film “The Rich Man’s Daughter”, The China Press, June 27, 1926 (Wikimedia Commons)

Typeset by Cheshire Typesetting Ltd, Cuddington, Cheshire

STUDIES IN

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POPULAR CULTURE There has in recent years been an explosion of interest in culture and ­cultural studies. The impetus has come from two directions and out of two different ­traditions. On the one hand, cultural history has grown out of social history to become a distinct and identifiable school of ­historical investigation. On the other hand, cultural studies has grown out of English literature and has concerned itself to a large extent with contemporary issues. Nevertheless, there is a shared project, its aim, to elucidate the meanings and values implicit and explicit in the art, ­literature, ­learning, institutions and everyday behaviour within a given society. Both the ­cultural historian and the cultural studies scholar seek to explore the ways in which a culture is imagined, represented and received, how it ­interacts with social processes, how it contributes to individual and collective ­identities and world views, to stability and change, to social, political and economic activities and programmes. This series aims to provide an arena for the cross-fertilisation of the discipline, so that the work of the cultural historian can take advantage of the most useful and illuminating of the theoretical developments and the ­cultural studies scholars can extend the purely historical underpinnings of their ­investigations. The ultimate objective of the series is to provide a range of books which will explain in a readable and accessible way where we are now socially and culturally and how we got to where we are. This should enable people to be better informed, promote an interdisciplinary approach to cultural issues and encourage deeper thought about the issues, attitudes and institutions of popular culture. Jeffrey Richards

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Contents

List of figurespage ix List of contributors x General editor’s foreword xiii Introduction Dance floor encounters and the global rise of couple dancing: an introduction to the worlds of social dancing – Klaus Nathaus and James Nott

1

  1 Tango dancing in Buenos Aires: women, style and intimacy, 1920–40 – Cecilia Tossounian

18

  2 Building ‘Dreamland’: dancers, musicians, and the ­transformation of social dancing into mass culture in the USA, c. 1900–41 – Klaus Nathaus

41

  3 ‘We do not want “fairies” in the ballroom’: working-class men, dancing and the renegotiation of masculinity in interwar Britain – James Nott

64

  4 Similar steps, different venues: the making of segregated dancing worlds in South Africa, 1910–39 – Alida Maria Green

87

  5 ‘European dances’ in colonial Kikuyuland: modernities, ethnicity, and politics, 1926–47 – Cécile Feza Bushidi

108

  6 Domesticating the social dance: the case of New Zealand between the two World Wars – John Griffiths

130

  7 Demarcating status: tango music and dance in Japan, 1913–40 – Yuiko Asaba

154

  8 The rise of Chinese taxi-dancers: glamorous careers, romantic fantasies, and sexual dreams on the dance floors of Shanghai, 1919–37 – Andrew David Field

177

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Contents

  9 Dancing through dictatorship: everyday practices and affective experiences of social dancing in Fascist Italy – Kate Ferris

201

10 Co-ordinating for love: establishing conventions of romantic couple dancing in interwar Germany – Klaus Nathaus

228

11 Between control, education, and free communication: social dancing in the USSR from the 1920s to the early 1960s – Igor Narskiy

252

Index275

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List of figures

  1 A 1931 dance in the Buenos Aires city council party room to benefit a charitable organisation, photo published in F. Comas, El arte de bailar (Buenos Aires: Fontana y Traverso, 1932), p. 241. page 23   2 Dancers at the Pla-Mor Ballroom, taken by Tynen & Murphy Photographers, Kansas City, Missouri, c. 1939 (with permission of the Kansas City Museum). 56   3 Many in Britain presumed that men’s chief reason for dancing was romantic/sexual. Comic postcard, c. 1935, author’s private collection.69   4 Advertisement in the Rand Daily Mail (2 November 1932). 97   5 The location of Auckland’s cabarets and dance halls, c. 1920–42. 133   6 ‘Mobo, moga no kanrakukyō taru dansuhōru (The Dance hall, the pleasure hometown of the modern boy and girl) – The Union dancehall a[t] Ningyō-chō’, in Y. Takakura (ed.), Dai Tōkyō Shashinchō (‘The Pictorial of Tokyo’) (Tokyo: Chūseidō, 1930), n.p. (Courtesy of the National Diet Library Digital Collections). 169   7 Dance hostesses working at the Paradise Ballroom in the Sun Co. Department Store on the corner of Nanjing Road and Tibet Road. From Daxin Wuting Kaimu Jinian Tekan (Paradise Ballroom Opening Special Volume) (Shanghai, 1936). (Courtesy of Shanghai Municipal Library). 184   8 ‘Lido di Venezia, Hotel Excelsior, dance party in the ball room’, 1925 (with permission of the Municipality of Venezia, Cultural Sector, ‘Fondo fotografico Giacomelli’). 213   9 Poster of the Resi-Casino, artist unknown, n.d. [1929] (with permission of the Stiftung Stadtmuseum Berlin). 241 10 Dancers under the open sky in Satka (Chelyabinsk region) on a Sunday evening, 1957. Photographer is unknown (with permission of the Chelyabinsk State Historical Museum). 269

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List of contributors

Yuiko Asaba is an EU Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Research Fellow and Senior Research Fellow at the University of Huddersfield and Visiting Researcher at Osaka University. Her work focuses on South American popular dance music performances in East Asia, in particular on tango in Japan and China, as well as music and migration politics in early to mid twentieth-century Japan. She holds a PhD in Music from Royal Holloway, University of London (2017). She has published on the circulation of tango, affect and morality in journals including the Ethnomusicology Forum and is currently working on a monograph on tango in Japan. She is also a tango violinist and has performed professionally as a member of tango orchestras in Argentina and Japan. Cécile Feza Bushidi is a Postdoctoral Associate and Lecturer in Dance and Art History in Africa in the Department of Art History and the Council on African Studies at the MacMillan Center at Yale University. She is currently writing a monograph about the art and the cultural politics of dance in central colonial Kenya between the 1880s and 1963. Kate Ferris is Reader in Modern European History at the University of St  Andrews. Her research focuses on the history of everyday life and the lived experience of dictatorship in Fascist Italy and Francoist Spain. Among her publications are Everyday Life in Fascist Venice, 1929–40 (Palgrave, 2012) and, co-edited with Joshua Arthurs and Michael Ebner, The Politics of Everyday Life in Fascist Italy (Palgrave, 2017). She is currently the PI of an ERC-funded research project into ‘Dictatorship as experience: a comparative history of everyday life and the “lived experience” of dictatorship in Mediterranean Europe, 1922–1975’. Andrew David Field earned a PhD in East Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia University (2001). He currently serves as an Associate Professor of Chinese History at Duke Kunshan University in China. His



List of contributors xi

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book publications include Shanghai’s Dancing World: Cabaret Culture and Urban Politics (Chinese University Press, 2010), Mu Shiying: China’s Lost Modernist (Chinese University Press, 2014) and Shanghai Nightscapes: A Nocturnal Biography of a Global City (co-authored with James Farrer; Chicago University Press, 2015). He is the author and co-author of numerous articles on the cultural and social history of Shanghai and on music and dance scenes in urban China. His personal website is shanghaisojourns.net. Alida Maria Green holds a master’s degree (2009) in Cultural History from the Department of Historical and Heritage Studies, University of Pretoria with a thesis entitled ‘Dancing in Borrowed Shoes: A History of Ballroom Dancing in South Africa (1600s–1940s)’. She has published a number of articles on ballroom dancing in South Africa. She is currently working on her PhD proposal on ballroom dancing and is an archivist in the University of Pretoria Archives. John Griffiths is Senior Lecturer at Massey University, North Shore, Auckland. He is the author of  Imperial Culture in Antipodean Cities, 1880–1939  (Palgrave, 2014) and several articles in international journals,  which explore cultural adaptation across the British World. He is currently working on a longer-term project which investigates English ­ regional culture in the Swinging Sixties. Igor Narskiy received his PhD on Russian liberalism in the 1905 revolution (Academy of Sciences, Moscow, 1989); he habilitated on party landscapes in the late Tsarist empire (Chelyabinsk State University, 1995). Since 1989 he has lectured at Chelyabinsk State University and he was a Professor of Russian History and Director of the Research Centre for Cultural History at the South Ural University Chelyabinsk from 2004 to 2019. He is currently a Professor at the University of Perm and works in research with the Centre for Cultural History at the South Ural University and the ‘Human, Nature, Technology’ Centre at the University of Tyumen. Since 1993 he has been a visiting researcher at the universities of Tübingen, Berlin (Humboldt University), Basel, Munich and Oldenburg. He was a scholarship holder of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (1995–96, 2016), of the Fritz Thyssen Foundation at the Historisches Kolleg Munich (2014–15) and of the Russian National Foundation (2020–22). His research interests are the everyday and cultural history of the late Tsarist empire, the Russian Revolution and the Soviet Union, including the history of dance in the USSR. Klaus Nathaus is a social historian of twentieth-century popular culture. He was awarded a Dr. phil. in History from Humboldt University Berlin

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List of contributors

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in 2008 and worked at Bielefeld University and the University of Edinburgh. He is now Professor in Contemporary Western History at the University of Oslo, Norway. He has published numerous articles and chapters on the history of popular music and commercial entertainment in Germany, Britain and the USA. He is the editor of Made in Europe: The Production of Popular Culture in the Twentieth Century (Routledge, 2014) and, with Martin Rempe, Musicking in Twentieth-Century Europe: A Handbook (De Gruyter, 2021). James Nott is a social and cultural historian of twentieth-century Britain. He gained his PhD from the University of Oxford and worked at the University of Sussex and the University of Edinburgh. He is now Lecturer in Modern British History at the University of St Andrews. He pioneered the social and cultural history of social dancing in Britain and Going to the Palais: A Social and Cultural History of Dancing and Dance Halls in Britain, 1918–1960 (Oxford University Press, 2015/2020) won widespread critical acclaim. He also wrote Music for the People: Popular Music and Dance in Interwar Britain (Oxford University Press, 2002), the first academic history of the British popular music industry in the 1920s and 1930s, and together with William Whyte and Claire Griffiths he co-edited Classes, Cultures, and Politics: Essays on British History for Ross McKibbin (Oxford University Press, 2011). Cecilia Tossounian is a researcher at Argentina’s Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET) and at Universidad de San Andrés and visiting researcher at the University of Bologna. Her work focuses on gender studies, modern Argentine history, nationalism and consumer culture. She holds a PhD in History from the European University Institute and served as a postdoctoral fellow at the Free University of Berlin. Her book La Joven Moderna in Interwar Argentina: Gender, Nation and Popular Culture (University Press of Florida) came out in 2020. In addition, she has published articles in journals including Gender & History and the Journal of Latin American Studies. With Stephanie Fleischmann and José Alberto Moreno Chávez, she edited the book América Latina entre e­ spacios: Redes, flujos e imaginarios globales (Walter Frey, 2014).

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General editor’s foreword

When historians first began to study the history of social dancing, many of them turned naturally to the wider context of the practice and in particular the extent to which dancing and dance halls reflected current political, social and economic developments. In this new collection of essays, editors Klaus Nathaus and James Nott seek to shift the focus onto the dance floor itself and the influence of the industry whose imperatives dictated the evolution of the world of social dancing. These essays combine to show how the dance hall became the primary site of heterosexual romance, with the rise of the cabaret facilitating the social mixing that reinforced the centrality of dancing to people’s leisure lives. They also demonstrate how dancing integrated with the other major contemporary leisure forms – cinema, radio and gramophone in p ­ articular – to confer respectability on dancing as part of a new world of commercial leisure. These vivid and readable essays take us from Fascist Italy, the Soviet Union and interwar Britain and Germany to South Africa, Buenos Aires, Shanghai and Japan. The whole collection adds a new level of complexity and richness to our understanding of the worlds of social dancing. Jeffrey Richards

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Introduction

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Dance floor encounters and the global rise of couple dancing: an introduction to the worlds of social dancing Klaus Nathaus and James Nott In 1927 popular British dance band leader Jack Payne was one of many to release a recording of the new hit song Since Tommy Atkins Taught the Chinese How to Charleston. A typical hybrid music hall/dance music number, the song comically recounts the attempts of British troops during China’s civil war to teach the local population the steps to the ‘latest’ dance that had captured the imagination of much of the western world in the previous two years. In reality, however, the Chinese didn’t need to be taught this globally successful dance by British soldiers – they’d already been dancing the Charleston in the proliferation of dance halls and ballrooms in Shanghai and other major Chinese cities for nearly as long as those in the West. Indeed, by this time, modern social dancing had reached across the globe and dances such as the Charleston and the foxtrot, and variations of it, were danced in Moscow, Tokyo, Auckland, Berlin and Buenos Aires. One striking point from this period is the ubiquity of a small number of modern couple dances, regardless of fundamental differences in the political contexts of nations around the globe. The interwar years saw the rise of dictatorships and the competing ideologies of fascism and communism in some European countries and the persistence or growth of democracies in other nations. The period marks the decline of the British Empire and continued colonialism as well as the rise of the USA’s global leadership. It witnessed increasing nationalism as well as the internationalism of the League of Nations. Yet beyond these divergent political trends, seemingly everybody danced the Charleston, the foxtrot and the tango, often in dedicated, commercially run dance halls that looked surprisingly similar around the globe. In this volume, whilst recognising that social dance could act as a means of political resistance or promoting conformity, we suggest that in general these political trends shaped social dancing to a much lesser extent that one might think. Instead, it is argued here that the culture industry, media technology and broader local contexts were instrumental in the global distribution of couple dancing and its changes during the period. While steps proliferated around the world, social dancing remained an inherently

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2

Introduction

local practice, framed by the circumstances under which dancers met. The Charleston, the foxtrot and other steps were danced in venues from upmarket cabarets and huge ballrooms to social clubs and private living rooms, on sprung wooden floors as well as on earth floors that were sprinkled with water to keep down the rising dust. Dances were accompanied by large orchestras, small bands or gramophone records. They were performed by dancers who had received lessons or by people who improvised steps, often informed by what they had seen in cinema films. Dancers came alone, in groups or as couples; they expected to find romance, recognition, respite, excitement, pleasure or sex. They left the dance hall as romantic partners or political comrades, with their friendship reinforced or their identity confirmed. Thus, local settings shaped the social relations that dancers forged during their dance floor encounters and sometimes maintained outside the dance venues. The contributions to the present volume explore worlds of social dancing in both a geographical and a social sense. Case studies from all continents trace the global dissemination of dances as a composite of steps, movements, sounds, conventions and images. Looking out for the appearance of modern steps around the geographical world, they are interested in the growth of couple dancing in commercial venues as a major trend in the  history of popular culture in the era of the two World Wars. At the same time, the chapters shine a light on the social world of dancing, where rules and conventions that were specific to this realm shaped the conduct of its population. This social world eclipsed the moral panic that condemned steps like the tango and the Charleston for being ‘frivolous’, ‘indecent’ and ‘foreign’, and afforded its participants alternative social relations and identities.

Historiography With its double interest in the global dissemination of social dance and the local, situational sociality of dancing, the volume builds on existing scholarship in history and dance studies, taking inspiration too from sociology. Social and cultural historians have studied social dancing for about forty years now as part of early twentieth-century commercial entertainment that also includes variety theatre, fairgrounds, cinema, popular music and spectator sport. Some studies focus on class conflict. They oppose the goings-on in popular dance venues with the vociferous critique of moral reformers and interpret social dancing as working-class resistance against bourgeois social control.1 Other works are concerned with modernity and the cultural changes associated with it. They home in on the urban, m ­ iddle-class

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Introduction 3

­ leasure seekers in the first three decades of the twentieth century who p found the courage to follow their urge to ‘step out’ of Victorian restraints and onto dance floors to embrace the values of an emerging liberal-­ democratic consumer society.2 Pointing to the fact that many of the fashionable steps of the period can be traced back to African American origins, some researchers have taken social dancing as a lens through which to study race relations and identities.3 In a similar vein, dance has been taken as an entry point to study debates about national identity and the impact of cultural Americanisation.4 Some of the latter historians’ work is informed by critical dance scholarship, a line of enquiry that interprets dance as ‘meaning in motion’, an embodied representation of identities and values.5 All these studies have in common a regard for social dancing as an emblem of larger societal trends and attitudes. They draw from an anthropological concept of culture as a manifestation of widely shared values and beliefs. This makes social dancing ‘a form of life or … a way of being’, ‘an arena for the articulation of different values and behaviors’ or ‘a symbolic abstraction of social dynamics [that] represents social life and thus offers participants a means of expressing their own views on its hierarchies, roles, and stereotypes’.6 From this assumption, historians study social dancing as  a political expression, a means to participate in a wider debate about how society should be organised. In this view, social dancing serves as a mirror of society that reflects the fundamental values, needs and identities of social groups and offers insights into how they were ‘contested’ and ‘negotiated’, to use two key terms from this scholarship. Conceptualising social dancing in this way directly links a practice that may, at first sight, appear peripheral and of minor importance to larger discourses of class, modernity, democracy and identity. At the time when research on popular amusements was very much a minority pursuit among historians, this concept of culture underwrote the legitimacy of the object of study, because it connected commercial amusements firmly to central topics on the historians’ agenda. Referencing Clifford Geertz, Antonio Gramsci, Claude Lévi-Strauss and Raymond Williams, this perspective drew on a number of theoretical interventions that were amounting to a wider ‘cultural turn’ in historiography from around 1980.7 The anthropological approach to culture fostered historians’ interest in popular entertainment and led to valuable insights. However, there are also problems with studies that perceive social dancing as symbolic resistance, a challenge to ‘cultural hegemony’, a manifestation of values or an expression of needs and desires. Firstly, these interpretations fade out the more specific concerns that dancers faced when they met on and around the dance floor. Elizabeth Clement has put this pointedly when she contends that historians present ‘working-class women in dialogue with the middle class … making

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Introduction

it appear that the working class engaged in a constant conversation with the middle class about sexual behaviors and the definitions of respectability’.8 Her study on courting, treating and prostitution in New York in the first half of the twentieth century makes quite clear that this ‘dialogue’ did not take place and that working women followed their own rationales in their relationships with men. The contributions to this volume share Clement’s scepticism and subscribe to the same orientation towards actors’ bounded rationality. They start from her observation that the warnings about the dangers of the dance hall from moral reformers, priests, employers or parents shaped the conduct of dance hall patrons far less than the presence of observing peers and the interaction with the dance partner at hand. Movements had to be co-ordinated; conversations had to be maintained; and, above all, face had to be saved. Dancers negotiated situations rather than values; they behaved strategically rather than followed subconscious needs; they performed in front of relevant others rather than expressed attitudes to people who were not even present to witness it. The second shortcoming of scholarship that looks at dance as a mirror of society, or ‘meaning in motion’, is that it does not pay enough attention to the influence of commercial providers of dance events on the development of the practice. The managers of cabarets and ballrooms, dance teachers and professional dancers, musicians and broadcasters as well as record and film producers all contributed to shape the multifaceted phenomenon that is social dancing. They created spaces and atmospheres, supplied sounds, suggested looks, offered guidance and popularised scripts that dancers drew from when they met on the dance floors. Their contribution to the making of the social world of dancing was neither motivated by the aim to gain social control, nor did it follow directly from the demand of ‘the people’ who would steer the supply of culture by selectively opening their wallets. Instead, their offerings resulted from collaboration and competition among themselves, an interaction that was constrained by laws and regulations, media technology, power relations in the industry, skills and visions of the market.9 For instance, the stricter regulation of taxi-dancing, where male patrons bought tickets to dance with female dancers-for-hire, motivated ballroom promoters in early 1930s America to cater to dating couples. The transition to sound film and the subsequent boom in dance movies both fostered dancers’ expectation of romantic love and lifted dancing’s reputation. Dance teachers all over the world established the distinction between ‘elegant’ and ‘vulgar’ ways to execute fashionable new steps. The transnational vaudeville touring circuit and the global recording industry allowed for the worldwide distribution of steps and sounds. The rise of broadcasting in the USA gave white dance bands national prominence, while excluding black bands, which in turn divided the dance industry along racial lines.

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Introduction 5

These and other developments on the production side of dance culture by no means determined dance floor encounters. However, they structured these situations spatially and by disseminating conventions, while also providing dancers with a repertoire of behavioural strategies to navigate the dance halls. Under the conditions of a growing dance industry, the provision of venues, steps, music and scripts was largely allocated to specialists. As they did not directly emanate from people’s needs, the study of how, when and why they changed has to take the inherent dynamic of the entertainment industry into account. Following from this critical discussion of existing scholarship, the present volume sees a need to break social dancing out of its conceptual lockstep with larger political, social and economic trends and put greater weight on both the interaction on the dance floors and the development of the entertainment industry. In this way, we hope to account for changes in social dancing as well as the social relations forged on the dance floors.

Approach The approach that seems most congenial to this endeavour dates back to our period of study, when sociologists at the University of Chicago concerned themselves with urban life, including the commercial amusements that flourished in the big cities. Pioneering work on Chicago’s taxi-dance halls was the first research to suspend the moral condemnation of commercial social dancing and take the phenomenon seriously as a subject in its own right.10 Paul Cressey and his team of field workers studied the halls as a social world to uncover the conventions that governed the conduct of the people who populated them. Like many other scholars of what is sometimes called the ‘Chicago School’ of sociology, Cressey and his collaborators first looked at this particular social world in isolation, closely observing its participants on site and in action to understand the rationale of their behaviour. Subsequently, they followed taxi-dancers outside the halls, as some of them met with patrons after their shift and even moved in with them, trying to maintain relationships that had started with the exchange of money for company. In this way, taxi-dancing established new gender relations that were independent of ties of kinship and community but threw up new questions of trust and economic and emotional dependency. Since Cressey’s research, the study of dancing as interaction has continued, resulting in publications that exemplify the insights this approach may yield.11 Frequently, research on the social world of dancing has featured prominently the aforementioned ‘motley crew’ of entertainment suppliers, as for instance in Howard Becker’s work on dance musicians in post-1945

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Introduction

Chicago or in David Grazian’s look behind the scenes of urban nightlife in Philadelphia in the early 2000s.12 All these studies perceive dancing as a kind of social drama, performed by the dancers for each other, set on stages that were prepared by professionals from the amusement trades. The social world approach has informed some historical studies on our topic as well, most notably works that used the archives of Chicago sociologists as primary sources. Examples include Randy McBee’s study of social dancing in the USA from the turn of the century to about 1930, which shows that working-class men, just like their female counterparts, developed tactics to negotiate the presence of women in their places of conviviality while maintaining as much as possible the idea of masculine superiority.13 Another example of a historical study that takes an interactionist approach is Chad Heap’s book on ‘slumming’ in New York and Chicago from the late nineteenth century to the Second World War. It argues that the engagement of white middle-class men and women with lower-class, racialised entertainment re-affirmed rather than eroded class and race boundaries.14 Observations from the social world of dancing can also be found in some of the historical studies mentioned earlier. Kathy Peiss, for instance, analyses ‘treating’, the gendered exchange of gifts for sexual favours, as interaction; Lewis Erenberg describes New York cabarets as an ‘action environment’, drawing on terminology coined by Erving Goffman, probably the most famous Chicago School sociologist.15 However, these hugely insightful ‘social world’ observations sit uneasily with the narratives of their respective studies, because they give rise to different concerns than the struggle against cultural control or the emancipation from the mental constraints of Victorian inhibitions that Peiss and Erenberg were aiming at. The contributions to the present volume set aside such ‘grand’ interpretations and foreground dance floor interaction to tell different stories of social dancing. They achieve this through a social world perspective, but also through a slightly different periodisation and topical focus. The volume takes the three decades before the Second World War into view, with the 1930s as a vanishing point and a few years around 1930 as a possible caesura. Histories of dancing that are primarily concerned with class conflict, women’s emancipation or the rise of a modern mindset have prioritised the period from the turn of the century into the ‘Roaring Twenties’ with its highly controversial cake-walks, ‘animal dances’, the tango and the Charleston. They have taken energetic jives and jitterbugs of the late 1930s into view as precursors of rock ‘n’ roll from the mid-1950s, when rebellious youth picked up the thread of emancipatory steps again and rang in a ‘cultural revolution’ that culminated in the late 1960s. In contrast to this familiar narrative of social dancing as a challenge to the status quo, the present volume puts greater stress on the 1930s as the decade when



Introduction 7

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heterosexual couple dancing became firmly established, and with it new modes of conduct and social relations. These developments will not appear as particularly progressive or challenging from a viewpoint that cherishes a critical edge in popular culture. However, they represent what most people associated with and practised as social dancing in the middle of the twentieth century. This warrants the phenomenon the same scholarly attention as the dance ‘crazes’ of subsequent ‘roaring’ decades and leads to an interpretation that features social dancing as an object sui generis.

Findings Covering dance halls from Buenos Aires to Tokyo, from Liverpool to Johannesburg and from Chelyabinsk to Auckland, the chapters in this book paint a picture of couple dancing’s global proliferation that shows great similarities as well as local variation. To be sure, the social world of dancing encompassed many venues, styles, steps, situations and functions. Old-time and community dances did not disappear during the period of study, though they receive less attention in this book. Amidst multiple variations, however, two central institutions emerged that drew the attention of dancers and dance industry professionals like a magnet turns iron filings. The first one was the cabaret; the second one, the grand ballroom or ‘palais de danse’. From around 1910, key developments in the history of social dancing originated from cabarets, which opened for business in many cities around the world. Typically combining floor shows with drinking and dining, cabarets featured vaudeville acts, presenting them in a more intimate setting. Through their link with variety theatre, cabarets participated in the transnational touring circuit that had been established at least ten years earlier, with the transatlantic link between the metropoles in North America and Europe as a hub.16 This circuit sent variety acts around the world, serving as a major travel route for stage dancers who introduced audiences across the globe to newly fashionable dance steps. Other ways for dances to travel in the 1910s and 1920s that are mentioned in the chapters of the present book include films, press reports, entrepreneurs in the amusement business, migrant workers and soldiers, but also international delegations. At the latter’s events, knowledge of certain steps was becoming de rigueur, as Igor Narskiy and Yuiko Asaba point out in their chapters on dancing in Russia and Japan. Whereas in music halls and cinemas, as well as at vaudeville and operetta theatres, the dancing remained on the screen or the stage, in cabarets dance demonstrations mobilised the audience to participate. At cabarets,

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8

Introduction

f­ashionable stage dances were transformed into social dancing. How exactly that happened begs explanation. As Klaus Nathaus argues in his chapter on the American case, cabaret acts literally overstepped the edge of the stage, which was often low to begin with, to venture into the auditorium and engage with guests. At the same time, amateur dancers were encouraged to step into the limelight at dance competitions or, at the height of the pre-World War I dance fad, to become professional dancers or dance instructors. As a form of entertainment that was created by patrons themselves, social dancing was something that cabaret owners were quite happy to facilitate. For many guests to take the plunge and go out to the dance floor, however, it took an extra nudge. Cabarets provided this through the social composition of their patrons, Nathaus proposes. Attracting showbiz affiliates and experienced nightlife revellers, they built up a critical mass of people who were ready and able to join the merriment, pulling the rest of the audience with them. The framing of the dance fad as a ‘craze’ gave ordinary people the licence to let go of their concerns about losing face and partake in the turkey trot, grizzly bear and bunny hug, something that, as Irving Berlin’s contemporary hit assured them, ‘everybody’ was doing. From all this, it follows that social dancing in cabarets should be considered foremost as a form of participation in urban nightlife, related more closely to courting, treating, ‘slumming’ and singing along than to codified dances like the waltz. The excitement of the cabarets gave rise to dancing across the classes, but also, and predictably, to status concerns. In this situation, dance instructors offered help by teaching refined versions of fashionable steps that were supposed to distinguish the ‘elegant’ from the ‘vulgar’ dancer. The issue of class as well as race became entangled with dance styles. In the case of tango in Japan, for instance, the discourse of dance, with its charged opposition between ‘elegance’ and ‘vulgarity’, travelled at least as fast as the actual steps. By the time the tango was first performed on stage in Yokohama in May 1914, news about its scandalous impact in Europe and America was almost a year old, so that the explanation given by the performers that it was the person who made the dance ‘elegant’ fell on fruitful soil. Throughout the period studied in this book, dance teachers tried to refine popular steps and guide the dancing public to what they considered the correct styles. National schools emerged in the interwar years. In Britain and its former colonies, prominent dance instructor factions propagated the ‘English style’ of ballroom dancing. In Johannesburg, as Alida Maria Green shows in her chapter, leading dance teachers were trained in London and ballroom competitions adjudicated by British judges. The manager of Johannesburg’s leading ballrooms had been recruited in London, and local musicians sat as understudies with famed British bands to learn directly

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Introduction 9

from them. According to John Griffiths, the English style was almost as dominant in New Zealand, where local members of the Imperial Society of Teachers of Dance relayed the ‘dos and don’ts’ of ballroom dancing to local dancers. In Japan from the late 1920s, supporters of the English style competed for authority with followers of the French way of dancing the tango. Interestingly, the latter considered themselves ‘naturally talented’ and accused the former of being ‘industrious’ and ‘ordinary’, thus reiterating the distinction between ‘elegance’ and ‘vulgarity’. This opposition was still prominent in the interwar years, not only in Japan and not just with regard to the tango. In South Africa in 1926–27, the Charleston provoked a similar reaction among dance teachers, who offered to teach ‘refined’ steps to a white clientele that was concerned about their black servants enjoying the same dance. In other countries, national styles were promoted in defence against western or American steps. In the Soviet Union, the position of choreographers and dance teachers to dances from the West changed in reaction to official cultural policy, but also in view of the popularity of imported steps. In the late 1920s, this resulted in the codification of the ‘Sport-trot’ as an attempt to ‘Sovietise’ the foxtrot. Political demands from the state, real or perceived, affected dance teachers most clearly in the European dictatorships. In Germany, dance teacher Walter Carlos anticipated in late 1932 the increasing nationalisation of dance and propagated the Deutscher Sporttanz (German sport dance), ‘Deta’ for short. Subsequently, dance teacher organisations tried to please the new Nazi government by reviving (or reinventing) traditional German steps. In Italy, Fascist opposition to ‘foreign’ dances in general and ‘black’ dances in particular led to the development of an Italian style of jazz and the substitution of English-sounding names for dance venues with Italian ones, as Kate Ferris mentions in her chapter. Overall, attempts by the dance teaching profession to harness dancers and make them execute the ‘correct’ steps had surprisingly little impact on the development of social dancing, even where such efforts were urged on and supported by state authorities. In most parts of Italy, for instance, Fascist as well as Catholic opposition to social dancing subsided. Ferris quotes a high-ranking official, who in 1925 commented on a memorandum with a hand-written note saying, ‘let them dance, for pity’s sake!’, which makes the resignation palpable. Likewise, in Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia ‘homegrown’ dances that had party approval never caught on, as dancers found ways to move the way they wanted. Efforts to roll out the English style across the British Isles and the Empire or to teach the Japanese how to tango had marginal effect, as apart from in the most general terms they did not reach far beyond the inner circle of the dance profession. Dance teachers in 1930s America still discussed the basic question of how they

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10

Introduction

could standardise dances, which suggests that there were still many people who made up steps as they went along. To be sure, evidence of failed control shows that people voted with their feet and found ways to pursue the dances they preferred. However, this is only part of the story, because on the whole social dancing did become more formal during the interwar years. Tellingly, the concern with class status, a pressing issue in the early 1910s and during the 1920s, had become less important by the 1930s in the cases studied in this volume. Concomitantly, gender relations were deemed less problematic in the course of the period too. ‘Moral panic’ subsided, and social dancing became a legitimate pastime across classes and races, safe enough even to serve as a conduit for the pursuit of heterosexual romance with strangers. The following chapters show that this development was primarily due to changes in the entertainment business and to media convergence. All the countries covered in this volume saw an increase in the number and the size of dance venues, including purpose-built dance palaces for a few thousand patrons, but also multifunctional halls that were used for dance events. In Britain and the USA, private companies like Mecca and National Attractions invested in ballroom chains. In South Africa, the African Theatre Trust branched out into first cinemas and then dance palaces. In Buenos Aires and Tokyo, operators who ran amusements parks and other entertainments added dance halls to their portfolios. Elsewhere, the state provided venues that were subsequently used for social dancing. In 1930s Russia, where Joseph Stalin declared that ‘life has become more cheerful’, the government built tens of thousands of culture palaces and workers’ clubs in cities and in the countryside, adding to thousands of restaurants and cinemas where dance events took place. In Kenya, the British colonial administration welcomed the interest among Kenyan youth in ‘European’ dances and provided halls to be used for social purposes from the 1940s. Upmarket dance venues became veritable entertainment palaces. Berlin’s Residenz-Casino featured table telephones, a pneumatic post system and fountains that sprinkled water to the rhythm of the music. Buenos Aires’s Palais de Glace, converted from an ice-skating rink, was ornately decorated with columns, mirrors and chandeliers and allowed dancing under an  impressive skylight. In Auckland, the Click-Clack Cabaret, the Peter Pan and the Winter Garden competed for the social elite with cosmopolitan flair, while in Shanghai, elegant ballrooms were either stand-alone buildings or located in luxury hotels or department stores. To be sure, the luxury offered at these venues was well above the standard of the great majority of dance halls. However, this luxury was reaching a wider clientele in the 1930s. Pictures and descriptions of the interior of high-end dance venues were widely publicised in magazines, on posters and postcards as well as

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Introduction 11

being featured in the many music films that were released after the advent of sound film, with consequences for dance floor encounters in popular halls, as some of the following chapters suggest. Furthermore, luxurious venues that had opened their doors in the late 1920s to a better-off clientele had to reconsider their business model when the 1929 crash hit the entertainment industry and often opened up to a popular audience. Dress codes were scrapped and admission prices lowered. The cover charge that had been the rule in cabarets was replaced by ticket sales, and many dance palaces offered free instruction. The Mecca chain in Britain, for example, even developed ‘party dances’ to encourage popular participation. It appears that the economic crisis after 1929 hit the exclusive cabarets hardest, directing the investment of the industry to halls that were catering to popular audiences. Another development that affected the dance hall industry around 1930 was its integration with film and broadcasting. As all the following chapters show, synergies with film and the cinema affected the experience of social dancing in profound ways. Multiple links existed between the two branches of the entertainment business, and connections go back to the pre-sound era. To begin with, cinema foyers were used as dance venues, as in Soviet Russia, for example. Film screenings were also coupled with dance demonstrations, as Green mentions for South Africa, and new steps featured in films. While it was hardly possible to learn dancing from watching moving images without synchronised music, films like How To Dance the Foxtrot, shown in New Zealand shortly before the First World War, gave audiences at least an impression of a new dance. John Griffiths also mentions ‘movie balls’, which were held in Australia and New Zealand after the First World War. At these events, patrons danced before a backdrop of theatrical sets and were dressed up as film stars. The fact that profits from these balls were donated to charity helped to improve social dancing’s reputation. With the coming of sound film, social dancing and film integrated further. Audiences in Shanghai, Germany, the USA and elsewhere – largely owing to the reach of Hollywood – were offered a glut of music films that featured extended ballroom scenes. These familiarised new audiences with the social world of dancing, and the screen presence of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers or local equivalents inspired many to take dance lessons, as dance instructors noted. The presentation of social dancing in moving images that were synchronised with the most popular music hits and embedded in happy stories helped immensely to co-ordinate both the movements and the expectations of dancers, thus solving a problem that had been raised frequently in the dance community, as Nathaus shows for Germany. Dancing became associated with stars, and cinema audiences began to emulate their behaviour in dance halls, as American sociologists found out in interviews with

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12

Introduction

high school and college students. These observations suggest that dance and music films offered ‘scripts’ which dancers took as guidance when navigating the dance floor. The integration of social dancing as an attractive feature or key plot device in uncontroversial films that were aimed at a mass audience also served to enhance the reputation of dancing. This may be most apparent in the case of Shanghai, as Andrew Field shows, where the movie presence of the most famous dance hostesses elevated Chinese dancers-forhire to stardom, well above the status of courtesans. While sound film was the medium that impacted social dancing the most, the influence of the gramophone and of broadcasting was far from negligible. As Ferris and Narskiy show for two cases where the dancing of western steps was officially restricted, the gramophone enabled dancers to practise those steps at home. The global distribution networks of the record industry also played a role in proliferating the music that was meant to accompany jazz dances like the Charleston, thus contributing to the establishment of dance conventions around the world. Dancers became familiar with new sounds and rhythms before they heard them in the dance hall, and musicians learned international hits from recordings, as Green mentions for South Africa and Griffiths for New Zealand. In some countries, dance teachers convinced record producers to issue discs that had the ‘correct’ speed to accompany certain steps. However, the gramophone could also be a factor that discouraged social dancing, as Asaba argues. In 1930s Japan, collectors and connoisseurs of Argentinian tango and other western music met in music cafés (ongaku kissa) to listen to music rather than dance to it, taking pride in contemplative reception and preferring it to dancing. Similar developments can be observed elsewhere in our period, for instance in the USA, where ‘name’ bands began to attract audiences who wanted to listen rather than dance. A small but growing community of jazz fans, focused on recorded music, sought intellectual stimulation in music and the cultural capital that came with it. This interfered with social dancing in some instances and kept some people from stepping out, though its detrimental effect on dancing in general and couple dancing in particular would only show prominently later, in the 1960s with the rise of rock music. Radio, the medium that rose parallel to sound film, influenced social dancing in similar ways to the gramophone, as it allowed dancing at home and featured the latest international dance music, performed by popular bands. The share of modern dance music on radio programmes increased even in Italy, Germany and Soviet Russia, whose governments explicitly condemned ‘American’ or black music. Many dance broadcasts were transmitted ‘live’ from metropolitan ballrooms, which stimulated if not a sense of immediate participation in this social world at the very least curiosity about it. Finally, radio contributed to the standardisation of danceable

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Introduction 13

music, because playing to a microphone favoured arranged music over improvisations born of the performance situation, as Nathaus shows in his chapters. The proliferation of large dance halls and their opening up to a popular audience and especially the integration of music and dance in film and broadcasting came to a head around 1930, as many of the following case studies show. In turn, these changes in the entertainment ecology shaped the social world of dancing through defining new settings and establishing new conventions. Centred around the large ballrooms, popular dance bands and romantic films, dance floor encounters afforded new social relations, which the contributions to the present volume explore. First, there is evidence that social dancing’s function as a conduit for heterosexual romantic love became more pronounced during the period of study. In Europe and America, young people found marriage partners more often than not outside of kin supervision and followed their romantic emotions when looking for a partner. Several chapters in the present volume show that the dance hall provided a setting where this ‘romantic revolution’ took place and suggest that couple dancing served as a means to accomplish it. The link between dancing and courtship was, in many parts of the world, older. However, it was only by the interwar years and especially in the 1930s that couple dancing was widely considered a legitimate means to initiate romance. Earlier reservations about commercial entertainment as a context for encounters between unmarried men and women gave way to a discourse that was no longer concerned with the question if, but how courtship should be conducted. The chapters on Argentina, Germany, the USA and Britain as well as Russia and Shanghai present ample evidence for this discourse in the press, in novels and in film. In the social world of couple dancing, gender relations and identities changed, in many cases in favour of an emancipated femininity and a gentler masculinity. Young women often appear to have been keener dancers than young men. The pleasure they derived from developing their own style with attractive clothes and make-up, from cultivating their own public persona and from moving relatively unrestrained on dance floors was in itself a factor in gaining independence, as Cecilia Tossounian suggests. In Buenos Aires, in Kenya and elsewhere, dance floors became sites where women experimented with identities and relationships. It is important to stress that the potential for emancipation did not simply equal the absence of constraints. As Nathaus argues in his chapters, the very conventions of couple dancing, as they were established by the 1930s, offered women room for manoeuvre. Even though the initiative to approach a dance partner was commonly attributed to men, the rules of couple dancing, popularised via mass media and laid down on dance floors, provided the female partner

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14

Introduction

with the option of an easy exit, simply by saying ‘thank you for the dance’. Once the conventions of couple dancing were set, the social world legitimised women’s public presence and afforded them considerable agency. In turn, men felt obliged to follow the conventions and show their gentler side, if they wanted to participate in dance hall culture. As James Nott argues with regard to the British experience, many men not only performed a ‘softer’ masculinity in the interest of finding a female partner, but actually enjoyed the social world of dancing for its absence of ‘the more brutal and restrictive demands of patriarchal culture’. Concomitantly, Nathaus in his chapter on the American case mentions that dancing was such a prominent feature of the dating life of college and high school students that any lack of necessary skills was felt desperately. Boys and men who were unwilling or unable to dance were aware that one way to approach potential romantic partners was closed to them. While formal couple dancing urged men to display their gentle selves, it was not incompatible with dominant masculinity. Kate Ferris points out that pictures of Benito Mussolini dancing were interpreted by his supporters as evidence for his ‘virility’, regardless of the concerns of fascist censors who had initially prohibited the circulation of such images, as they had feared that they might effeminate the image of the Duce. While it can be argued that social dancing throughout the twentieth century was avoided by he-men as an ‘unmanly’ practice,17 the thirty ‘golden years’ of couple dancing that began in the 1930s may still be considered the period in which male obstinacy towards dancing was at its lowest or, put positively, when heterosexual men found dancing most rewarding. There were, however, limits to how far the performance of gender identities could divert from conventional binaries. For instance, while it was generally accepted in British dance halls that women danced as same-sex couples, the sight of men doing the same provoked homophobic reactions from other men. Some chided men for dancing with ‘too much “swank”’, others ridiculed them, while still others started fistfights with men they insulted as ‘fairies’. The widespread concern with men who appeared ‘too feminine’ in the eyes of other men, described in detail in Nott’s chapter, shows that the social world of dancing was a heteronormative space in the period of study. While it afforded considerable female agency and encouraged male gentleness, it sharply excluded behaviour that went beyond gender norms. Apparently, gains within this social world came at the cost of harsh exclusions. This observation also applies to class and race relations. As already mentioned, the rise of grand ballrooms and formal couple dancing opened the social world of dancing to the wider population through popularising images and the teaching of easy steps as well as lowering the cost of entry. The dance palaces erected in many countries between the World Wars

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Introduction 15

exuded luxury, but they did not intimidate ‘ordinary’ people who would have found it difficult to navigate smaller, more intimate venues like the cabarets of the 1910s. At the same time as they appealed to majority audiences, popular dance halls kept out the ‘rough element’ (i.e. poor people), either by keeping ticket prices just high enough or by maintaining strict rules of conduct. Dance stewards, MCs and doormen, the absence of alcoholic drinks, as well as rules such as the one that forbade women to decline one dance invitation and immediately accept another one from a different partner for the same dance, defined sharp boundaries of civility that aligned with socio-economic differences. While the social world of dancing opened up to new groups in society, it remained to a degree divided internally, compartmentalised into venues and time slots, as when ballrooms advertised evenings for beginners and matinees for adolescents. People danced the same steps to the same music, following the same conventions, but not always on the same floor, as Green, Nathaus and Field show in their chapters. In South Africa, a black and a white world of dancing developed in parallel, with musicians and dance teachers traversing between them. In the USA, the coupling of radio, hotel gigs and touring divided the dance band business into a (thriving) white and a (poorly funded) black industry. Shanghai’s taxi-dance halls that catered to the domestic Chinese population had been initially inspired by cosmopolitans but became hard for sojourners to access in due course. Asking whether romantic relationships were formed across ethnic lines, Field finds that dance floor encounters between men and women were fleeting at best.

Outlook Collecting case studies on couple dancing in commercial dance venues from all continents, this volume registers the appearance of this practice across the globe. It identifies trends in the entertainment industry and media as common causes for this appearance, and while it acknowledges local specificities, it stresses striking similarities between the cases. Most importantly, it approaches couple dancing from the vantage point of its greatest popularity to qualify the relatively minor – but often overestimated – importance of ‘moral panics’. The editors are aware that their questions and their perspective are informed by a ‘western’ experience and historiography. Because of the volume’s interest in the commercial setting of dancing, its focus is almost exclusively on major cities and much less on rural examples, where the development of social dancing may have been rather different. An alternative selection of case studies would have been possible, of course. Further

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16

Introduction

chapters on other countries and regions, primarily France and the Middle East, would have been desirable; their absence is owed not just to our blind spots, but mainly to the vagaries of producing such a volume. Also, as the case studies register the appearance and local adaptation of dances, their transnational movement as such is not a central concern of this book. We would be happy if other historians take the gaps and biases of this volume as starting points to push the study of social dancing, its commercial organisation and its societal role further. We would be thrilled if this book speaks to dance scholars and sociologists too, and we are much obliged to our team of authors. Their commitment, willingness to provide feedback on each other’s drafts and openness to our suggestions have been exemplary.

Notes  1 K. Peiss, Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Turn-of-theCentury New York (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1986).   2 L. A. Erenberg, Steppin’ Out: New York Nightlife and the Transformation of American Culture, 1890–1930 (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1981); K. Lange, Tango in Paris und Berlin: Eine transnationale Geschichte der Metropolenkultur um 1900 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015).   3 D. Robinson, Modern Moves: Dancing Race During the Ragtime and Jazz Eras (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015); A. Kusser, Körper in Schieflage: Tanzen im Strudel des Black Atlantic um 1900 (Bielefeld: transcript, 2013).   4 A. Abra, Dancing in the English Style: Consumption, Americanisation and National Identity in Britain, 1918–50 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2017).   5 J. C. Desmond (ed.), Meaning in Motion: New Cultural Studies of Dance (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997); A. Carter and J. O’Shea (eds), The Routledge Dance Studies Reader, 2nd edn (London: Routledge, 2010).   6 Quotes are from J. Malnig, ‘Introduction’, in J. Malnig (ed.), Ballroom, Boogie, Shimmy Sham, Shake: A Social and Popular Dance Reader (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2009), p. 3; Peiss, Cheap Amusements, p. 4; Robinson, Modern Moves, p. 18.   7 W. H. Sewell, Jr, ‘The Concept(s) of Culture’, in V. E. Bonnell and L. Hunt (eds), Beyond the Cultural Turn: New Directions in the Study of Culture and Society (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999), pp. 35–61. See also K. Nathaus, ‘Why “Pop” Changed and How it Mattered (Part  II):  Historiographical Interpretations of Twentieth-Century Popular Culture in the West’, H-Soz-Kult, 2 August 2018, www.hsozkult.de/index.php/ literaturereview/id/forschungsberichte-1685.   8 E. A. Clement, Love for Sale: Courting, Treating, and Prostitution in New York City, 1900–1945 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), p. 7.

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Introduction 17

 9 R. A. Peterson and N. Anand, ‘The Production of Culture Perspective’, Annual Review of Sociology, 30 (2004), 311–34. 10 P. G. Cressey, The Taxi-Dance Hall: A Sociological Study in Commercialized Recreation and City Life (Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 1932). For further information on the ‘social world’ approach, see A. Strauss, ‘A Social World Perspective’, Studies in Symbolic Interaction, 1 (1978), 119–28. 11 See, for example, B. Berk, ‘Face-Saving at the Singles Dance’, Social Problems, 24:5 (1977), 530–44; D. A. Snow et al., ‘“Cooling Out” Men in Singles Bars and Nightclubs: Observations on the Interpersonal Survival Strategies of Women in Public Places’, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 19:4 (1991), 423–49; S.  Ronen, ‘Grinding on the Dance Floor: Gendered Scripts and Sexualized Dancing at College Parties’, Gender & Society, 24:3 (2010), 355–77; M. Leeds Craig, Sorry I Don’t Dance: Why Men Refuse to Move (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014). 12 H. S. Becker, ‘The Professional Dance Musician and His Audience’, American Journal of Sociology, 57:2 (1951), 136–44; D. Grazian, On the Make: The Hustle of Urban Nightlife (Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 2008), pp. 29–62. 13 R. D. McBee, Dance Hall Days: Intimacy and Leisure among Working-Class Immigrants in the United States (New York: New York University Press, 2000). 14 C. Heap, Slumming: Sexual and Racial Encounters in American Nightlife, 1885–1940 (Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 2009). 15 Peiss, Cheap Amusements, pp. 107–9; Erenberg, Steppin’ Out, p. 113; E.  Goffman, Behavior in Public Places: Notes on the Social Organization of Gatherings (New York: Free Press, 1963). 16 M. Schweitzer, Transatlantic Broadway: The Infrastructural Politics of Global Performance (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). 17 Leeds Craig, Sorry I Don’t Dance.

1 Tango dancing in Buenos Aires: women, style and intimacy, 1920–40 Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Cecilia Tossounian

In 1925, a man called Romualdo wrote a letter to the advice column of the national mass-market women’s magazine Para Ti (For You) asking for counsel. He was concerned about the fact that his girlfriend regularly patronised ‘every dance she possibly could’ but didn’t allow him to kiss her. Romualdo complains about this ‘absurd’ behaviour, stating that he has a hard time understanding how a ‘a girl that dances Shimmys, tangos and other dances’ refuses to be kissed by her boyfriend. Leda, the columnist, concurs with Romualdo that hers is a bizarre choice, even more so as dances have changed in the last twenty years, and now young women let strangers tightly embrace them while dancing.1 What the male reader and the magazine counsellor define as ‘absurd’ conduct can also be understood as an expression of a radical set of changes in young women’s behaviour. Not only did the girlfriend in question patronise dance halls without her boyfriend, and did so frequently, but also she did not conclude that dancing the tango and shimmy should oblige her to be intimate with her boyfriend. A series of common assumptions about gender roles was called into question through this ‘absurd’ behaviour, and much of it had to do with dance halls, tango and gender relationships. This chapter explores dance hall culture in Buenos Aires during the 1920s and 1930s, paying special attention to the cultural depictions and lived experiences of young women who patronised them. In particular, it explores the rise of the dance hall and its impact on young women’s leisure time. There are a number of key focuses for this chapter. Which styles did young women choose to adopt when patronising the diverse dance halls of the city? How did they negotiate their relationships with men? How did their contemporaries make sense of changes in leisure, dance and social relations forged in these commercial amusements? To achieve this, it analyses the public elaboration of the dance hall world in popular media. The historiography on Argentine women in the 1920s and 1930s has explored women’s significant involvement in the public sphere. It has focused, particularly, on the feminist movement and on female political engagement,

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Tango dancing in Buenos Aires, 1920–40 19

education and labour market participation from a social perspective.2 The present article engages with this scholarship and argues that popular culture, and principally beauty, fashion, intimacy and courtship, were relevant practices in the real lives of young women as well as crucial discourses in the shaping of their identities.3 The dance hall culture is better understood not only if situated in the broader social and cultural context of Buenos Aires, but also by taking into account its internal dynamics and particularities. The dance hall spread during a period of intense urbanisation and shifting gender roles. Within a few decades, largely as a result of external migration, Buenos Aires transformed from a small town to one of the largest cities of South America. With 2.3 million inhabitants by the 1930s, porteños – as the inhabitants of Buenos Aires are known – were experiencing rapid social change.4 While upon their arrival the two largest groups of immigrants, Italians and Spaniards, retained strong ethnic identities, this did not preclude a relatively rapid process of national integration. By 1930s, owing to significant social mobility, a vast part of the immigrant population was already Argentinised.5 Many of the young women who are the protagonists of this chapter were the Argentine daughters of these European immigrants, who were adjusting themselves to the city’s social fluctuations. Their everyday lives were considerably altered, as they became increasingly visible in urban spaces of work and leisure. Developments in women’s employment and education allowed many of them to attend school, learn teaching and business skills and enter the labour market, especially in the tertiary sector.6 Equally important was the new sense of freedom and autonomy that many of these young women experienced through commercial entertainment. They attended outings and cinemas, interacted with men without the control of their parents and experimented with different styles and looks when out and about. In this context, issues of female morality, style and social class become crucial for understanding these young women’s participation in porteño urban life.7 At the same time, commercial leisure offered several venues and activities, each with their own particular characteristics. Dance halls were one among the many commercial offerings that young men and women could attend in Buenos Aires in the 1920s and 1930s. For a few pesos, porteño people could also admire internationally acclaimed performers such as La Mistinguet, Maurice Chevalier or Josephine Baker at the famous El Casino music hall, stroll through El Parque Japonés amusement park or frequent one of the many cinemas the city hosted.8 As Carolina González Velasco has shown, the core of porteño commercial leisure was Corrientes Street, where the majority of theatres, coffee houses, restaurants and cabarets were located, with the different barrios (neighbourhoods) supplementing local entertainment through their social and sport clubs and mutual aid ­societies.

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20

Worlds of social dancing

Porteños’ enthusiasm for leisure and fun can be gauged in numbers: in 1922, in a city of almost two million inhabitants, there were twenty-six million attendances at the diverse programmes offered by commercial entertainment.9 This chapter examines how dance halls in particular challenged and redefined young women’s leisure time. In order to do this, the first section examines the development of milongas, academias and cabarets, and studies the diverse patrons that attended them, the social values these places endorsed and the dances that were in vogue during this period in Buenos Aires. The second section explores female representations and young women’s participation in dance hall culture. It examines two female figures that condensed the moral panic generated by the dance hall and explores ‘real’ young women’s visual styles and the relationships they forged with men when frequenting diverse dance venues. The chapter analyses representations of gender and dance hall culture in the yellow press and in general interest and women’s magazines and explores how young women experienced them through opinion pieces, advice columns and letters to the editor.

The dance hall as a novel social space Dancing was one of the most popular amusements offered to young women and men. As in other big cities throughout the world at this time, young porteños were eager to dance. While patios and living rooms continued to host dances well into the 1940s, these traditional venues were no longer the most popular places for youth to dance.10 Balls in public places and dance halls progressively outnumbered these private sites. Balls hosted in social clubs located in the diverse barrios of the city became very popular during the 1920s and 1930s. Founded around 1880 as mutual benefit societies and ethnic associations, the Centro Asturiano and the Centro Catalán, Unión y Benevolenza as well as the Club Social Balvanera and the Defensores de Villa Crespo, to name just a few, let their saloons to dance promoters or organised their own balls, usually in order to raise funds or as part of their cultural activities.11 The popularity of these balls, commonly called milongas, increased as the tango developed into a ‘respectable’ dance. The number of balls organised by porteño social, ethnic and sport clubs during these years is difficult to gauge because of a lack of records. However, some scholars have established that popular dances held in the most important neighbourhood clubs – such as Boca, River, San Lorenzo, Atlanta, Huracán and Vélez Sarsfield – could host several thousand people, especially at the end of the 1930s.12 In Villa Devoto, a peripheral barrio of the city which by 1936 had 146,717 inhabitants, there were at least twenty sport clubs, ten

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Tango dancing in Buenos Aires, 1920–40 21

neighbourhood clubs and six ethnic associations. During Carnival, these clubs organised, among other activities, several dances per night that lasted the four days of the celebration. On these days, neighbourhood social clubs’ balls became more crowded.13 The myriad of ethnic societies that populated Buenos Aires also offered their own balls and parties. In her book about the Jewish community in Argentina, Adriana Brodsky has pointed out that the Jewish associations were among the most active ones in organising social events, hosting several parties and dances per weekend, with the aim of making the young get together and raise money for the community.14 As dance was becoming a highly popular commercial entertainment, entrepreneurs tried to meet this increasing demand, creating new dance halls, dance palaces, cabarets and dance academies, which complemented the existing neighbourhood halls and social club dances.15 Some contemporaries seized the commercial opportunities that dance halls offered and opened new venues, often under the guise of philanthropic societies and bogus social clubs in order to circumvent licensing restrictions and official controls. Anyone willing to pay admission could frequent these neighbourhood dance halls.16 However, commercial entertainment tended to be in the hands of a few powerful European entrepreneurs, who profited from their transatlantic connections to lead the market.17 Among them was Charles Seguin, an enigmatic French entrepreneur who arrived in Buenos Aires in 1895, at the age of eighteen. He was at the centre of a huge business operation, which included the ownership and administration of the most important circuses, theatres, music halls, cabarets, dance halls, amusement parks, boxing spectacles and zoos of the city. The Pabellón de las Rosas and the Palais de Glace, the most elegant dance palaces, as well as the Armenonville, the Royal Pigall, the Tabarís and the Chantecler, among the most important cabarets, were controlled by this powerful man.18 The Palais de Glace and the Pabellón de las Rosas, both located in the upscale barrio of Recoleta, were originally conceived as more than just places for dancing. The Pabellón de las Rosas – which changed its name to Armenonville in 1911 – was an elegant building with French windows and beautiful gardens. It included a restaurant, a ballroom and an ice-skating rink. The Palais de Glace, opened in 1910 also as an ice-skating rink, had a twenty-one-metre diameter circular rink with a large central skylight above it, around which were arranged theatre-style boxes and rooms for social gatherings. These palaces were ornately decorated with columns, mirrors and sumptuous chandeliers. Both buildings were converted into elegant dance palaces during the mid-1910s, when a growing part of the population shared the enthusiasm for dancing. The Armenonville thus functioned as a restaurant and elegant family dance hall, while also hosting impressive outdoor spectacles. With two orchestras – one led by Osvaldo Fresedo, the

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Worlds of social dancing

other being the American Jazz conducted by Eduardo Armani – it hosted dances that began at 8.30 p.m. and concluded at 4 a.m. The dance hall opened its doors to well-known milongueros, as assiduous tango dancers from a lower-class background were called.19 The Palais de Glace, in turn, was among the first dance palaces where tango was danced by the upper classes. The promoter, Baron de Marchi, was a wealthy Italian–Argentine tango enthusiast, who knew both the tango performed in the outskirts of Buenos Aires and the one danced at the luxurious tango parties in Europe.20 Other less luxurious dance halls also appeared. La Argentina, Salón Rodríguez Peña and Casa Suiza, for example, all located on Rodríguez Peña Street, near Corrientes Street, the commercial amusement district of the city, which began their activities around the turn of the century as mutual aid societies and philanthropic institutions, converted into dance halls during the 1920s. The Salón Rodríguez Peña, for example, held dances on Wednesdays and Thursdays, and ‘El Vasco’ Casimiro Aín and ‘El Pardo’ Santillán, two of the most famous milongueros, used to dance there.21 Dance hall entrepreneurs did not only provide dance halls and palaces, however. Luxurious cabarets also proliferated during these years, especially in the city centre. The cabarets had large dance floors surrounded by tables and a bar, where the best French food of the city was served, and two orchestras alternated sets of tango and jazz music for dancing. Their renown came, basically, through the quality of their orquesta típica, the Argentine term for a medium-sized band that plays tango and other dancing styles. Central cabarets usually had the more prestigious orquestas típicas and were generally luxurious places, with magnificent chandeliers, ornamental walls and private rooms, while the ones in the barrios were more modestly decorated. Sergio Pujol has observed that cabarets’ architecture highlighted their modernity: electric networks lighting the dance floors, magnificent oriental-style entry halls and interior halls decorated in an art deco style.22 Chantecler, opened in 1924, Casino Pigall, renamed Maipú Pigall in the 1920s, Marabú (1935) and Tabarís (1924), near and on Corrientes Street, were among the most famous cabarets in the 1920s and were the places where the most popular orquestas típicas – those of Roberto Firpo, Francisco Canaro and Eduardo Arolas – played. The Tabarís, the most renowned cabaret in the city, promoted itself as an ‘ultramodern restaurant’, with private saloons and theme parties. Between 1930 and 1935, however, the economic crisis obliged many cabarets to close. Their replacements, the boîtes and dancings, were smaller, more expensive and more exclusive versions of the 1920s cabarets, which fewer people attended. Among the most famous boîtes were Africa, which was located in the roof garden of the exclusive Alvear Palace Hotel, the Boîtes du Cirque des Ambassadeurs and Imperio.23

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Tango dancing in Buenos Aires, 1920–40 23

Figure 1  A 1931 dance in the Buenos Aires city council party room to benefit a charitable organisation

Dance academies joined neighbourhood and saloon halls, dance palaces and cabarets as places for dancing in the 1920s and 1930s. Established around 1900, these academies were places to socialise and practise modern dances, especially the tango. Academias hired skilled female dancers, some of whom might be prostitutes, to dance with their male clients. The academias, which hosted both expert milongueros and inexperienced dancers eager to learn, were usually not considered respectable places because of the bad reputation of the young women who worked there.24 By the 1930s, many boîtes and dancings started to employ girls as dance partners whose pay was proportional to the time they spent dancing with the customers. The Casanova dancing, for example, was among the first dance halls to be run on the taxi-dance system.25 Cabarets, boîtes and dancings tended to attract an upscale clientele, while dance palaces, dance halls and social clubs’ balls were attended by more heterogenous crowds. Wealthy porteños went to these lavish venues basically to dance to the music of jazz and tango orchestras. The majority of regulars were men, although it was not exclusively for them. The few women who frequented the cabaret were either male customers’ companions or milonguitas and coperas (young women who made a living selling

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Worlds of social dancing

drinks and entertaining the customers).26 Manuel Gálvez, a famous writer, described the cabaret’s style and patrons in a few but precise words: ‘a saloon, tables where to drink and an orchestra. Young wealthy men, their mistresses, curious people and some young women of loose morals, who attend the cabaret by themselves, are its patrons.’27 The yellow press, especially Crítica, the first popular tabloid, constantly denounced the bad working conditions of cabaret women. They tended to describe their work as close to slavery because of the long hours and meagre pay. Milonguitas were paid between 8 and 10 pesos per night, plus a percentage of the clients’ drinks, and worked between 6 p.m. and 4 a.m. Newspapers also stated that they were subjected to the owners’ surveillance and the customers’ rudeness.28 According to Crítica, however, there was something worse than the cabaret, and that was the academia. For even fewer pesos per night, these young women were expected to be dressed nicely, learn new dance steps and dance mechanically with whoever paid for their services, regardless of whether it was ‘an immature pretentious customer’, ‘a vulgar smelly one’ or ‘a greasy storekeeper’, as the newspaper suggested with disgust.29 Although the cabaret generated much social commentary, few people actually attended it. Men and women who wanted to dance usually patronised instead the less exclusive balls and dance halls of the city. Workingclass and immigrant couples usually took part in milongas organised in their neighbourhoods. Some of these dances were held at patios and were known as baile formativos (constructive balls). At these balls, people bought tickets, and the collected money was used to pay the musicians as well as for food and beverages. Young female employees and male workers went to the baile formativos because they tended to be less expensive than the dance events in saloons.30 Other milongas were organised in neighbourhood saloons, which were not known for their style or decor. In his widely read urban chronicles, Roberto Arlt argued that the dances ‘for poor people’ were held in places ‘with electric light bulbs that emit white light’, adding that their buffet offered food that seemed taken from the barracks’ mess halls.31 Enrique Gómez Carrillo, a famous writer from Guatemala who penned his impressions of Buenos Aires, provided an even worse description of milongas, stating that the one he patronised was held in a vast saloon with some dirty tables, with almost no light nor decor.32 Despite the milongas’ drabness, young women and men from lower-class backgrounds assiduously participated in them. Girls and boys of around fifteen years old tended to frequent the matinees, as the milongas held on Sunday evenings were called, while young grown-ups joined the crowded Saturday night ones.33 While working-class youth was attracted by the neighbourhood milongas, the emerging middle classes frequented the balls

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Tango dancing in Buenos Aires, 1920–40 25

held at the social and sport clubs of their barrio. Balls organised by the Club Social y Deportivo Villa Malcolm, located in the Villa Crespo neighbourhood, for example, reserved admission for middle-class dancers by charging higher ticket prices.34 Compared with the humbler milongas, the social club dance had stricter rules: it was expected that young women would attend the balls with a chaperone, usually the mother or an uncle, and visit the Sunday evening balls instead of the Saturday night ones, which were attended by women considered to be of dubious morality.35 However, many observers of the time were worried about these Sunday evening balls too. An article in the newspaper Última Hora, for instance, argued that matinees were typically attended by fifteen-year-old girls who danced with ‘unscrupulous men’, adopting ‘the rudest and most irreverent postures’. It was, the newspaper argued, the ‘voluptuousness of the dance’ which induced these girls to accept men’s physical requests. The main concern of the article was that underage girls went to these matinees because, unlike common dance halls, they were not controlled by the city council.36 Crítica joined the newspaper campaign, concurring that these supposedly ‘familiar saloons’ were corrupting girls and demanding that the city council should monitor them. In fact, Crítica stated that it had received desperate letters from these girls’ parents asking for help, and it decided to launch a campaign to call the attention of authorities and get regulation of these balls.37 Turning next to the dancing in these many different dance venues, one notices that while there were important differences between them, they all shared the same enthusiasm for tango. Tango was the social dance that dominated the porteño dance scene around these years, with the ‘American dances’ – as the foxtrot, shimmy and Charleston were usually called – standing in a secondary position. Tango was initially a lower-class cultural product, which emerged around 1880 in the impoverished outer districts of Buenos Aires and Montevideo. It was initially disdained by the middle and upper classes who considered it the immoral lowbrow dance of prostitutes and pimps. But once tango achieved international fame during the 1910s, it gradually gained social prominence and conquered a vast audience, becoming Argentina’s most popular music and dance genre, as well as its national emblem. The acceptance of tango by Buenos Aires high society coincided with the transition to a smoother tango style. As happened with the one-step and the foxtrot in the United States and Europe, the dance teachers’ role, and particularly that of Vernon and Irene Castle, was crucial for demonstrating the possibility of a smoother and more elegant dancing style.38 Consequently, the figures that intertwined dancers’ bodies in peculiar ways – for instance, a sensual movement of the hips or the brush of the female leg on her partner’s one – tended to disappear. The tamed version of tango, called tango de salón (dance hall tango), trumped the other types of

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tango dancing, and ultimately became the socially accepted form of dancing the tango in many public spaces.39 Tango’s success, however, co-existed with the slightly lesser popularity of other dances like the Charleston, shimmy and foxtrot. For example, in 1925 Crítica newspaper, along with the dance hall L’Ainglon, held a contest for the best tango and shimmy dancing couples. The winners would be awarded a significant cash prize and a silver cup donated by Rudolph Valentino. The judges included French singer and film star Maurice Chevalier and his wife Yvonne Vallée as well as local actor Gloria Guzmán.40 Mastering the dances of the moment became a sign of being up to date. As one journalist commented, in order to patronise a dance hall and not cause embarrassment, people felt they had to attend an academia and master the one-step, the two-step, the foxtrot, the Boston waltz, the jazz and the tango, the dances considered fashionable in 1920 Buenos Aires.41 While the tango presupposed close contact between bodies, the ‘American dances’, given their eccentric steps, required a sort of corporal looseness and a variation of the ‘classic’ couple position. Alternating between dancing a tango and a Charleston hence signified radically changing the way the bodies were positioned. Although different, they somehow complemented each other. As Sergio Pujol has argued, when a couple wanted a ‘tight’ dance, they could always forget about the shimmy and resort to a tango.42 While these were the more popular dances, there was also some space for less mainstream ones. The Shimmy Club, an African–Argentine association opened in 1924, for example, rented the saloon of the Casa Suiza for nearly fifty years. In its weekly ball, there were two dance floors: on the ground floor, people danced tango and jazz to the sound of employed orchestras, while in the basement, candombe and rumba were executed by the people who patronised the saloon.43 While it was a fact that dancing, and especially the tango, was becoming popular throughout the entire city of Buenos Aires and that this implied a certain degree of standardisation of the dance, it was also true that the manner in which men and women danced varied considerably from one type of ball or dance hall to another. Observers argued that certain ways of dancing the tango prevailed in some dance halls and not in others. Dancing the tango with cortes and quebradas (stops and swaying hips) was practised mainly at modest balls, where, according to Roberto Arlt, lower-class people went to dance closely and to forget about their many problems.44 Manuel Gálvez describes in detail a ball in a modest patio, where couples were dancing with ‘a heavy slowness’, ‘bending down, getting up, twisting to one side and then to the other … to finally pause in order to rock forwards and backwards’.45 In contrast, neighbourhood social clubs patronised by the middle classes tended to regulate tango’s movements, and

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Tango dancing in Buenos Aires, 1920–40 27

dancers who did not dance properly could risk being expelled from the hall.46 The way of dancing the tango could also differ from one barrio to another. Villa Urquiza, Boedo and San Cristóbal, to name just a few neighbourhoods, had different styles: a specific cadence or a particular way of embracing the female partner differentiated one style from the other. The association between a barrio and a mode of dancing was so profound that not adopting the neighbourhood’s fashions could lead to a confrontation or even exclusion from the dance hall.47 The growing ‘craze’ for tango and other dances, and the difficulty of mastering each dance and its particularities, translated into an increase in the number of teaching techniques. The use of private teachers was common among the upper classes, who guaranteed their daughters’ reputations by making them learn in the supervised privacy of their houses. Concomitantly, many magazines began to run articles explaining how to dance. El Gráfico, for example, promoted foxtrot lessons by showing the drawings of a couple’s legs dancing, along with an explanation of the basic steps, in a 1919 issue. A paragraph advised male readers what was considered incorrect: to make the female partner repeatably jump and to confuse foxtrot’s cadence with tango’s one were among them.48 A couple of years later, El Gráfico published another article, this time explaining how to learn the shimmy by showing pictures of different female bodily postures. Signed by Vivian Persis Dewey, an American dance manual author, this article is interesting not only because it states that the shimmy is too immoral to be performed in public, while being perfect as an exercise of physical culture practised in the privacy of the home. It is also noteworthy because it is an exact copy, only translated into Spanish, of a US article, showing how some dances and their particular steps became globalised practices during these years.49 While some authors explained their techniques through magazine articles, others, such as Domingo Gaeta, promoted their correspondence course method, promising ‘no disruptions’ and stating that it is ‘the most complete, cheap and easy way of learning how to dance that exists until now’.50 Not only did magazine articles and correspondence courses appear, but also dance academies flourished during the 1920s. In the middle years of that decade, Buenos Aires counted more than ten of these institutions.51 An article published in Caras y Caretas magazine recreated a fictional dialogue between friends, who complained they could not sleep because of Buenos Aires’ intense level of noise, which was caused by the recent profusion of academias.52 As the name academia was often linked to places of dubious morality, many instructors preferred to use terms like ‘school’ or ‘institute’ for their businesses.53 Francisco Comas, for instance, founded the Instituto Superior de Baile (Higher Dance Institute) and presided over the Sociedad Argentina de Profesores de Baile (Argentine Society of Dance Teachers) as

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its first president. Stressing the educational function of dance schools, he highlighted that many dancers, especially male ones, had no clue of how to hold a female partner and consequently became too rigid, or bent over their partners too much.54

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Dance hall culture: style and intimacy Many contemporaries, when wondering about the origins of dance hall culture, disapprovingly pointed out that it was the consequence of the ‘Americanisation’ of porteño people. The dance hall, defined as an  ‘American’ import, came along with what historians now call the ‘modern girl’ phenomenon. A global figure during the interwar years, the modern girl personified the dance ‘craze’ that captured Buenos Aires society. Defined as a frivolous single upper-class young woman, she was critically depicted dancing, flirting, smoking and drinking in public spaces like dance halls.55 For instance, Juan José de Soiza Reilly, a popular journalist and writer, disapproved of young women’s behaviour at the upmarket Ocean Club at Mar del Plata beachside resort: ‘Chic girls have imposed the fashion of getting drunk’ in dance halls, he claimed, adding that ‘the girl’s face, hair and legs rub against the male body’ when dancing the shimmy.56 Dancing also featured prominently in fictional accounts. It is central in the story of Beba, a wealthy modern girl, who loves to dance and is particularly fond of the Charleston, an ‘exotic’ and ‘savage’ dance ‘inspired by the dances of black Africans’. In this story, the Charleston and the tango were censured mainly because they were associated with transnational black and lowerclass culture, which were at odds with the polished culture intended for girls like Beba.57 Observers often blamed the dance hall and the modern girl figure for the corruption of the porteño soul. In his study of Buenos Aires’ manners, Juan Agustín García identified the cabaret as an American import which, through its promotion of alcohol and gender equality, destroyed the old porteño customs.58 An article in El Hogar magazine added that modern dances, so globally in vogue during this period, had also originated in the United States. ‘As it happened with films … the United States imposed their … dances’, thus ‘making society balls, and with them the polka and the waltz, disappear’.59 In his book about porteño culture, Roberto Gache extended this argument to music. ‘After sending us their cheap cars and their oak desks … the United States, in the form of a pacific penetration, have sent us their music’, which is ‘the agitated and practical music of an agitated and practical country’.60 While many journalists and writers identified American dance hall culture, its music and dances as a cultural

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Tango dancing in Buenos Aires, 1920–40 29

imposition, others pointed out that porteños were rather fascinated with American mass culture.61 A female magazine reader, for example, stated that the tango was far more decent than ‘North American dances’, which were only praised because Argentines tended to endorse foreign products.62 For many contemporaries, the film industry was at the centre of this cultural ‘invasion’, which targeted women as its main victims.63 Raúl Scalabrini Ortíz, a well-regarded intellectual, voiced a widespread view regarding the role of films in the ‘North Americanization of the city’, as he called this phenomenon. In his famous 1931 essay about the essence of porteño people, he criticised many novel habits, like dances, female sports and the new camaraderie between men and women, as American cultural imports brought by the expansion of Hollywood. According to Scalabrini, the worst enemy of the porteño soul was the cinema, because through it the ‘nastiest’ US traits sneaked into Buenos Aires: ‘the compliment of ambition, the tenuous pornography, the grotesque sensuality’.64 For many contemporaries, porteño people’s manners were being erased by the arrival of Hollywood. Alongside the upper-class modern girl there was the milonguita character, the lower-class cultural figure who also condensed the moral panic generated by the emergence of dance halls and of cabarets especially. The protagonist of many tango songs of these years, the milonguita was portrayed as a young woman who abandons her humble barrio in exchange for a life of luxury and pleasure in the cabarets of Buenos Aires. Tango culture usually forecast a miserable and tragic future for this figure – the result of her choice to abandon her suburban life for a fleeting moment of fun in the company of wealthy men.65 As with other cabaret women around the world, contemporaries usually claimed that these women’s attraction to urban nightlife, and to the cabaret specifically, reflected their desire to enjoy material gains at the expense of morality.66 According to tango songs, luxurious clothing was one of the most important material treats that the milonguitas yearned for. Tango tunes referred to young women’s obsession with fur coats and dresses made of silk or satin each time they mentioned the milonguita, pointing out how she liked to show off her fashionable short hair and tiny dresses in the cabarets. Many observers concurred, stating that the young women who worked at downtown cabarets had an elegant style that emulated upper-class fashions.67 According to Ahora newspaper, for example, milonguitas spent much of their salaries on nice dresses, perfumes, manicures and regular appointments with the hairdresser to always look adorable.68 While this was the case for upscale downtown cabarets, Gómez Carrillo painted a different picture of the milonguitas from a poor neighbourhood dance hall. According to Carrillo, these young women, with their heavy makeup and

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démodé clothes, could barely make ‘the sad miracle of appearing elegant’.69 Even if some milonguitas could achieve a sophisticated look, they were usually criticised for pretending to be something they were not. This type of assessment responded to a widespread concern with social mobility that characterised Buenos Aires during these years. Many contemporaries worried about status markers becoming blurred and criticised the efforts of people of modest means to purchase respectability and a higher-class status.70 The importance given to style points to the centrality that appearance had in young women lives. As Kathy Peiss has shown for the case of young urban working-class American women, and James Nott for such women in Britain, leisure was the moment when they played creatively with their identities. Dance halls, in particular, became the perfect place to ‘put on style’ and experiment with new attitudes and looks.71 Many ordinary young women could not afford expensive clothing and found alternative ways of elaborating their style. Several sewed their own dresses, using fabrics with big patterns and bright colours, while others bought cheap imitations or second-hand versions of expensive furs and jewellery, or added numerous accessories such as extra ribbons and flowers to their outfits.72 While these young women probably felt fashionable or appealing by adopting these looks, many critical observers thought that they looked like unrefined versions of upper-class fashionable women. According to Arlt, for example, young women in modest milongas naively thought they were dressed as ‘princesses’ when actually they were wearing ‘absurd … yellow, red, and green dresses’.73 Other contemporaries, like the well-known poet and journalist Alfonsina Storni, examined the efforts made by these young women to polish their style. Through her description of a low-income family dance, she shows the importance that many lower-class young women gave to looking respectable: their dresses were new, their old shoes were newly shined and their damaged silk stockings had been recently patched.74 Many dance halls and cabarets gathered persons of diverse social classes and ethnic origins, especially during Carnival, when people dressed up and mingled in the parties held for this special occasion. The concern about excessive social climbing and simulation, widespread throughout the city, explains the obsession many observers had with recognising the actual social origins of dance hall patrons. Many of these origins were expressed, according to observers, by the type and quality of clothing, as well as by certain social attitudes. Arlt, again, offered a detailed description of a Carnival party at a famous downtown cabaret, unmasking the people behind the costume. In one section of the cabaret, ‘decent people’, who are identifiable as such because they look and smile instead of dance, mingle with poor young women who ‘from far away seem princesses’ but

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Tango dancing in Buenos Aires, 1920–40 31

at a closer look reveal their real unsophisticated personality. In another corner, a ‘black curly-haired man’ dances with a languid blonde woman, who almost seems to faint. Not only did people of diverse social and ethnic backgrounds mingle, but they also behaved in defiant ways. According to Arlt, young women danced and drank in ‘excessive’ ways. Some showed their nude backs and their bare legs emerging from over-the-knee dresses while dancing a ‘tight’ tango; others, almost collapsing from fatigue and drunkenness, nevertheless asked for more cigarettes and alcohol.75 In order to prevent this sort of ‘chaos’, dance handbooks usually included detailed ballroom etiquette. Nicanor Lima’s well-known manual for learning ballroom tango, for example, provided particulars on how to dress and behave in a respectful way. Men were advised to wear a black suit and white gloves, to announce their dance intentions on a dance card at the beginning of the ball, and always to ask for the parents’ permission to take their female partners to the buffet area. Women, in the meantime, should always be polite, smile back and behave with modesty in order to prevent critique. Men were particularly instructed to dance in a simple and correct way.76 The manual’s purpose was, in fact, to teach how to dance a courteous and well-mannered tango, in order to be able to perform it ‘without concern’ and with ‘absolute calm’ in every ballroom.77 Although rather formal and probably intended mainly for affluent balls, this type of protocol served not only to avert possible social misunderstandings but also, above all, to assure appropriate gender comportment. This ballroom etiquette contrasted with other depictions of young women’s behaviour at dance halls. Many women established new types of relationships with men. They often arrived unescorted at dance halls and milongas and left with friends or young relatives. A young woman recalled crossing Buenos Aires to frequent the balls held in the barrio of Villa Devoto during Carnival, and then arranging with her female and male cousins to walk back together to her barrio.78 Mass culture mirrored this new freedom that young women were experiencing. When Chingolo, a character in a 1922 theatre play, asks Julia to join him at 3.30 a.m. to go dancing, Julia, instead of refusing the invitation as her parents would never allow it, answers that she will sneak out and meet him with her female friend.79 It is clear that without parental supervision young women had greater chances of dancing with unknown men and performing the tango, which was not always looked upon favourably. This tension was captured by a humorous play directed by Manuel Romero, a popular theatre and film director, who portrayed the behaviour of an eagle-eyed Italian father and his daughter. In a luxurious cabaret, a man approaches a table where the Italian father and his daughter are seated and asks the young woman to dance. The father refuses the invitation and the man states that every woman who visits the

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cabaret is obliged to dance, taking her to the dance floor. While dancing, the young woman complains that the man is tickling her leg. Her father punches him, and everybody ends up being kicked out of the cabaret.80 New relationships meant also that many young women, instead of passively waiting for somebody to invite them to dance, took the initiative. Herminia Brumana, a famous writer and journalist, recalled a ball held in the 1910s in her small rural town, when it was common that boys asked girls to dance and girls were almost obliged to accept their invitations, and contrasted this ball with a fancy dance she attended twenty years later. Now, women did everything to catch the attention of their preferred candidate, smiling or making funny gestures to him.81 An article in Vosotras magazine added further ‘catching’ techniques used by many young women at dance halls: to stare intensively at the selected candidate, to persuade a friend to tempt him to dance with her and finally, if nothing else worked, to drop a purse or a handkerchief or to stumble when passing near him.82 Many young women based their decision on who to dance with by considering the dancing skills of their potential partners. An admonitory letter to a girl who danced the tango, published in Atlántida magazine, addressed this issue by stating that nowadays girls selected who they would dance with based on who performed the tango better, because in this way they could also show off their own skills.83 Another journalist concurred, stating that currently, the fact that two people danced together all night long did not mean that they were a couple, as was common a few years before, but rather that ‘they get along well with each other and that they like making an impression’.84 To show off your dance skills was an important element when performing the tango and to get along well was key to accomplishing that, even between two perfect strangers. Men eager to dance properly could even instruct their partners and set up the next move while dancing, in order to avoid any confusion. An article in the newspaper Última Hora reported some phrases pronounced by men at the matinee: ‘hurry up, girl’ or ‘let’s do the half-moon step’.85 The anonymity provided by the dance halls also allowed many young women to dabble in tango dancing, sometimes even in defiant ways. Arlt described a couple dancing a tango with cortes and quebradas in a neighbourhood milonga, defending their right to have some fun after a long week of work against the moral critique they were usually subjected to, especially by other women.86 Many women directly praised tango for the pleasure they experienced when dancing it. In 1920, Atlántida magazine conducted a survey on readers’ opinions regarding tango. Using the pseudonym Amor (Love), a female reader affirmed that, for its rhythmical and enthusiastic pace, dancing the tango was a ‘sublimity’.87 María Luisa, in turn, stated that the best hours of her life were the ones in which she danced tango with

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Tango dancing in Buenos Aires, 1920–40 33

her partner in a ‘decent’ way.88 Clara S. added that the fact that tango was criticised as immoral was young men’s fault, as they were the ones who, ‘with their coquettish contortions’, had degraded it.89 Not all young women were willing to dance the tango or even liked it, though. Tita declared that her father had taught her that it was not nice for good girls to dance the tango, so she didn’t.90 La de los rulitos (The one with the curly hair) instead based her negative opinion on experience: ‘When I was younger, I used to dance the tango with great enthusiasm, but now that I have realised that men use it to clumsily touch us … I hate it’. She concluded that she would never dance it again.91 While many young women visited the dance hall just to have fun, others went there with the purpose of finding a partner. According to an article, ‘dancing is the beginning of a marriage’, as the obliged contact that it required created intimacy among couples.92 Many young women who attended ballrooms and milongas surely found a husband, or at least a suitor. A female magazine reader, for example, affirmed that thanks to the tango she found a boyfriend.93 Such was the importance of dancing for getting a date that one girl wrote to the advice column of Para Ti asking for guidance about the fact that, as she didn’t know how to dance, she didn’t have a boyfriend. The conformist answer she received – to wait until somebody would appreciate her for who she was – probably did not satisfy this girl, who was worried that she didn’t even have any flirting experience.94 Not everybody, however, concurred with the view that it was something positive that dance halls functioned as social venues for meeting future spouses. An article in El Hogar magazine stated that relationships that started in ‘boîtes’, with their irritating music and their ‘suffocating atmosphere’, were an example of the moral decadence that characterised the era.95 However, dancing was not only the prerogative of single people. Young married couples also frequented dance halls. US journalist Lilia Davies, who regularly wrote articles about Buenos Aires’ customs, estimated that 1930s ‘dancings’ were more frequented by married couples than 1910s cabarets, which were mainly patronised by groups of male acquaintances.96 Heated debates about this new custom were fought in the press. An article in Atlántida magazine, for example, stated that young wives were eager to go dancing frequently but husbands, too tired after a long day of work, were not able to satisfy this request. This divergence had become the cause of many conflicts among newlywed couples, continued the article. The journalist declared that it was better that wives stop asking their husbands to attend ‘dancings’ six times per week because they would get tired of them, adding that it was also in their best interest to do so, because too much dancing took time away from housework and made wives look tired, old and nervous.97 Roberto Gache, on the contrary, stated that dancing was a

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way of improving a married couple’s ‘union and happiness’, as it reinforced their interdependence.98 A female journalist from Para Ti suggested that if husbands didn’t dance, their wives should go dancing with friends, because they shouldn’t ‘get old before time’ and lose ‘the joy and opportunities of being admired’.99

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Conclusion Patronising dance halls, milongas and cabarets occupied a big share of young porteños’ commercial leisure time. Many of these places were located in the city centre and attracted patrons from diverse social backgrounds, who found in these dances a moment of shared fun. However, not every place was accessible to everybody. Cabarets were exclusive places attended mainly by upper-class men, their mistresses and the milonguitas, where clients dined and danced tango and jazz to the best orquestas of the city. Milongas and neighbourhood balls, on the contrary, appealed to the w ­ orking-class and immigrant youth who enjoyed dancing tango, especially with cortes and quebradas. For the emerging middle classes that were populating the peripheral barrios, there were the dances organised by social and sport clubs, characterised by their stricter social rules. Dance halls were regarded with concern by many contemporaries, who were worried about their moral effects, especially on young women. Matinees, academias and cabarets, in particular, were presented as venues where the tango was performed by men with dubious intentions, who ended up corrupting their young dance partners’ souls. Milonguitas seemed to provide evidence for these worries. In every tango song that portrayed them, young women were accused of seeking the easy life of the tango and pretending to be someone they were not. While the milonguita condensed the moral concerns regarding working-class women, the upper-class modern girl who danced the Charleston and the tango with abandon represented the fears of harmful foreign influence. Allegedly seduced by ‘American’ fashions, and particularly by ‘American dances’, she was held responsible for corrupting the porteño essence. This discourse, in turn, often targeted the US film industry as the main culprit for introducing porteño people to the immorality of American mass culture. The majority of ordinary young women, in spite of these moral warnings, attended mainstream dance halls and ballrooms, played with their looks in creative ways and negotiated their new autonomy and freedom with their male friends. Many young women from lower-class backgrounds wanted to look respectable and tended to wear their best outfits when

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Tango dancing in Buenos Aires, 1920–40 35

v­ isiting b ­ allrooms. Others probably wanted to be noticed by men and used ­eye-catching items to create their style, while many recreated socialites’ styles wearing second-hand or cheap versions of expensive items. Dance halls also allowed young women to manage their relationships with men in ways that differed from what was expected of them. Many arrived unaccompanied or with female friends at dance venues and left with cousins and friends, while others, instead of passively waiting to be asked to dance, showed their interest first. Many selected their potential partners based on their tango dancing skills and demonstrated that sometimes the mere pleasure of dancing came before romantic motives. Others instead went to dancing venues in order to find a future husband and were terribly worried if men did not notice them, while others refused to dance the tango because they felt that men took advantage and touched them. Young women of different social classes found many ways of addressing the novelties that the dance hall culture introduced into their lives. While they experimented with sexual allure by dressing provocatively and explored a new-found freedom by attending dance halls unescorted, they also had to learn how to confront men’s unrequired advances and to negotiate with them new social ­agreements. Just like Romualdo’s girlfriend did. I would like to thank Lila Caimari, Pablo Palomino, the Centro de Estudios en Historia, Cultura y Memoria seminar participants, as well as the editors and authors of this book, for their constructive comments.

Notes  1 ‘Epistolario sentimental’, Para Ti (3 March 1925), p. 10.   2 See, among others, A. Lavrin, Women, Feminism and Social Change in Argentina, Chile and Uruguay (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1995); M. Lobato, Historia de las trabajadoras en la Argentina (1869–1960) (Buenos Aires: Edhasa, 2007); M. Nari, Políticas de maternidad y maternalismo político: Buenos Aires 1890–1940 (Buenos Aires: Biblos, 2004).   3 For literature on women and popular culture in Argentina during the global 1960s, see V. Manzano, The Age of Youth in Argentina: Culture, Politics and Sexuality from Perón to Videla (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2014); I. Cosse, Pareja, sexualidad y familia en los años sesenta (Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI, 2010).   4 From 1875 to 1930, Argentina’s gross domestic product increased by a factor of twenty and the population rose from two to twelve million, largely owing to immigration. F. Rocchi, Chimneys in the Desert: Industrialization in Argentina During the Export Boom Years, 1870–1930 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006), p. 1.

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  5 E. Míguez et al., ‘Hasta que la Argentina nos una: reconsiderando las pautas matrimoniales de los inmigrantes, el crisol de razas y el pluralismo cultural’, Hispanic American Historical Review, 71:4 (1991), 781–808. See also F. Devoto, Historia de los italianos en la Argentina (Buenos Aires: Biblos, 2006).  6 In 1914, 11,715 women held an office job in Buenos Aires, a number that grew to 79,770 by 1947. G. Queirolo, Mujeres en las oficinas: Trabajo, género y clase en el sector administrativo (Buenos Aires, 1910–1950) (Buenos Aires: Biblos, 2018), pp. 93–4.  7 For more racialised urban experiences, see J. Hershfield, Imagining la Chica Moderna: Women, Nation, and Visual Culture in Mexico, 1917–1936 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008); L. Suk, ‘“Only the Fragile Sex Admitted”: The Women’s Restaurant in 1920s São Paulo, Brazil’, Journal of Social History, 51:3 (2018), 592–620.  8 For an overview of El Casino and El Parque Japonés, see S. Goldberg, ‘Entertaining Culture: Mass Culture and Consumer Society in Argentina, ­1898–1946’ (PhD dissertation, Columbia University, 2016), pp. 65–93.  9 C. González Velasco, Gente de teatro: Ocio y espectáculos en la Buenos Aires de los años veinte (Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI Editores, 2012), p. 53. For a useful visual representation of the geography of entertainment, see the map in the appendix to Velasco’s book. 10 For a depiction of patios’ dances at the turn of the century, see J. S. Tallón, El tango en su etapa de música prohibida (Buenos Aires: Instituto Amigos del Libro Argentino, 1959). 11 S. Pujol, Historia del baile: De la milonga a la disco (Buenos Aires: Emecé, 1999), pp. 98–102; M. E. Rosboch, La rebelión de los abrazos: Tango, milonga y danza; imaginarios del tango en sus espacios de producción simbólica: la milonga y el espectáculo (La Plata: Universidad Nacional de la Plata, 2006), pp. 96–105. 12 E. Gálvez, ‘El tango en su época de gloria: ni prostibulario, ni orillero; Los bailes en los clubes sociales y deportivos de Buenos Aires 1938–1959’, Nuevo Mundo, Nuevos Mundos, 2009. doi: 10.4000/nuevomundo.55183; R. Daskal, Los clubes en la Ciudad de Buenos Aires (1932–1945): Revista La Cancha: sociabilidad, política y Estado (Buenos Aires: Teseo, 2013), pp. 94–7. 13 E. Cubilla, ‘Buenos Aires en carnaval: los corsos del barrio de Villa Devoto en la década de 1930’, Páginas, 10:23 (2018), 101–25. See also Daskal, Los clubes en la Ciudad, pp. 122–4, and A. Matallana, Qué saben los pitucos: La experiencia del tango entre 1910 y 1940 (Buenos Aires: Prometeo, 2007), pp. 82–5. 14 A. Brodsky, Sephardi, Jewish, Argentine: Community and National Identity, 1880–1960 (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2016), pp. 140–9. 15 Pujol, Historia del baile, pp. 98–9. 16 ‘Los danzantes que viven de la danza son quienes con inaudito descaro fomentan la inmoralidad’, Atlántida (7 July 1927), p. 18; C. Marshall, ‘Filantropía, dancing y cultura: Al margen de la moral’, El Hogar (22 February 1924), p. 5. 17 M. Paoletti, ‘La red de empresarios europeos en Buenos Aires (1880–1925): Algunas consideraciones preliminares’, Revista Argentina de Musicología, 21:1 (2020), 51–76.

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18 C. Szwarcer, ‘Charles Seguin: Un asombroso empresario’, Estampas de Buenos Aires. Blog. 22/01/2020. http://blogs.monografias.com/estampas-de-buenosaires/2014/08/11/charles-seguin-un-asombroso-empresario-esplendor-y-ocasode-la-poderosa-south-american-tour/. 19 Matallana, Qué saben los pitucos, p. 102. 20 L. Benarós, ‘El tango y los lugares y casas de baile’, in R. Selles and L. Benarós (eds), La Historia del Tango: Vol. 2 (Buenos Aires: Ediciones Corregidor, 1977), p. 279; Pujol, Historia del baile, p. 42. 21 Benarós, ‘El tango’, pp. 252–6; Matallana, Qué saben los pitucos, pp. 101–3. 22 Pujol, Historia del baile, pp. 112–13. 23 Matallana, Qué saben los pitucos, pp. 102–3; Pujol, Historia del baile, pp. 112, 146–8. 24 Benarós, ‘El tango’, pp. 233–5. 25 Pujol, Historia del baile, p. 148. 26 Tania, Discepolín y yo (Buenos Aires: La Bastilla, 1973), pp. 29–33. 27 Manuel Gálvez, Nacha Regules (1919), quoted in T. De Lara and I. De Panti, El tema del tango en la literatura Argentina (Buenos Aires: Ediciones Culturales Argentinas, 1961), p. 290. 28 ‘Hay esclavas en el cabaret’, Crítica (9 November 1925), p. 10; ‘Juan Pueblo farrea esta noche’, Ahora (16 September 1935), pp. 44–5. It is important to note that this wage was higher than that of the average female office worker. 29 ‘Milonguita se quedo en el peor recodo de la mala vida: la academia de bailes’, Crítica (7 May 1926), p. 14. 30 Pujol, Historia del baile, pp. 101–2, 127. 31 R. Arlt, ‘Me refería a los bailes pobres’, El Mundo (24 December 1930), p. 6. 32 E. Gómez Carillo, El encanto de Buenos Aires (Madrid: Mundo Latino, 1921), p. 172. 33 ‘Cosas de la urbe: algo acerca de las milongas domingueras’, Ultima Hora (28 October 1924), p. 3. 34 Gálvez, ‘El tango en su época de gloria’, n.p. 35 Ibid.; Rosboch, La rebelión de los abrazos, pp. 98–9. 36 ‘Cosas de la urbe: algo acerca de las milongas domingueras’, Última Hora (28 October 1924), p. 3. 37 ‘La inmoralidad en los bailes’, Crítica (11 November 1922), p. 15. 38 J. Baim, Tango: Creation of a Cultural Icon (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2007), pp. 46–87. 39 M. Ogando, ‘Del burdel al salón: Una mirada sobre la evolución sociocoreográfica del tango para entender por qué es baile nuestro’, in J. Adámoli (ed.), Doce ventanas al tango (Buenos Aires: Fundación El Libro, 2001), pp. 175–96. 40 S. Saítta, Regueros de tinta: El diario Crítica en la década de 1920 (Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI, 2013), p. 147. 41 V. Méndez Calzada, ‘Los bailes de moda’, El Hogar (7 May 1920), n.p. 42 Pujol, Historia del baile, p. 105. 43 R. L. Montero and N. Cirio, Rita Montero, memorias de piel morena: una afroargentina en el espectáculo (Buenos Aires: Dunken, 2012), p. 32.

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44 R. Arlt, ‘A una muchacha que no baila’, El Mundo (17 January 1930), p. 6. 45 Gálvez, Historia de arrabal (1923), quoted in De Lara and De Panti, El tema del tango en la literatura, pp. 310–11. 46 Gálvez, ‘El tango en su época de gloria’, n.p. 47 S. Cecconi, ‘Territorios del tango en Buenos Aires: aportes para una historia de sus formas de inscripción’, Iberoamericana, 9:33 (2009), 49–68. 48 ‘El fox trot: Lo que es necesario hacer para danzar el fox trot’, El Gráfico (27 December 1919), n.p. El Gráfico was actually launched in 1919. 49 Vivian Persis Dewey was the author of the 1918 small manual titled Tips to Dancers: Good Manners for Ballroom and Dance Hall. 50 Caras y Caretas (12 September 1936), p. 89. 51 Pujol, Historia del baile, p. 106. 52 F. Lima, ‘Profesionales de la actualidad: los docentes de milongas’, Caras y Caretas (19 November 1938), p. 55. 53 Pujol, Historia del baile, p. 108. 54 F. Comas, El arte de bailar (Buenos Aires: Fontana y Traverso, 1932), p. 151. 55 For the porteño upper-class modern girl, see C. Tossounian, La Joven Moderna in Interwar Argentina: Gender, Nation and Popular Culture (Gainesville, FL: University of Florida Press, 2020), pp. 33–52. 56 J. J. de Soiza Reilly, ‘La cultura chic en Mar del Plata’ (1936), in J. J. de Soiza Reilly, Las Pecadoras (Ediciones de la Flor: Buenos Aires, 1974), pp. 7–13. 57 For Beba’s story, see Tossounian, La Joven Moderna in Interwar Argentina, pp. 40–3. 58 J. A. García, ‘Chiche y su tiempo’ (1922), in J. A. García, Obras completas (Buenos Aires: Zamora, 1955), pp. 901–4. 59 Méndez Calzada, ‘Los bailes de moda’, n.p. 60 R. Gache, Glosario de la farsa urbana (Buenos Aires: Centro Editor de América Latina, [1919] 1968), pp. 98–9. 61 Tossounian, La Joven Moderna in Interwar Argentina, pp. 34–44; R. Salvatore, ‘Yankee Advertising in Buenos Aires: Reflections on Americanization’, Interventions, 7:2 (2005), 216–35; F. Rocchi, ‘La sociedad de consumo en tiempos difíciles: el modelo estadounidense y la modernización de la publicidad argentina frente a la crisis de 1930’, Historia Crítica, 65 (2017), 93–114. 62 ‘¿Qué piensa usted del tango?’, Atlántida (12 February 1920), n.p. For the same viewpoint, see ‘¿Qué piensa usted del tango?’, Atlántida (1 January 1920), n.p. 63 ‘La Beba va al cine por la tarde’, Caras y Caretas (30 July 1927), n.p.; ‘Beba aprende a bailar el Charleston’, Caras y Caretas (10 September 1927), n.p.; G. Madero, ‘Los peligros del modernismo’, Para Ti (9 July 1935), p. 30; G.  Madero, ‘Los peligros del modernismo’, Para Ti (30 July 1935), p. 18; R. Blanca, ‘Ejemplos inconvenientes’, Para Ti (26 October 1937), p. 101. 64 R. S. Ortíz, El hombre que está solo y espera (Buenos Aires: Gleizer, [1931] 1932), pp. 59–61, 118. 65 E. Archetti, Masculinities, Football, Polo and the Tango in Argentina (Oxford: Berg, 1999), pp. 140–7. For the milonguita character, see also A. Viladrich, ‘Neither Virgins nor Whores: Tango Lyrics and Gender Representations in the

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Tango World’, Journal of Popular Culture, 39:2 (2006), 272–93; D. Armus, ‘Tango, Gender and Tuberculosis in Buenos Aires, 1900–1940’, in D. Armus (ed.), Disease in the History of Modern Latin America: From Malaria to Aids (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003), pp. 101–29. 66 For Mexican cabaretera films, see J. Hershfield, Mexican Cinema/Mexican Women (1940–1950) (Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press, 1996), pp.  77–105; for the Japanese dancehall girl, see V. Mackie, ‘Sweet, Perfume, and Tobacco: The Ambivalent Labor of the Dancehall Girl’, in A. Freedman, L. Miller, and C. Yano (eds), Modern Girls on the Go: Gender, Mobility, and Labor in Japan (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013), pp. 67–83. 67 For milonguitas’ consumer aspirations, see C. Tossounian, ‘Milonguitas: Tango, Gender and Consumption in Buenos Aires (1920–1940)’, Estudios Interdisciplinarios de América Latina y el Caribe, 27:2 (2016), 29–45. 68 ‘Juan Pueblo farrea esta noche… y será Pototo Enciso su “chimentador” preciso’, Ahora (16 September 1935), pp. 44–5. 69 Gómez Carrillo, El encanto de Buenos Aires, p. 173. 70 F. Rocchi, ‘La americanización del consumoe: las batallas por el mercado argentino, 1920–1945’, in M. I. Barnero and A. Regalsky (eds), Americanización: Estados Unidos y América Latina en el siglo XX (Buenos Aires: Eduntref, 2003), pp. 154–6. 71 K. Peiss, Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Turn-of-theCentury New York (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1986), pp. 62–3; J. Nott, Going to the Palais: A Social and Cultural History of Dancing and Dance Halls in Britain, 1918–1960 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), pp. 108–17. 72 For working women’s fashion, see Tossounian, La Joven Moderna in Interwar Argentina, pp. 68–73. 73 Arlt, ‘Me refería a los bailes pobres’. 74 A. Storni, ‘Un baile familiar’, in M. Méndez, G. Queirolo, and A. Salomone (eds), Nosotras y la piel: Selección de ensayos de Alfonsina Storni (Buenos Aires: Alfaguara, 1998), pp. 34–7. 75 R. Arlt, ‘Baile de teatro’, El Mundo (17 February 1931), p. 6. For further descriptions of Carnival parties, see Matallana, Qué saben los pitucos, pp. 82–9. 76 N. Lima, Método de baile teórico práctico para bailar el tango argentino de salón (Buenos Aires: n.p., n.d. [c. 1916]), p. 6. 77 Lima, Método de baile teórico práctico para bailar el tango, p. 3. 78 Matallana, Qué saben los pitucos, p. 83. 79 S. Riese, Facas, taitas y milongas (1922), quoted in De Lari and De Panti, El  tango en la literatura, pp. 306–7. See also Arlt, ‘Me refería a los bailes pobres’. 80 M. Romero, ‘El bailarín del cabaret’ (1922), quoted in De Lari and De Panti, El tema del tango en la literatura, pp. 307–8. 81 H. Brumana, ‘Dos bailes’, in H. Brumana, Obras completas (Buenos Aires: Claridad, 1958), pp. 734–6.

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82 C. Onofre Alvear, ‘El arte de pescar marido’, Vosotras (23 November 1935), pp. 22–3. Carlos Onofre Alvear, a famous poet and journalist, was the pen name of Francismo Rímoli, known also by the alias of Dante Linyera. 83 ‘Cartas abiertas: a una niña que baila tango’, Atlántida (16 June 1921), n.p. 84 ‘Consejos a un bailarín’, Fray Mocho, quoted in Pujol, Historia del baile, p. 86. 85 ‘Cosas de la urbe: algo acerca de las milongas domingueras’, Última Hora (28 October 1924), p. 3. 86 R. Arlt, ‘A una muchacha que no baila’, El Mundo (17 December 1930), p. 6. 87 ‘¿Qué piensa usted del tango?’, Atlántida (1 January 1920), n.p. 88 ‘¿Qué piensa usted del tango?’, Atlántida (29 January 1920), n.p. 89 ‘¿Qué piensa usted del tango?’, Atlántida (12 February 1920), n.p. 90 ‘¿Qué piensa usted del tango?’, Atlántida (15 January 1920), n.p. 91 ‘¿Qué piensa usted del tango?’, Atlántida (29 January 1920), n.p. 92 Alvear, ‘El arte de pescar marido’. 93 ‘¿Qué piensa usted del tango?’, Atlántida (12 February 1920), n.p. 94 ‘Epistolario sentimental’, Para Ti (3 February 1925), pp. 12, 15. 95 J. Curuchaga Hernández, ‘Las costumbres actuales no favorecen la sociabilidad’, El Hogar (5 November 1937), p. 8. 96 L. Davies, ‘La evolución de las costumbres porteñas: del cabaret al dancing’, El Hogar (17 February 1933), pp. 17, 64. 97 ‘La desmedida afición al baile de algunas mujeres casadas’, Atlántida (4 August 1927), p. 7. 98 R. Gache, Baile y filosofía (Madrid: Babel, 1928), p. 141. 99 A. Fortune, ‘Mi marido no baila’, Para Ti (5 June 1923), p. 46.

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Building ‘Dreamland’: dancers, musicians, and the transformation of social dancing into mass culture in the USA, c. 1900–41 Klaus Nathaus The 1936 film Dancing Feet (dir.: Joseph Santley) tells the story of Judy Jones, granddaughter of a rich lumber baron, and Jimmy Cassidy, a bellhop who aspires to become a dance instructor. The two meet in a dance hall where men buy tickets to dance with ‘hostesses’. Judy has come with her upper-class friends for ‘slumming’, while Jimmy visits the hall to hone his dancing skills. He mistakes Judy for one of the regular girls, much to her friends’ amusement, who keep quiet about her identity. Subsequently, Judy falls out with her grandfather. To prove her independence, she seeks employment at the dance hall. Now a ‘proper’ hostess, she meets Jimmy again and decides to help him launch Dr Cassidy’s Dance School of the Air, both as a dance partner and with money she secretly borrows from a wealthy friend. After a few more plot twists, Judy and Jimmy are at the dance hall for the grand finale. Their tap dance routine goes out on the airwaves and is a success with the radio audience, who have rolled up their carpets and tap along in their living rooms. Jimmy declares his love for Judy. Behind them, a curtain opens through which they dance to join the other couples on the dance floor. As much as it is a love story, Dancing Feet is also a film about a ‘social world’ that has the Dreamland ballroom at its centre. For Judy, the realness of this world contrasts with her sheltered rich-girl existence. At Dreamland, she finds love and becomes an independent woman. Jimmy realises his business ambition at the ballroom, turning into a respected entrepreneur. The dance hall is a place of social harmony and self-improvement, not only for the two lovers, but for everyone who is stepping out, including a clumsy patron who had stamped on Judy’s foot earlier, but taps away skilfully at the finale. Radio connects Dreamland to the homes of remote listeners, thus further extending its social world into American society. As Jimmy and Judy perform at Dreamland, the film cuts to a young woman, a cook in his kitchen, two pre-teenagers, a middle-aged white couple, and a black couple amidst family, all dancing to the same music in their remote settings. With the help of proper instruction and broadcasting, the film suggests, dancing

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bridges the divides between the sexes, classes, ages, and races, creating a shared mass culture. Viewed in the context of the history of social dancing in the USA, the choice of Dreamland as a location for romance is surprising. ‘Taxi-dance’ halls, where men bought tickets to dance with hostesses, had been under intense public scrutiny only five years before Dancing Feet’s release. Brandished as ‘creep joints’, they were regarded as a last resort for women in dire straits and a honey-trap for single men. This critique resonated with the middle-class condemnation of social dancing at the turn of the century, when the activity became commercial, and was sometimes voiced by the same moral reform associations, like the Committee of Fourteen in New York and the Juvenile Protective Association in Chicago, that had campaigned against saloon dance halls thirty years earlier.1 By the mid-1930s, this debate had ebbed away, so that the social world of commercial couple dancing could be depicted as ‘Dreamland’ without appearing completely implausible. The present chapter traces this change, focusing on the producers of this social world – musicians, dance teachers, ballroom operators, etc. – and exploring the interaction between dancers that the setting afforded.2 This is not to say that the chapter takes Dreamland as a realistic representation of social dancing in mid-1930s America. On the contrary, it is one of the aims of this study to assess how far the boundaries of inclusion actually extended. However, even the most critical onlooker on social dancing in the USA will notice a remarkable shift between its commercial breakthrough around 1900 and its reputation by the late 1930s, when it had transformed into a legitimate activity strongly associated with heterosexual romance. The chapter draws mainly from social and cultural histories of dancing, dance studies, and histories of popular music and leisure, supplementing this scholarship with trade press reports. Its first part enters working-class dance venues at the turn of the century and argues that the improvised and vigorous dancing that moral reformers observed there was not so much an expression of sexual desire as a strategy to deflate the expectation of a sexual exchange. It suggests that girls and boys who found themselves peerpressured to consummate their dance floor encounter with a member of the opposite sex exited the situation through a performance of hilarity. In this, they met with dance musicians whose conduct was largely a product of their working conditions. Forced to compete on a crowded and open labour market, dance musicians, a large share of them black men, developed a style based on improvisation and showmanship. The second part shifts the focus to upmarket Broadway cabarets in the  1910s. It tries to explain why ‘respectable’ middle-class patrons defied  the fear of losing face and engaged in ‘bunny hugs’ and ‘turkey

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trots’, before it interprets initiatives to refine these steps as attempts to redraw class boundaries during the dance ‘craze’. Concomitant to middleclass acceptance of popular steps, African American musicians successfully claimed that modern dance music was hardwired in their racialised bodies, making them naturally superior purveyors of dance music. The third part traces the rise of ballroom culture between the wars, charting the interrelated growth of the ballroom industry and the dance band business. As the latter became segregated under the influence of broadcasting, new booking agencies, and emerging jazz criticism, the former sharply excluded people who were marginalised by their race and their sexual orientation. Turning marginalised punters away and shedding dancing’s associations with ‘black’ moves and music, ‘Dreamland’ became a place of respectability and romance for heterosexual whites across a wider class range.

Improvisation on the floor and the podium: working-class patrons and marginalised musicians in the saloon dance hall around 1900 Social dancing was not a new activity for working-class Americans at the turn of the century. Immigrants had danced at community events and continued to do so. What changed from the 1890s, however, was that social dancing became commercial, part of the ‘cheap amusements’ that led mostly young people away from the supervision of families and neighbours. A first step in this direction was the ‘rackets’, dances that were organised by profit-making entrepreneurs in rented halls. Saloonkeepers saw business opportunities and provided backrooms for dancing, making these venues the most common space for commercial dancing in American cities at the time.3 Dance events in saloons and rented halls were mostly frequented by teenage wage earners. The large majority of patrons were under the age of twenty, with girls as young as twelve and boys slightly older on average. Teenagers of both sexes went to the dances for a variety of reasons, like escaping crowded homes and having a break from strenuous work. The fact that they went to dances in groups of same-sex friends strongly suggests that peer expectations had a considerable influence on their leisure choices. Because girls, who had previously worked mostly in domestic service, were in the early twentieth century more likely to find employment in workshops, retail, or offices, they had colleagues with whom to socialise. As ‘gentlemen friends’ were a staple topic of workplace conversation, going to dances became almost a must, as it demonstrated maturity and independence in front of relevant others.4

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While the initial motivation of working-class teenagers was homosocial, the activity involved them in heterosexual relations. As girls had to pass on their wages to their parents, they depended on men to pay for them when they went out. Male sponsors paid for drinks, tickets, or presents and expected a sexual favour in return, ranging from a kiss or petting to intercourse. In a pioneering study, Kathy Peiss has termed this exchange ‘treating’.5 It forced girls to tread a fine line between being ‘treated’ as a woman and gaining notoriety as a prostitute. Receiving gifts from men proved that they were desirable and improved their standing among their female peers, whereas taking money for sex was heavily sanctioned. Girls were aware of treating’s proximity to sex for sale, to the extent that they knew what prostitutes received for their services and took that as a benchmark for expected presents. Under this premise, boys and girls stepped out on the dance floor and into the focus of numerous onlookers. They engaged in simple steps that became known as ‘animal’ or ‘tough’ dances. These are commonly traced back to African American origins, by reference to either San Francisco’s Barbary Coast red-light district or the influence of American slaves. While this suggests relatively stable movement patterns and black ‘roots’, a closer look suggests that the dancing was actually highly improvised, made up from a repertoire of steps partly derived from the folk dances of the Old World.6 Apparently, the children of German, Irish, Italian, and Eastern European immigrants drew on whatever dance moves they knew and saw fit. Moral reformers and their investigators have looked at these dances in pursuit of vice, whereas historians have often interpreted them as a form of resistance against middle-class control.7 However, considering them as part of an interaction between a man who expects a return on his investment and a girl who is mostly concerned about her reputation brings out a different rationale. From this perspective, certain dance moves become discernible as part of the girls’ strategies to keep unwanted suitors at bay and their own reputations intact. Girls developed a range of tactics to avoid intimacy, for instance by leaving the dance hall at the right moment, by hiding, feigning illness, or arranging with a female friend to break up a togetherness that was getting uncomfortable.8 Dance moves were part of this arsenal of strategies. Imitations of turkeys, bunnies, and bears afforded female dancers opportunities to deflect the tensions of the treat and dissolve them in a state of hilarity. The same is true for ‘spieling’ or ‘pivoting’, a dance where both partners placed their chins on each other’s shoulders and spun around on the spot, often accompanied by shouting and singing. This energetic dance induced dizziness, which again took the sting of the sexual bargain out of the situation and diverted the interaction to i­nconsequential fun.

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Seen from this perspective, ‘tough’ dances had less to do with sex than with its avoidance. Neither the girl nor the boy, watched by their respective peer groups, needed to ‘go all the way’ if they transformed the treat into a display of shared fun. To be sure, for boys in pursuit of a sexual reward, a moment of hilarity will have seemed no more than a consolation prize, and it is likely that they felt they were falling short of peer expectations. However, this consideration would have hardly altered their behaviour on the dance floor. Boys who wanted to get their return had no choice but to play along with a dancing girl, as this was still their best chance to get what money alone could not buy. While they depended on male sponsorship for tickets and male acknowledgement for social status, girls had an advantage when it came to the action on the dance floor. The numbers stacked in girls’ favour, with young men in pursuit of romance outnumbering girls throughout the period. The treating mechanism as such also worked for the girls, because men had to pay upfront, and while they may have felt entitled to a return, they could be kept waiting indefinitely. A girl who was successful at keeping boys waiting – and paying – may have gained notoriety among men for being a ‘tease’. Among the girls, however, such a reputation could only boost her status, as it proved both her attractiveness and her chastity. This particular constellation may account for the fact that women were in general keener dancers than men. It may also explain the obstinacy boys displayed in dance halls. As Randy McBee shows, smoking, spitting, tobacco-chewing, drinking contests, asking girls for a dance by just nodding or pointing a finger, but also refusing to dance were among the many male reactions to the loss of influence over women which social dancing implied. Power shifted to women who, if they were picky and proficient dancers, could deploy it mercilessly by turning down young men who had left the protection of their group of friends to ask for a dance. In return, men tried to transform the saloon back into a space of male conviviality, where women had only been present as pictures of nudes or a topic for conversation.9 The soundtrack to this balancing act of expectations and reputation was supplied by musicians who were caught up in their own game of impression management. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, urbanisation, increasing real wages, and the rise of commercial entertainment created a growing demand for musicians. In 1900, the US census registered some 92,000 professional musicians,10 not including the many semi-professionals who made music to supplement their income from other jobs. The musicians’ labour market was highly differentiated, segmented along the lines of instrumental skills as well as race and gender. White, male musicians performing in symphony orchestras and theatres represented the higher end of this market. From around 1900, these musicians were increasingly likely

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to be affiliated to the American Federation of Musicians (AFM), whose membership rose from 10,000 at the beginning of the century to almost 80,000 in 1918.11 Trying to prevent non-union musicians from undercutting rates, the AFM cast its net wide and accepted most working musicians without much concern for formal musical training. However, AFM locals drew a line at accepting black instrumentalists, who, after Chicago set the precedent in 1902, were at best allowed to form segregated charters under white local branches. It is safe to say that many organisers of working-class dances did not hire AFM members but sought to find able players among non-union musicians. This meant that they had to select performers on a labour market that was open to virtually all comers and thus highly competitive. Black players were overrepresented on this market. Not only were they excluded from the unions, but they were also more inclined to work in music and put up with adverse labour conditions. A badly paid gig in show business was still more attractive than most other jobs available to African Americans. For them, music opened a way to move up in the world. According to music historian Thomas Riis, who refers to census figures, ‘musicians and actors constituted the two largest professional employment categories for blacks nationwide’ in 1900.12 Many hopeful black musicians migrated to the cities, most importantly to New York, the emerging centre of American show business. They usually played for tips at first. The way to proceed to better engagements was to outperform other contenders and gain a reputation among patrons, proprietors, and band leaders who might hire them. To this end, musicians ­cultivated personas that stood out both on and off the stage. Expensive clothes communicated success, and so musicians who could afford an expensive coat took care that people could see the label. Sharp dressing went with smooth talking; competitiveness permeated every facet of a musician’s conduct. This affected musicians’ music and performance style. Musicians cultivated instrumental gimmicks, which they performed with conspicuous gestures, from backhanded glissandi on the piano to tricks with mutes on brass instruments. Successful players understood that performance was a confidence game, rarely won by those who stuck to the score. Competition required quick thinking and adaptability, so that new tricks frequently replaced the old ones. Novelties were rapidly adopted by other musicians who worked them into their personal style.13 While barrooms were the place to impress peers and potential employers, playing for a dance came with slightly different demands. In that environment, musicians had to keep in mind that in order to please their paymasters, they had to please an audience that neither cared much about nor even understood the more subtle points of their musical virtuosity. At the same

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time, however, dancers who themselves were putting moves together on the spot and were thankful for the release that hilarity allowed were very willing to respond to musicians’ stunts and improvisations. In fact, both parties thrived on mutual excitement, co-created by the ruckus on the dance floor and the conspicuous performance style on the podium. Evidence for the repertoire played at working-class dances in this period is sparse, but it is likely that Tin Pan Alley songs made up much of the music played to dancers. This repertoire lent itself to dance accompaniment because it was widely available and known as well as used in exhibition dancing. New York’s popular music publishers in the last years of the nineteenth century brought out ragtime tunes in great numbers. They promoted them on the vaudeville stages and sold them cheaply through department stores.14 Pianist James P. Johnson in an interview nearly fifty years later confirms the prevalence of popular tunes, remembering to have played Tin Pan Alley songs such Alexander’s Ragtime Band during his stint at a Tenderloin brothel in 1912. He interspersed these with instrumental works by Broadway composers like Victor Herbert and Rudolf Friml as well as so-called Indian songs like Hiawatha, also popularised via the vaudeville stage.15 In any case, more important than the repertoire was the style of delivery, which would have been improvised and responsive to the goingson on the dance floor. While this performance style can be traced back to African American music, it should also be understood as skills that were reiterated in the new commercial dance hall setting, where working musicians were required to be able to turn heads and move feet. Thus, ragtime was at least as much the result of musicians’ changing working conditions as of ‘tradition’. By 1900, such a tradition had not been established in popular music, neither on the vaudeville stages – where black characters more often than not were whites in blackface and where performers routinely assumed different ethnic characters – nor at workingclass dances. In both settings, versatility, novelty, and improvisational skills ranked highly, whereas ‘authenticity’ was of no concern. This began to change in the 1910s, when innovation in social dancing moved from the saloons, vice districts, and working-class neighbourhoods to Broadway cabarets. It was during this decade that popular dance music became defined as ‘black’.

Demarcating class in the dance ‘craze’: heterogeneous crowds and black professionals in 1910s cabarets According to contemporary commentators, America became ‘dance mad’ in the early 1910s. Previously confined to exclusive ballrooms and the private

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homes of the rich or quarantined in working-class quarters and vice districts, the ‘virus’ of social dancing spread to the leisure venues of the middle class where it ‘infected’ even sober businessmen and crusty grandfathers. Songwriter Irving Berlin diagnosed the condition in his tune Everybody’s Doing It, published in 1911, at the height of the ‘craze’. It takes the perspective of a couple who visit a dance hall and let each other know that they feel intoxicated by ‘funny music’ and share their bewilderment about a dancing ‘bear’, before giving in to the excitement and getting in line to mingle with other ragtime couples. The universal talk about a dance ‘craze’ is, of course, not to be mistaken for an apt description of the phenomenon, but part of the effort to frame a cultural offering as an irresistible force of nature. Taking a sober look at the ‘craze’ and focusing on trendsetting New York, one can see social dancing arriving on Broadway in connection with the emergence of cabarets. Beginning with Folies Bergère, opened in 1911 by theatrical managers Henry B. Harris and Jesse L. Lasky and modelled on the Parisian music hall of the same name, upmarket restaurants began to host variety shows. Though the Folies closed after a few months, the basic idea to combine dining with vaudeville caught on. Healey’s, Shanley’s, Reisenweber’s, Café Martin, and other Broadway restaurants announced regular cabarets from late 1911 onward. Where the Folies failed, these venues succeeded by holding costs down. They staged shorter and less elaborate programmes, consisting mainly of singers and dance acts. Some of these acts were moonlighting from nearby vaudeville houses, whose managers eyed the cabarets with suspicion.16 To avoid open conflict with the powerful vaudeville combines, performers and restaurant proprietors took care to keep programmes low key. This policy was also opportune in view of licensing regulations. Cabarets did not require a theatrical licence as long as they did not charge admission or use scenery for their shows.17 Licensing, costs, and the uneasy relationship with vaudeville theatres shaped the cabaret formula. Admission was cheap or free, shows informal and understated, and proprietors earned money from food and drink sales. Cabaret’s position in the entertainment ecology also made social dancing a major attraction, since that was an activity where guests did much of the entertainment work themselves. Cabaret entertainment was also shaped by popular music publishers who soon discovered opportunities to ‘plug’ new songs. They sent their employees to act as musical directors, sing the latest releases, judge dance competitions, or hustle performers to feature their firm’s catalogue. In addition, they offered cabaret proprietors stage acts, using their contacts to do some booking business on the side.18 While costs for the promotion of new songs on the vaudeville stages rose, cabarets provided publishers with cheaper ‘plugging’ outlets. For publishers, cabarets had the added a­ dvantage that

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songs could be repeated in the course of an evening. Moreover, they were places where publishers could socialise with variety artists outside the supervision of the powerful vaudeville magnates. The keen interest of music publishers in cabarets had consequences for the popular music repertoire, which featured dance songs ever more prominently. Like Berlin’s Everybody’s Doing It, many new songs were written with the dance cabaret in mind, their lyrics giving guidance on how to act on the dance floor. Music publishers were, with a slight delay, followed by record companies, which from 1914 issued dance music recordings explicitly targeted at people wanting to learn dancing at home.19 Experiments of restaurant proprietors with the cabaret format and music publishers supplying songs tailored to dancing set the scene for ‘everyone’ to join the fun, including the sober businessman and his wife. Concerning the attractiveness of social dancing for an aspirational middle class, it helped that the cabaret as well as the dancing came with the cachet of European sophistication and the flair of cosmopolitanism. Folies Bergère defined the amusement as Parisian, and subsequent cabarets maintained the Old World connection by featuring performers from European variety stages and (re-)importing dance steps from Paris and Berlin. Journalists reporting from cabarets proudly published foreign praise, which shows that Americans looked up to European capitals when it came to higher-class entertainment.20 The promise of sophistication may explain why ‘respectable’ people frequented cabarets to watch. To make them go a step further and move onto the dance floor, it was crucial that the boundary between stage and auditorium was blurred and eventually collapsed from both ends. In restaurant cabarets, no orchestra pit or footlights separated performers from audiences, and bands were placed on podiums that edged right on the dance floor.21 Performers who in vaudeville were used to reach the spectator in the last row developed in the cabaret a more personal, almost intimate delivery. Stepping down into the auditorium, they moved within touching distance of the audience. Some dancers began their performance by getting up from one of the tables and starting their show amidst the audience.22 Furthermore, it was a well-publicised fact that Broadway restaurants were frequented by stars and starlets, from Broadway actors to boxers and chorus girls. In this way, cabarets taught their guests not just to focus their attention on the stage but to look out for the action in the auditorium. While professional entertainers stepped down into the auditorium, members of the audience moved into the limelight. Proficient amateurs participated in the many dance contests that were hosted in venues across the social spectrum, including the high-end restaurants, apparently with the aim of turning professional. The trade press nurtured the expectation that

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dancing could lead to a career in entertainment by acknowledging aspirational dancers who showed their talent in neighbourhood halls. ‘It is but a question of time before the winners of these local dancing contests will be offered booking in the houses in their vicinities’, commented Variety on a contest at the Danse La Fleur on upper Broadway. Billboard suggested that ‘the art of instruction has proven a profitable field for the many hundreds now engaged along those lines’, mentioning barbers, clerks, chauffeurs, and grocers who went into teaching dances while the ‘craze’ lasted.23 But Variety was less generous when it came to the upmarket restaurant cabarets, where ‘near-professional’ dancers were scorned for ‘showing off’: ‘It can’t always be told whether this bunch is really looking for a job or merely happens to own a head, but the impression they leave, that they are “the” dancers can’t be gotten away from.’24 Struggling to place these dancers socially, this observer explains their conspicuousness with showbiz aspirations. Other people of unknown social and occupational status and with ulterior motives frequented the cabarets, trying to catch the eye of the wealthy and the show business elite. Prostitutes were attracted by an environment of liquor-fuelled dancing and managed to get past doormen who were instructed to keep them out.25 Their male equivalents were the ‘tango pirates’, whom the New York Times branded as ‘a new kind of parasite whose victims are the unguarded daughters of the rich’.26 Characterised as well turned out, smart-talking young men, good dancers, and shrewd flatterers, these ‘pirates’ operated mostly at afternoon dances where they approached young women, took their money, and led them astray to indulge in drugs and illicit sex. Prostitutes and ‘gigolos’ were the most extreme examples of social climbers who used the cabaret setting to socialise with the rich. Their presence was most certainly overstated by the press, but as infamous types they represented the possibility of passing for someone else in the fluid environment of the urban dance hall. In New York, Times Square was still very much in the process of becoming a legitimate entertainment district. While vaudeville and popular music eagerly strove for respectability, they still bore the traces of their lower-class, poor immigrant origins. Both geographically and socially, Broadway and Bowery were still very close in the 1910s.27 From the other end of the class scale, young middle- to upper-class men and women who had previously patronised lower-class ‘joints’ to go ‘slumming’ now frequented Broadway cabarets. When dance hall reformers got the ear of the authorities and the police clamped down on vice districts and saloon dance halls at the beginning of the 1910s,28 ‘slumming’ – i.e. seeking proximity to the ‘Other’ in order to impress peers – became detached from those localities and found its temporary home elsewhere. Historian Chad Heap points to bohemian cafés and tearooms as the next destination for

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‘slummers’,29 but the Broadway cabarets too lent themselves to those seeking excitement in a socially mixed setting. In any case, young people with a mind for adventure and experience in nightlife were forced out of the vice districts and were now doing the rounds on Broadway. The coming together of wealth and fame, showbiz hopefuls and dance instructors-to-be, social climbers and freeloaders, hustlers and ‘slummers’ created a situation in which the sober businessman and his wife were surrounded by a critical mass of people seeking ‘action’. Rather than catching a dance ‘virus’, they succumbed to self-assured, experienced nightlife performers who evidenced to them that indeed everybody, even the welldressed patrons of upmarket restaurants, was ‘doing it’. Heterogeneous mingling on the dance floor was neither happy nor meant to last. Restaurant proprietors grew weary of guests who may have enjoyed the dancing but did not spend money on food and drinks. Worse were crooks who approached respectable patrons and brought the cabaret into disrepute. To keep the unwanted element out, proprietors introduced dress rules, charged high prices for drinks, and employed floor managers who supervised the dancing and intervened in cases when flirting went too far.30 Cabaret operators as well as their well-heeled customers grappled with the problem that people of lower status invaded their leisure spaces undetected. ‘It knocks the class helter-skelter’, observed Variety at the New York Roof Cabaret, where better-off patrons paid an extra charge to be seated separately from the crowd, only to find themselves sharing the dance floor with truck drivers and longshoremen.31 In this situation, dance instructors promised to restore status distinctions by refining social dancing. The most prolific teachers in the early 1910s were Irene and Vernon Castle, a married couple who rose to fame with the cachet of Vernon’s British citizenship and a repertoire of steps from Europe. The Castles and other dancing couples set out to transform the simple ‘animal’ dances into more elegant and graceful, yet still easy to learn movements. This initiative has been, with convincing reasons, interpreted as cultural appropriation and ‘whitewashing’.32 However, given that the racial status of dancers was hardly contested, the blurring of class distinctions seemed the far more pressing problem on the dance floors. This is confirmed by the way the Castles and their programme of refinement were promoted. The Rochester Herald, for example, in a story about the couple’s exclusive dance school drew the analogy, ‘as vaccination is to smallpox, so is Castle House to the ordinary restaurant cabaret’.33 The central message of that as well as other newspaper reports was that the dance ‘craze’ had infected all bodies equally and that the Castles held the cure. To support them in their campaign to refine social dancing, the Castles in 1914 hired band leader James Reese Europe as musical director and his

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Society Dance Orchestra as exclusive accompaniment. They were not the only ones to employ black musicians to perform dance music to white audiences. By the summer of 1913, black bands and orchestras were playing at upmarket restaurants on Broadway and beginning to command higher fees than their white competitors. Soon after, current dance music was regarded as quintessentially ‘black’, and the new fashionable steps linked to ‘black’ music. To understand the affordance of ‘black’ steps to white dancers, we need to take into account initiatives of African American musicians, who managed to claim ‘authenticity’ for their performances at the time of the dance ‘craze’. James Europe played a central role in this. A classical violinist by training, he moved to New York in 1903. As he found that he could not break into playing art music, he traded his instrument for a mandolin and performed at Tenderloin clubs, in vaudeville, or for tips in Broadway restaurants. Going back to his social contacts in Washington DC, he was also hired to assemble bands that could perform at elite parties.34 In this function, he experienced first-hand the challenges of recruiting non-­unionised musicians, who were difficult to find and would leave him stranded if something more attractive came up for them. To address this problem, in 1910 Europe founded a booking service for black musicians. The Clef Club of New York City turned out to be much more than a placement service. As part of Europe’s efforts to raise the professional image of circa 200 members the club had at the time, he organised high-profile concerts to showcase their skills. Performing at Carnegie Hall, the Clef Club Symphony Orchestra impressed both black and white concert-goers, as well as influential critics, with selections of marches, light classics, spirituals, and popular ballads.35 However, its particular strength was dance music, according to Europe. As the band leader explained to the press after a concert in 1914, ‘we colored people have our own music that is part of us … the product of our soul. Our people have a monopoly of this kind of work, for the simple reason that the negro has an inimitable ear for time in dancing.’36 James Europe claimed that black musicians had a natural gift for dance music. To confirm this, Clef Club musicians, many of them being excellent sight-readers, memorised their repertoire to perform it without having to look at the scores, apparently playing even the latest Broadway hit by ear. Whereas black musicians had, as mentioned in the first part of this chapter, improvised to stand out in an open and unregulated labour market, they now pretended to improvise in order to raise their professional status as the primary purveyors of dance music. The Clef Club set an example for other black musicians in America. In Boston in 1915, the members of the black chapter of the segregated AFM

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branch split from the union to form their own separate organisation because they ‘wanted to have their own identity’, as one of their leaders explained.37 Parallel to developments in the field of popular recording,38 dance music became oriented towards authenticity in the 1910s, when musicians used it as a resource to improve their position relative to competitors. Popular dance music became black, and black musicians were regarded as superior performers because of their (self-declared) natural abilities. The AFM, previously determined to keep black musicians out of the union, invited them in 1914 to join as equal members. Attempts to raise the professional image of African American musicians and to gentrify popular steps made dancing the latest steps palatable for middle-class couples while blunting the critique of social reformers. Thus, in the 1910s, the social world of commercial couple dancing had moved one step closer to ‘Dreamland’. Uncertainties for dancers remained, of course. Vernon Castle’s assertion that ‘vulgar people will make any dance vulgar’ was questionable, coming from an ex-vaudevillian who taught anyone willing to pay for lessons or the Castle’s dance manual.39 The refinement of social dancing thus did little to redraw class distinctions on the dance floor. However, while it could not keep the goats of social pretenders away from the sheep of middle-class dancers, the refinement of popular dancing was not without consequences. It turned out to be an important element to transform social dancing into the foremost mechanism for heterosexual courtship, a development that we will turn to in the next part of this chapter.

Opening the dance floor to the majority: white couples and name bands in the ballrooms, 1920–41 By the second half of the twentieth century, jazz had evolved into an art form with roots in black tradition and branches reaching into the world’s cultures. In its early years, however, there were few signs that jazz would gain this status, as it bore all the traces of a commercial fad. Like the ragtime dance ‘crazes’, it celebrated itself when it broke through in 1917, loudly announcing that it would spread like earlier dance ‘viruses’. ‘In a way, it was the turkey trot all over again’, writes music historian Elijah Wald, pointing for illustration to the liner notes of Everybody Loves a ‘Jass’ Band, a record released in March 1917 whose title suggested that there was no escape from this new trend. After answering the question if its listener would fall in love with jazz in the affirmative, the notes claimed that ‘(j)ass bands are all the rage this year in the “Lobster Palaces” along Broadway’,40 which linked the current fad to the centre of the previous dance ‘epidemic’. Numerous ensembles, both black and white, jumped on the bandwagon by

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adopting the ‘jazz’ moniker. Performed by small ensembles and showing all the trimmings of improvisation and showmanship, jazz was following the trajectory of ragtime and seemed destined to rekindle dance ‘madness’. After these beginnings, however, the development took a different turn, as cabarets were hit by Prohibition in January 1920 which ended drinks sales. A common view holds that their loss was more than compensated by speakeasies, where patrons are said to have drunk more than before the ban and danced the night away. A sober look at drink and dance music under the Prohibition, however, reveals that the ‘jazz age’ meant dark times for commercial nightlife. Venues that sold liquor risked being closed down on any night; money earned with the sale of alcohol was not reinvested into the clubs but went into the pockets of criminals. This meant that speakeasies lacked the resources necessary to make their entertainment flourish. The AFM claimed in February 1933, a few months before the alcohol ban was lifted, that Prohibition had cost 56,000 musicians (or two-fifths of the overall membership) their jobs.41 While jazz and speakeasies loom large in the memory of the ‘Roaring Twenties’, the major development in commercial popular dancing in this period was actually the rise of the ballrooms. The first ones had already opened in the 1910s, but the industry really took off after the war. By the middle of the 1920s, every large city had at least four or five such large ballrooms, with New York having ten, each accommodating between 500 and 6,000 patrons.42 From there on, the ballroom trade appears to have grown continuously. For some observers, not even the Wall Street Crash impeded its overall upswing. According to a Billboard editorial in 1930, ballroom managers from nearly all parts of the country reported ‘greatly improved business’ because the economic slump had lured dancers away from upmarket dance venues to ballrooms with ‘reasonable admission prices and no cover charges’.43 Global figures about the ballroom industry are few and have to be interpreted with great care, not least because different entities were counted. For the year 1933, the US Census Bureau established that 2,646 dance halls had grossed over $10 million.44 In its more comprehensive report for 1935, the bureau put the number of dance halls in the country at 3,872 and the combined intake from these venues, and a good 700 dance bands, at nearly $20 million. Even though the census researchers stressed that these figures did not allow for diachronic comparisons, Variety regarded them as evidence for a ‘substantial improvement in the dance hall business between 1933 and 1935’.45 Another survey, compiled by the Department of Commerce in 1937, focused on the dance band business and estimated that 400,000 musicians, both unionised and non-unionised, were paid full- or part-time for providing dance music to ‘hoof nutty’ Americans in

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restaurants, hotels, nightclubs, dance halls, and ballrooms. In total, the dance music industry took about $80 million, Variety reported, concluding that the ‘[d]ance business has climbed consistently, with this year seeing the peak of all times’.46 From the mid-1920s, dance business operators established the ballroom as an alternative to pricey cabarets as well as ill-reputed taxi-dance halls, drawing punters away from both while winning over new patrons for dancing. With their enormous size, glamorous décor, and fairy-tale names like Crystal Slipper, Cinderella, or indeed, Dreamland, the palaces had come a long way from the turn-of-the-century saloon dance halls. In contrast to those neighbourhood venues, they were located near transport hubs and other places of public amusement and attracted an out-of-town clientele. In addition to regular dancing, the palaces offered dance competitions, fancy dress parties, free tutoring, and variety entertainment similar to the cabarets, albeit of a more modest standard.47 A fairly typical example of these venues is the Pla-Mor Ballroom in Kansas City, Missouri, built in 1927 as part of an amusement complex that also housed a swimming pool and a bowling alley. With a sprung dance floor of 16,000 square feet, the venue accommodated up to 4,000 people at concerts. A ‘Latinesque’ decoration with Spanish motifs was meant to transport patrons to another world. From booths and tables at mezzanine level, guests could observe dancers and the band. Admission prices at forty cents during the week and fifty cents on Saturdays were in the region of one hour’s average pay for a male industrial worker – affordable for most but considered high enough to keep out the ‘rough crowd’. For Pla-Mor’s manager, the right social tone was key. He stressed the importance of courtesy towards patrons, which began with parking assistants and ended with himself greeting dancers on their way to the floor, showing them that he took personal care for their comfort. The busiest night at the Pla-Mor was Thursday, when dancers received an hour of free dance instruction to records before the band entered the podium. For this purpose, the ballroom employed 175 boys and girls, most of them out of high school and college. Young dancers flocked to the Sunday matinee, for thirty-five cents a head. The matinee kept the kids separate from the adult crowds, while introducing them to the conventions of this social world.48 With ‘reasonable’ prices and a differentiated programme, with comfort, cleanliness, and courtesy, ballrooms attracted dancers from a wide crosssection of society.49 Men and women under thirty made up the biggest group of guests. While minors were only present in larger numbers in the cheaper halls and on certain days, the palaces drew older people who had not visited dance halls in great numbers before. Some operators made extra efforts to attract these crowds, like the manager of the Totem Pole Ballroom

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Figure 2  Dancers at the Pla-Mor Ballroom, taken by Tynen & Murphy Photographers, Kansas City, Missouri, c. 1939

in Auburndale, Massachusetts, who, via radio, invited parents to join their dancing youngsters on Monday nights.50 The ballrooms’ attraction owed a good deal to their links to other branches of the entertainment industry. An important factor in this regard was their integration with the dance band business. As the furnishing and maintenance of dance palaces required large investments, ballroom proprietors joined forces, secured financial backing, and formed circuits to offer patrons new bands regularly. In May 1925, National Attractions Inc. set up a ballroom tour that offered dance bands consecutive three-day to weekly engagements in dozens of cities for up to forty weeks. The company was led by L. O. Beck, owner of a chain of dance halls in the Midwest, band manager J. E. Horn, and financier George F. Baright. With veteran talent agent William Morris on the board, National Attractions built on the model of vaudeville, where central booking had been established earlier in the century.51 In the second half of the 1920s, however, the dance music business integrated radio, hotels, and cinemas to promote bands. National Attractions folded, and large booking agencies rather than ballroom operators became the key players of a national industry. By 1941, the Music Corporation of America (MCA) managed about two-thirds of the booking trade; most

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of the rest was handled by the General Amusements Corporation and the William Morris agency after its return to the band business.52 The business model established by the late 1920s was based on radio promotion and touring: bands were hired to play in hotels with a radio hook-up, which meant that their performances were broadcast by local stations and, via expanding networks, to affiliates throughout the country. In this way, bands built up a base of listeners that would pay to see them when they came to town for a one-nighter. While the actual money was earned on tours, hotel gigs and airplay were the key to success.53 The corporate organisation of the dance business and its integration with radio had far-reaching consequences for bands as well as for dancers. To begin with, the broadcasting of ‘name bands’ set musical standards and homogenised repertoires and playing styles. It also slowed down the tempo of musical innovation, because the leading bands went on extensive tours to exploit their fame before returning to radio work and recording. Musical and dance fashions that had been constant and frantic, driven by showmanship and improvisation, became cyclical. This accommodated dance teachers, who in the early 1930s campaigned for a standardisation of steps and welcomed the fact that jazz dances like the Charleston and the black bottom were substituted by ‘peppy and polite’ waltzes and foxtrots.54 That, in turn, most certainly allowed dancers to catch up with new steps and co-ordinate their movement with partners. At the same time, the connection between hotel gigs, network broadcasts, and touring excluded black musicians, in effect rendering popular dance music ‘white’. Managers of metropolitan hotels were too anxious to employ black musicians in view of white guests from the South, and radio stations were too concerned about advertisers to feature black bands. That meant that African American musicians with few exceptions found the channels that the band business depended upon closed to them. There were efforts to set up a separate ballroom circuit for black bands,55 but without network radio they could never have the reach of the white band business. Exclusion on racist grounds also happened in ballrooms. For instance, when dance hall managers in the late 1930s observed that young people engaged in the vigorous jitterbug, a dance based on the lindy hop developed by black dancers in the 1920s,56 the Iowa Ballroom Operators’ Association clamped down on the trend by banning ‘all forms of “extreme eccentric dancing”’, using a shorthand traditionally used to describe black(face) stage dancing.57 With black music conspicuously absent and black steps openly excluded, black dancers could have hardly felt invited. Another link to entertainment media that shaped social dancing was the connection to film, which in the 1930s featured dancing prominently, performed by stars and accompanied by the latest hit music. Commentators

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doubted that films could actually teach people how to dance, but acknowledged their contribution to popularising dancing as an enjoyable activity.58 Most importantly, many films of the period embedded dancing in romantic stories about white men and women, making couple dancing a conduit for heterosexual love while offering orientation about how to behave at a ballroom. A sociological study on ‘movies and conduct’ found plenty of evidence of how films provided young people with a behavioural repertoire to draw from when they ventured into flirting and dating. One eighteenyear-old white high school senior, for instance, said that he imitated a film star when he kissed his dance partner on the dance floor.59 Though in this instance the role model did not prove to be reliable (the young man’s foray earned him a slap in the face), this and other stories evidence that young people trusted films as behavioural cues. Coupled in this way, dance and film afforded adolescents and young adults opportunities to pursue heterosexual romances. The conventions that dance films defined became so entrenched that a twenty-year-old Jewish man explained his awkwardness towards young women with the fact that he had watched the ‘wrong’ films: I never learned how to dance, for cowboys don’t dance, in fact no he-man dances. Consequently, I have never, even up to the present, had enough courage to ask a girl on a date. My relations with the girls have always been restrained and formal. I hold the movies chiefly responsible for this.60

As sociologist Maxine Leeds Craig argues, this young man was not alone in considering dancing as ‘un-manly’.61 Disregarding the practice as effeminate came at a price though. As the quote shows, ‘he-men’ were being sidelined at the dating game, for which the ability to dance became a common expectation.62 Providing a template for courting, squeaky-clean dance films like Dancing Feet countered the old associations of popular dancing with ‘vulgarity’, a tainted image that dance teachers had fought in the 1910s and that reappeared after the crash of 1929 with the boom of dance marathons and taxi-dancing.63 In late 1930, Variety reported that there were 405 taxidance halls in New York alone, employing almost 12,000 women. Halls were associated with prostitution and, in some places, race riots. Filipino men, regarded as particularly generous and thus favourites with hostesses, were racially abused by white men.64 In this situation, Hollywood’s wholesome depiction of romantic couple dancing flanked the efforts of ballroom operators to package dancing as clean ‘family’ fun. In the course of the 1930s, the balance in this struggle tipped in favour of ballroom culture, thanks to its presentation in movies, but also because local authorities regulated taxi-dancing increasingly tightly.65 Under these circumstances, catering to couples who paid an admission charge and consumed

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­refreshments rather than male buyers of dance tickets was a sustainable business model. The luxury of the dance palaces and the sophistication of ‘name’ bands civilised the dancing crowds more than stewards and ‘hostesses’ could have achieved. Movies like Dancing Feet played an important role in this. As they synchronised dance steps with music and ballroom conventions, they rendered the ballrooms and the dancing attractive and manageable, impressive, though not intimidating. In ‘Dreamland’, the tensions between the sexes described for turn-ofthe-century saloons were defused. The sophisticated surroundings contributed to this, but the key was the dance floor etiquette propagated by the dance instructors of the 1910s and reiterated by Hollywood in the 1930s. As Judy and Jimmy perform at the grand finale of Dancing Feet, Jimmy sings the theme song to his partner, warning her to ‘be discreet, never wiggle a hip, never hop and skip’, and to ‘show them plenty of class, every time you pass, with your dancing feet’. Such conventions superseded the ‘treat’ and allowed men to approach anonymous women for a dance, while allowing both partners to end the temporary relationship without friction. On the one hand, dancing etiquette reserved the initiative to a male partner and thereby affirmed heterosexual norms. This reassured young men that they were still in control, so that they could give up their obstinacy and start dancing.66 On the other hand, women still had the exit option. Whereas before they had to lie, sneak off, display hilarity, or be blunt, they now simply said ‘thank you for the dance’ if they did not wish to prolong togetherness. In this way, dance hall conventions established an equilibrium between men and women that turned out to be highly conducive to heterosexual romance, at least for white dancers. Framed by the soundscape, atmosphere, and built environment of the ballrooms, dance floor conventions provided a mechanism to fade out ulterior motives, reduced the risk of losing face, offered a dignified exit option, and structured the encounter in such a way that both partners had an opportunity to present themselves in a favourable light.

Conclusion This chapter has traced the development of couple dancing in American cities from the contested beginnings of its commercialisation at the turn of the century to its establishment as mass culture for a white majority in  the 1930s. It has highlighted factors in the music and entertainment field that shaped the changing social world of dancing. These factors include technological innovations like radio and sound film, the r­ egulation

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of entertainment venues, competition in the entertainment industry, and the professional socialisation of players carving out their niche on the ­musicians’ labour market. The overall conceptual argument this analysis supports is that changes in commercial entertainment need to be understood as the result of the interplay of specialists who pursued their own professional projects in the field, drawing on whatever resources they could mobilise. Through competition and collaboration, musicians, cabaret ­performers, dance teachers, and others created a social world as a network of people whose activity, organised via their joint knowledge of conventional means of doing things, produced the kind of dancing this social world was noted for, to paraphrase Howard Becker’s famous ‘art world’ definition.67 Dancers were part of this network too. Especially in the early years of the period covered in this chapter, when musicians and dancers fed off each other’s performances, they were co-constituting the social world of dancing. On the way to ‘Dreamland’, the making of dance hall conventions gradually fell to professionals. Dance teachers like the Castles managed to convey a certain code of dance floor conduct to a larger number of people, but the major push for popularising this code came when it was supported by an integrated dance industry from the 1920s and channelled by radio and sound film from around 1930. This vision was implemented most clearly in ballrooms that attracted members of the white heterosexual majority, while sharply excluding minorities. Dancing Feet shows a black couple dancing in their living room, but the ‘Dreamland’ of American ballrooms was in fact exclusively populated by white men and women, dancing to music played by white orchestras.

Notes  1 ‘Hostesses Not Important in Dance Halls with Wide Open Admission’, Variety (28 July 1931), p. 39.   2 For an early example of this approach see P. G. Cressey, The Taxi-Dance Hall: A Sociological Study in Commercialized Recreation and City Life (Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 1932); for a more recent study see D. Grazian, On the Make: The Hustle of Urban Nightlife (Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 2008).   3 K. Peiss, Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Turn-of-theCentury New York (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1986), p. 95; R. McBee, Dance Hall Days: Intimacy and Leisure among Working-Class Immigrants in the United States (New York: New York University Press, 2000), pp. 53–5.

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  4 Peiss, Cheap Amusements, pp. 49–51; E. A. Clement, Love for Sale: Courting, Treating, and Prostitution in New York City, 1900–1945 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), p. 57.   5 Peiss, Cheap Amusements, p. 54, further elaborated in Clement, Love for Sale, pp. 45–75.   6 D. Robinson, Modern Moves: Dancing Race During the Ragtime and Jazz Eras (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), pp. 64–5.   7 Ibid., pp. 22–4; Peiss, Cheap Amusements, pp. 100–1.   8 McBee, Dance Hall Days, pp. 111–12.   9 Ibid., pp. 103–6, 126–7, 131–2. 10 J. P. Kraft, Stage to Studio: Musicians and the Sound Revolution, 1890–1950 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), pp. 10–11. 11 Ibid., pp. 26, 39. 12 T. L. Riis, Just Before Jazz: Black Musical Theater in New York, 1890–1915 (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989), p. 32. 13 D. Gilbert, The Product of Our Souls: Ragtime, Race, and the Birth of the Manhattan Musical Marketplace (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2015), pp. 117–25. For the cultivation of ‘larger-than-life’ personas, see also the contemporary essay by T. Dreiser, ‘Whence the Song’ (1900), in T. Dreiser, The Color of a Great City (London: Constable, 1930), pp. 138–55. 14 D. Suisman, Selling Sounds: The Commercial Revolution in American Music (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012). 15 T. Davin, ‘Conversation with James P. Johnson’, Jazz Review, 2:6 (1959), 11. 16 ‘Cabarets Real Opposition to Regular Vaudeville’, Variety (23 March 1912), p. 9. 17 ‘News of the Cabarets’, Variety (7 November 1913), p. 23. 18 ‘News of the Cabarets’, Variety (23 March 1912), p. 9; ‘News of the Cabarets’, Variety (19 March 1913), p. 25; ‘News of the Cabarets’, Variety (28 March 1913), p. 16. On publishers acting as booking agents, see C. A. Sengstock Jr, This Toddlin’ Town: Chicago’s White Dance Bands and Orchestras, 1 ­ 900–1950 (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2004), p. 15. 19 S. C. Cook, ‘Talking Machines, Dancing Bodies: Marketing Recorded Dance Music before World War I’, in S. Dodds and S. C. Cook (eds), Bodies of Sound: Studies Across Popular Music and Dance (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013), pp. 149–62. 20 ‘Epidemic of Music Halls to Strike New York City’, Variety (6 May 1911), p. 6. 21 ‘News of the Cabarets’, Variety (14 March 1913), p. 18. 22 L. A. Erenberg, Steppin’ Out: New York Nightlife and the Transformation of American Culture, 1890–1930 (Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 1982), ch. 4. 23 ‘Cabarets’, Variety (20 February 1914), p. 22; MILT, ‘The Dance Mad Summer’, Billboard (20 June 1914), p. 19. 24 ‘Cabarets’, Variety (24 October 1914), p. 8; ‘Cabarets’, Variety (12 March 1915), p. 13.

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25 ‘News of the Cabarets’, Variety (8 August 1913), p. 15. 26 R. Barry, ‘Tango Pirates Infest Broadway’, New York Times (30 May 1915), p. 16. 27 W. R. Taylor (ed.), Inventing Times Square: Commerce and Culture at the Crossroads of the World (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991). 28 E. I. Perry, ‘“The General Motherhood of the Commonwealth”: Dance Hall Reform in the Progressive Era’, American Quarterly, 37:5 (1985), 719–33. 29 C. Heap, Slumming: Sexual and Racial Encounters in American Nightlife, 1885–1940 (Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 2009), p. 153. 30 ‘News of the Cabarets’, Variety (14 March 1913), p. 19; ‘News of the Cabarets’, Variety (25 April 1913), p. 16; ‘News of the Cabarets’, Variety (8 August 1913), p. 15. 31 ‘News of the Cabarets’, Variety (27 June 1913), p. 19. 32 Robertson, Modern Moves, pp. 55–6. 33 Quoted in Gilbert, Product of Our Souls, p. 200. 34 Ibid., p. 141. 35 Ibid., pp. 1–3. 36 Quoted in Ron Welburn, ‘James Reese Europe and the Infancy of Jazz Criticism’, Black Music Research Journal, 7 (1987), 38–9. 37 Cited in Kraft, Stage to Studio, p. 31. 38 K. Hagstrom Miller, Segregating Sound: Inventing Folk and Pop Music in the Age of Jim Crow (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010). 39 Quoted in Gilbert, Product of Our Souls, p. 201. 40 E. Wald, How the Beatles Destroyed Rock ‘n’ Roll: An Alternative History of American Popular Music (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 49, 57. 41 Ibid., p. 65. 42 L. E. Bowman and M. Ward Lamb, ‘Evidences of Social Relations as Seen in Types of New York City Dance Halls’, Journal of Social Forces, 3:2 (1925), 286–91. 43 ‘Believe It or Not – Depression Proves Boon to Dance Business’, Billboard (20 December 1930), p. 46. 44 ‘U.S. Census Report on Dance Halls, ’33’, Variety (20 November 1934), p. 44; ‘Amusement Bill in City $80,725,000’, New York Times (19 November 1934), p. 19. 45 ‘Hoof and Ear Cost in ’35, $20,000,000’, Variety (24 March 1937), p. 63. 46 J. Hurley, ‘$80,000,000 Dance Cost’, Variety (29 December 1937), p. 40. 47 R. B. Nye, ‘Saturday Night at the Paradise Ballroom: Or, Dance Halls in the Twenties’, Journal of Popular Culture, 7:1 (1973), 14–22. 48 W. H. Wittig, ‘This Ballroom Business’, Billboard (27 August 1938), pp. 17, 30; ‘Midwest Promoters Report as High as 40 Per Cent Increase’, Billboard (2 March 1940), pp. 1, 9. 49 Bowman and Lamb, ‘Evidences of Social Relations’, 290. 50 ‘“Bring Your Mother and Father Free,” Ballroom Operator’s Newest Slogan’, Variety (2 April 1941), p. 1.

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51 ‘Orchestras Will Play over “Ballroom Circuit” by March’, Billboard (22 November 1924), p. 20; ‘Ballroom Circuit to Start May 30’, Billboard (21 March 1925), p. 42; ‘Ballroom Circuit Progressing Rapidly’, Billboard (9 May 1925), p. 18; ‘Headliners Offered Next-Season Contracts by Ballroom Circuit’, Billboard (31 October 1925), p. 13. For the vaudeville circuits see A. F. Wertheim, Vaudeville Wars: How the Keith-Albee and Orpheum Circuits Controlled the Big-Time and Its Performers (New York: Palgrave, 2006). 52 I. Kolodin, ‘The Dance Band Business: A Study in Black and White’, Harper’s Magazine (1 June 1941), p. 72. 53 L. A. Erenberg, Swingin’ the Dream: Big Band Jazz and the Rebirth of American Culture (Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 1998), ch. 6. 54 ‘Chi Dancing Masters Meet’, Billboard (2 September 1933), pp. 18, 24; V. Pope, ‘On With the Dance, Though It Be Now Confined’, New York Times (13 December 1931), p. 17; ‘Formula Presented for Teaching Dance’, New York Times (15 February 1937), p. 12. 55 ‘Colored Ballroom Chains’, Variety (7 March 1928), p. 55. 56 M. Leeds Craig, Sorry I Don’t Dance: Why Men Refuse to Move (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), p. 61. 57 ‘Ops Swat Jitterbug’, Billboard (5 November 1938), p. 13 (my emphasis). 58 ‘Movies Set Dance Style’, Billboard (28 September 1935), p. 26; ‘6,000,000 in Nation Learning to Dance’, New York Times (20 July 1937), p. 25. 59 H. Blumer, Movies and Conduct (New York: Macmillan, 1933), p. 53. 60 Ibid., p. 233. 61 Leeds Craig, Sorry I Don’t Dance, pp. 54–8. 62 E. Burgess and P. Wallin, Engagement and Marriage (Chicago, IL: J. B. Lippincott, 1953), pp. 72–3, 77–9. For this, see also James Nott’s chapter in the present volume. 63 For dance marathons, see C. Martin, ‘Reality Dance: American Dance Marathons’, in J. Malnig, Ballroom, Boogie, Shimmy Sham, Shake: A Social and Popular Dance Reader (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2009), pp. 93–108. 64 ‘Taxidance Joints, 405 of ’Em in NY, Prefer Show Girls as “Hostesses”’, Variety (1 October 1930), p. 58; ‘Shady “Dance Studios” Use Girls as Decoy Instructors, Says Police’, Variety (1 October 1930), p. 58; ‘Cent-a-Dance Spot Looks Bargain, but 23rd St. Hall Has Its System’, Variety (16 February 1932), p. 57; ‘FilipinosWhite Gals; Coast Cops Worrying’, Variety (12 February 1930), p. 49. 65 ‘Clubs Cut In on Taxis’, Billboard (9 April 1938), pp. 4, 6; ‘Strict Code for Taxi Dancers’, Variety (15 January 1941), p. 39. 66 Leeds Craig, Sorry I Don’t Dance, p. 16. 67 H. Becker, Art Worlds (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1982), p. x.

3

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‘We do not want “fairies” in the ballroom’: working-class men, dancing and the renegotiation of masculinity in interwar Britain James Nott Introduction In 1927, a correspondent in the Dancing Times noted the emergence of a new breed of working-class men in Britain, fashion conscious and, importantly, interested in dancing. She wrote: The cloth-capped and mufflered works’ boy of the older generations has passed. The winged collar and butterfly tie and dancing pumps are now more familiar, just as the modern works’ youngster in this district, whether he be a collier or steel worker or tinplate worker or what not, knows that Italian-run cafe better than the public-house – much better, too.1

However, rather than welcoming such ‘modern youngsters’, many were alarmed at the erosion of older notions of masculinity that they claimed such developments represented. Dancing in particular was singled out as a ‘suspicious’ activity, better suited to women than men, and indicative of the wider feminisation of much British life and culture after the First World War. In 1927, for example, ‘Tea dance young men’ were attacked as a threat to the nation – loafers who were sapping the nation’s strength. One complainant opined: ‘No nation was built up on afternoon dancing, and no nation that had been through a war and industrial upheaval like this nation could afford to have its young men wasting time that should be devoted in their own business and the business of the country.’2 Whilst interested in this discourse for what it tells us about dominant attitudes towards masculinity in the interwar period, the purpose of this chapter is also to examine the lived experiences of working-class men and in particular to examine the ‘social worlds’ that dance halls created. It will highlight the role of dancing and the dance hall as ‘social worlds’ where men negotiated their relationships with women, and developed their own social, gender and personal identities. In the world of the dance hall, men had opportunities that were often denied them outside. Furthermore, the dance halls’ extremely codified rituals were formative in developing and shaping men’s r­ elationship with women. Yet

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Renegotiating masculinity in interwar Britain 65

is also important to note that men faced numerous impositions and limits on how they could behave. Thus, the dance hall offered alternative formulations of masculinity beyond the dominant ones being championed in the world outside its doors, yet was not completely immune from such restraining influences. Looking at the dance hall as a ‘social world’, this study will straddle both sides of the historiography of masculinity in interwar Britain, which centres on how the First World War and subsequent changes affected masculinity. In 1991, Alison Light argued that the late Victorian manliness of General Charles Gordon or Alan Quartermain, martial and rugged, perished in trench warfare. The Great War precipitated men’s post-1918 retreat into unheroic domesticity, typified by interwar whitecollar ­suburbia.3 This argument, supported by historians such as John Tosh, became the ­orthodox narrative.4 Yet, revisionist historians have since stressed continuities between Edwardian and interwar gender norms. Adrian Bingham, Emma Robertson and Jessica Meyer all argue there was not an epochal change. Pre-war manliness persisted after 1918, even as new masculinities arose.5 This study of men dancing suggests a plurality of masculinities in interwar Britain and in this respect the sociologist Robert Connell’s theory of hegemonic masculinity is particularly pertinent. Connell holds that any given society values one socially constructed masculinity as the best way to be a man.6 This is hegemonic masculinity. Other extant masculinities are usually condoned as unideal or censured as deviant.7 Recently, Ben Griffin has appraised hegemonic masculinity’s usefulness to historians and  ­persuasively defended it. As he contends, no other theory to date allows the power relations between masculinities to be analysed.8 Ultimately, ‘it remains meaningful to say that certain normative models of masculinity were dominant within particular [historical contexts] and that others were complicit, subordinated, marginalised’.9 Thus, this study adopts Connell’s  theory. It argues that the dance hall highlights how a distinctly pre-war masculinity was still hegemonic and being championed by authority figures (as evidenced by their criticism of dancing as deviant), yet how at the same time, the social worlds of dance halls allowed other non-hegemonic masculinities to co-exist, and even thrive, despite such criticisms. There are three main sections to this chapter. Firstly, it will examine men’s experiences of dancing in interwar Britain, highlighting key differences with those of women. Secondly, the chapter will highlight how dancing was seen as a threat to traditional hegemonic notions of masculinity and evidence of ‘feminisation’ by examining critical reactions to men dancing. Lastly, we will conclude that dancing had a positive role to play

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in the emergence of a new kind of working-class masculinity and that the dance hall allowed men the space to experiment with both their bodies and their identities in ways that they seldom had opportunities to do in the world beyond the dance floor.

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Men and dancing in interwar Britain We start by considering how popular dancing was with men, some of the reasons they went (or didn’t go) and how their experiences of dancing compared with that of women. Without doubt, dancing was less popular with men than it was with women. The most ardent dancers in Britain in the 1920s and 1930s were women. Nearly all of the social surveys of the time commented on this. The 1934 Social Survey of Merseyside, for example, commented: Dancing is one of the very few activities in which women engage more frequently than men. Of the women 20 per cent., but of the men only 7 per cent., made entries under this head. The predominance of women in most dance halls is, indeed, well known … Several of the Reports commented on the regularity with which working-class girls dance; dances are particularly popular in the slums.10

Indeed, the shortage of men at many dances was a perennial complaint amongst those organising events. In 1924, for example, it was stated that ‘there are not dancing men enough to go around, and those who do affect the art receive so many invitations that they grow … thoroughly spoilt’.11 As a result, throughout the interwar period those in the dance hall industry trying to stimulate business often targeted men. For example, the Mecca dance hall chain started to offer men free dance lessons in its Leeds dance halls in the 1930s, and other dance halls ran similar schemes.12 That being said, dancing’s popularity with men should not be underestimated. Several contemporaries point to the popularity of dancing among Britain’s young working-class men in particular. Robert Roberts, writing about dance halls in Salford in the 1920s, observed that they were frequented by working-class boys: ‘The great “barn” we patronised as apprentices held at least a thousand … at 6d per head … youth at every level of the manual working class, from the bound apprentice to the “scum of the slum”, fox-trotted through the new bliss in each other’s arms.’13 Young men were particularly keen on dancing; indeed, they were amongst the most habitual dancers in the country. This was the group that made visits to the dance hall three, four or even more times a week. Tom Harrisson’s Mass Observation survey of Bolton dance halls in the late



Renegotiating masculinity in interwar Britain 67

1930s identified and analysed the impact on the community of these young dancing enthusiasts:

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In churches, pubs, political organizations and all other groups with social and co-operative interests, young people are today conspicuously absent in Worktown; the elder folk continuously complain about it. In 6 main dancehalls on Saturday evening there are nearly as many young men as on Sunday evening in all the towns 170 churches.14

This was the case elsewhere in Britain too – indeed, the majority of Mass Observation’s studies of dancing undertaken between 1937 and 1939, for example, point to the preponderance of the young in the halls. The following report from 1939 is typical: ‘The patrons of the hall are all young – boys ranging from 14 in isolated cases to about 25 at the other end of the scale. But the majority are between 18 and 21.’15 As Cameron and Lush noted in their Carnegie study of Glasgow, Cardiff and London: ‘Many young men pass through a phase which has often been described by their parents and friends, and sometimes even by themselves, as “dancing mad.” The only limitation to the number of dances they attend is the amount of pocketmoney available.’16 Certainly, large dance hall chains such as Mecca deliberately targeted the youth market, most notably through the promotion of group dances such as the Lambeth Walk which, they believed, appealed to their sense of fun. Mecca even employed very young managers in order to keep abreast of the demands of youth. For example, at the Paramount Tottenham Court Road, London, a hall specialising in the latest dance styles, the assistant manager was only eighteen years old and the manager only thirty in 1939.17 Although both men and women enjoyed dancing, there were important differences in their experiences of dancing. Firstly, most boys started to dance at a later age than girls, who started dancing before they left school, from the age of twelve or thirteen onwards, but quite often even younger than this. Boys usually started to dance later, at about fifteen or sixteen. Secondly, boys and men were, on the whole, less skilled than women at dancing. They did not take dance lessons as often as women, and when they did, they tended not to take them as seriously nor devote as much time to practising. In the numerous social clubs provided by the church and other organisations it was the girls who took the dancing classes, not the boys. Why was this? There are a number of reasons. Even though boys had relatively more free time available to them than girls, who were often required to perform domestic chores for longer than boys and were less free to leave the house without parental supervision, they also had more alternative activities available to them. For girls, dancing was one of the few active leisure pursuits available to them. Another reason was that dancing

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was seen by many as ‘sissy’ or ‘girls’ stuff’ and boys would find it socially unacceptable to show too keen an interest in it. (Just why dancing was considered ‘feminine’ and seen to be better suited to women will be considered later on.) Indeed, men were frequently criticised – by dance teachers, women and journalists – for not being able to dance as well as their partners. In 1933, leading dance teacher Josephine Bradley suggested that laziness was behind men’s poor dancing skills: ‘today they just walk round the room and turn at the corners … folk are inclined to be lazy … they will not bother to learn fresh steps … So long as men can shuffle round the room and avoid ruining their partners’ stockings they are content.’18 Those in the dancing profession even regarded the poor dancing skills of men as putting at risk the proper gender roles for men and women, something to which we will return soon. For example, in 1925, Major Cecil Taylor, President of the Imperial Society of Dance Teachers, said that ‘it is only the woman who takes real pain … The man, who should be the guide, is often useless to his partner, who has to drag him around.’19 The poor skills of many male dancers also draw our attention to the fact that men were attracted to the dance hall for reasons other than dancing. Though many men did get pleasure from being able to dance to the best of their ability, the majority of men had ulterior motives for dancing. Indeed, there were some clear differences between men and women as to why they went dancing. In a 1939 Mass Observation survey, ‘meeting members of the opposite sex’ was the joint top reason given by men (29 per cent), together with ‘good entertainment and recreation’, for going to dance halls. However, only 12 per cent of women saw ‘meeting members of the opposite sex’ as the dance hall’s main attraction.20 Although we should factor in reluctance amongst women to state publicly that they went dancing to meet men, the differences are probably still real. In a survey of middle-class adolescent boys, also taken in 1939, the most popular single reason given for going to dances was ‘on account of female companionship’ (24 per cent), the next stated reasons being the dance steps (14 per cent) and the rhythm (14 per cent). Some comments from those surveyed: ‘I go to dances to enjoy myself and to make friends with as many girls as possible. I seldom leave without at least one kiss’; ‘I go to enjoy myself and to have a good time with various girl friends’.21 So dancing was, for many men, a means to an end – to meet girls and women. For women, there was as much pleasure to be gained in the dancing itself, though the apparent lesser concern with the dance hall as a venue for romance might also be because public admission of this fact might serve to ‘taint’ a woman’s reputation. Other differences in men’s experiences of dancing include drinking and the amount of time they spent in the dance hall. In the interwar period, dance halls open to the public were ‘dry’ – they were not licensed to serve

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Figure 3  Many in Britain presumed that men’s chief reason for dancing was romantic/sexual. Comic postcard, c. 1935

alcohol. Though some tried to overcome such restrictions by smuggling bottles in, the majority of men would go to the pub before they went dancing. This was still socially unacceptable for most women. Thus, an evening out dancing for men would usually start in a same-sex group in the pub, with most men only turning up in the dance hall at around 9 p.m. or later. Women, in contrast, arrived at the dance hall from about 7 p.m. and, like men, socialised with their own sex only for the first part of the evening.

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For both men and women, this provided an important opportunity for homosocial interaction. In some dance halls men were given ‘passes’ which allowed them to go out of the dance hall, to the pub for example, and return without paying again. This opportunity was not given to women. Men would thus combine both drinking and dancing (indeed, many needed this ‘Dutch courage’, as will be shown below), whereas for most women in the interwar period dancing and alcohol did not mix. Moreover, men would frequently only dance for a short part of the evening too, in contrast to women who would dance nearly all night. Despite this focus on the ‘traditionally masculine’ heterosexual objective of dating and meeting women, the increased popularity of dancing amongst men after the First World War was greeted with alarm by some. We will look next at how dancing was seen as a threat to ‘traditional’ hegemonic masculinity.

Dancing and the challenge to hegemonic masculinity Dancing drew into focus several contemporary concerns and attitudes regarding gender, femininity, masculinity and the relationship between the sexes. The relationship between dancing and masculinity was particularly complex – often confused and contradictory, it highlights the restrictions that the patriarchal society of interwar Britain placed on men’s freedoms to be themselves. There were several elements of men’s association with dancing that were regarded as problematic. First, dancing itself was considered to be particularly ‘feminine’ and something better suited to women rather than men – thus too much of an interest in dancing was regarded with suspicion. Second, men were supposed to be constrained and limited in the way they moved, and dancing was condemned because it could involve men moving in ways that were ‘inappropriate’. Third, by dancing, men were seen to be rejecting more masculine pastimes, to which they were better suited. Fourth, men’s behaviour in the dance hall was seen as worrying evidence of changing roles between men and women. First then, it was considered that dancing was an ‘artistic pursuit’ and that it was better suited to women because it was about ‘grace’ and ‘beauty’, two attributes not commonly associated with men, despite centuries of great art, music and literature from male sources. It was felt that women were the better dancers not because they practised harder or took it more seriously, but because they were ‘predisposed’ to it. It was something ‘in their nature’. For example, in answering the question of why women liked dancing, Professor D. Fraser-Harris explained to the Daily Mirror in 1927 that they had a ‘natural instinct for grace of movement’. He proclaimed that women

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had an ‘acuter perception of rhythm’ than men ‘and since dancing is the emotional expression of the appreciation of rhythm, it should follow that women would make better dancers than men’. He also argued that women had greater ‘refinement’ and appreciation of beauty than men: ‘Dancing is the poetry of motion, it is the aesthetic aspect of muscular movement, and therefore women, sympathetic as they are towards all refining influences, find pleasure in dancing.’22 Such attitudes stereotyped and constrained both sexes. One only has to look at the large numbers of graceful, refined, professional and semi-professional male dancers to see how the idea that men were somehow not suited to dancing was untrue. Men who danced well, however, were suspicious because they were showing traits thought better suited to women. It is also likely that the often rudimentary dancing skills of many men were in part a reflection of their subconscious and conscious control of their bodily movements. As young children, both girls and boys were free to move in whichever ways they wanted – hopping, skipping, jumping, throwing hands in the air, moving arms and body freely, and twisting and turning in whatever way they chose was perfectly natural, and seen as such. However, after childhood, working-class men learned to restrict the way they moved – any movements that were too playful, too enthusiastic, too flamboyant, too free, too elegant, were stamped out of them by a process of peer and societal pressure. Men’s bodily movements were confined, restricted, suppressed. Popular cultural depictions of homosexual men at the time were at great pains to show their hand, arm and body movements as loose, free, flamboyant, exaggerated. Indeed, the popular shorthand for a gay man was a limp wrist or an exaggerated hand on the hip – a corporal fluidity that was not deemed permissible for men. ‘Real men’ were rigid, upright, restrained. Only in sport was the male body free, and then within a regime that stressed discipline, strength, control and training. For these reasons, some of the complaints about the threat to masculinity represented by dancing were focused on particular ways of moving. Certain dances or dance forms were regarded with suspicion as they involved public displays of ‘feminised’ or ‘unmanly’ movements. Predictably, men who engaged in these new modes of behaviour were labelled as homosexual. In 1928, for example, leading dance teacher Victor Silvester highlighted how men could expose themselves to accusations of effeminacy if they got their steps wrong. Talking about the execution of the dance move called the ‘contrary movement’ he warned men not to introduce it in the wrong place. He wrote ‘I know a man … who, when doing an ordinary walk forward in the Slow Foxtrot, introduces it on every step. It gives the appearance of the worst effeminacy … we do not want “fairies” in the ballroom.’23 Party or novelty dances seemed to attract

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particular ire from critics too. With their playful approach to dancing and often ‘juvenile’ movements, it was considered unseemly for grown men to do them in public.24 A Mass Observer thus described the demonstration of the Big Apple by ‘two foolish looking young gents’ in terms which drew attention to the challenge to traditional masculinity: ‘A rather pansy affair, not very interesting and without spontaneity. However, people laughed at a peculiar gesture, often repeated, on the part of the dancers. They lifted up the leg of their trousers, sometimes one leg, sometimes both together, and disclosed little white socks and some pinky flesh.’25 These kind of swing dances came in for particular criticism regarding their undermining of ‘masculinity’. ‘Just look at the mincing and posturing in Truckin’! shrieked Ballroom and Band in August 1937. ‘A deaf onlooker would condemn the dance as vulgar or ridiculous … perhaps both!’26 Dance moves that were too ‘showy’ were also criticised. Speaking at Brighton Musical Festival in 1928, for example, musician Frederick Dawson complained about there being too much ‘swank’ in men who went dancing, which affected the way they moved: ‘not one of our young dancing men can walk nicely. It is not manly, and speaks badly for the race.’27 In addition to these issues, men’s interest in dancing was also condemned because it was seen as a sign of the rejection of more acceptably ‘masculine’ pastimes and attitudes. A liking for dancing amongst men was thus regarded with alarm by conservatives and seen as evidence of role reversal. In 1939 under the headline ‘Men dance whilst women get muscles’, a correspondent (a woman) for Reynold’s News chose to highlight with alarm the fact that in London County Council’s evening classes and schools, men were taking dancing classes in increasing numbers, whilst women were taking traditionally male activities such as sports.28 Critics who held a monolithic view of what masculinity was, were alarmed at the erosion of older notions of masculinity that men who danced seemed to represent. In his 1931 study of juvenile delinquency, for example, S. F. Hatton berated the influence of dance halls in creating ‘soft’ young men: ‘I deplore all attempts to effeminize young manhood, and am a little ashamed of some of the youths of today who are more given to the softer delights of the cinema and the dance hall, than the more vigorous and manly sporting instincts of boxing, football, and such-like pastimes.’ He blamed women for shaping these kind of men, and creating the ‘soft-faced, mealy-mouthed, dolled-up pomaded puppet as a dancing partner.’29 Men who danced too much were lambasted by these minority reactionaries, and regarded as deeply suspicious. Even some dance professionals cautioned against men who danced too much. One writing in the Dancing Times in 1927 argued: ‘The man who never dances misses much of the fun of life. On the other hand, I would rather be he than the man who dances



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to excess, and who becomes dependent on the habit.’30 Men who danced too ‘well’ and ‘too’ regularly were condemned by reactionary critics. One, writing in 1920 at the beginning of the dance ‘craze’, is worth quoting at length. The man, an uncle escorting his young niece, Priscilla, to a dance, where she had been invited by ‘Tony’ – a good dancer, who dressed ­fashionably – scoffed at these attributes. He went on: there’s a type of man who is perfection at dancing and misses perfection in what is a more important art – the art of being manly. And there’s a type of girl whose instinct is for the mainly manly man rather than for the mainly dancing man. Priscilla – praise be! – is that type of girl. She is an English girl … she looks askance at the partner who’s too good. In her heart of hearts she says ‘He’s a lovely dancer; but is he a lovable man?’ The years ahead are not to be devoted to naught but jazzing. The Tonies of the world may be superlative jazzers today; but what sort of husbands will they make tomorrow?31

Linked to this, dancing was also condemned because it was indicative of and helped shape changing gender boundaries. In particular, the shyness of many men in asking for a dance was taken as evidence of their lack of courage and the emergence of a generation of ‘emasculated’ men. Men could be extremely reticent to ask women to dance in the dance hall. Male dancers in Liverpool explained some of their reasons for avoiding dancing in 1928. Fear of being snubbed was the major reason. One dancer wrote that many men were ‘a little diffident about asking a girl for a dance lest they be turned down’, another concurring by stating, ‘Men hate a refusal, and if they get one it is often sufficient to give them cold feet for the rest of the evening.’32 Whilst such explanations seem reasonable, to those looking for evidence of the decline of manliness, they were signs of ominous developments. Men who were too shy to ask for a dance or who couldn’t get a dancing partner were treated with condescension, often by women. In Derby, both sexes debated the issue of men’s shyness in the letters page of a local newspaper in 1931, under the heading ‘Derby men shy’. One critic also noted disparagingly what he had observed in one of the city’s dance halls: ‘the male element was decidedly slow in coming forward, and seemed to prefer hanging about the corners, hands in pockets, while dozens of ladies were sitting waiting.’33 Conversely, over-confident men in the dance hall were also criticised, often by women, as ‘brutish’. One young woman from Leeds remarked in 1921, for example, that ‘one meets young men at a dance whose demeanour might be modelled upon Tarzan of the Apes’.34 Other complaints were made by women who disliked being left in the middle of the dance floor by men once an individual dance had ended, and the off-hand manner in which some men invited women to dance. As one report put it: ‘A girl need not be

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asked for a dance, a nod, a raised eyebrow or a motion with a thumb will do the trick.’35 Men were also in a no-win situation when it came to the way they held women once they were dancing. Edward Scott, writing in his guide Dancing for Strength and Beauty in 1921, for example, complained about the ‘feeble’ versus the ‘primitive’ male dancer. The feeble man was reticent and lacking confidence: he ‘puts his hand out about six inches behind her back, while she, for support, is constrained to take him by the shoulders or elsewhere’. In contrast, the ‘primitive man’ ‘seizes the girl … hugs her in a close embrace, and, while dancing, glares around him at other members of the company like a hungry dog with a bone’. He condemned the first type of male dancing behaviour as indicative of weakness, and the second as a sign of viciousness. The tight grip of many men when dancing was a common complaint, and served as an occasion to attack traditional masculinity. Norma Cave, writing in 1936, opined, ‘You may see the he-man fresh from a triumph on the field of sport, holding his partner as if she were a Dresden shepherdess, his eyes raised non-committally to the ceiling, while he proceeds with lordly disdain to ruin her satin shoes.’36 Another issue highlighting masculinity in the dance hall was the way men dressed there. What men should wear to dances became a matter for debate, and during the 1920s a movement developed that tried to reform and modernise men’s clothing. The dance hall, a key venue for the public display of men’s clothing, was important in this discussion, as it also drew attention to the impracticality of traditional menswear for an activity that required freedom of movement. Such debates highlight some of the forces trying to shape men’s appearance and behaviour at this time – commercial and often from women. For example, in 1929 the Dundee Evening Telegraph invited its readers to offer their views as to whether men’s clothing should be modernised. Not surprisingly, this idea was supported by some in the clothing industry. At an address to the Textile Institute in Bradford in 1928, Sir Edward Stockton, a big name in the Lancashire cotton industry, saw their newfound love of dancing as an opportunity to revolutionise men’s clothing, calling for the use of artificial silk suits for men to dance in. J Ewing of the Bradford Dyer’s Association concurred, arguing, ‘bearing in mind that at present men danced in thick wool and worsted … with the aid of artificial silk, something might be done’.37 Some men themselves also wanted to throw off the restrictions of older clothes. One male dancer wrote in 1921 that modern dancing was so energetic that traditional men’s evening clothes were uncomfortable in a hot ballroom and suggested that white flannel tennis trousers, white shirt with an open collar, and white socks and shoes would make a good alternative.38 One innovation that catered for this was the emergence of the so-called ‘Flannel Dance’ in the 1920s where less

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formal clothes for men were permitted. However, whilst dancing offered an opportunity to renegotiate traditional male appearance, showing too much of an interest in fashion was considered suspicious, and often linked to men who loved to dance. In 1921, for example, a trend amongst some of the ‘gilded youth’ of London was for artificially waved hair. The Leeds Mercury, commenting on the ‘accusation’, stated, ‘A study of some of the “dancing” men in certain West End Clubs devoted to the pastime suggested that if the indictment had included the use of cosmetics and the wearing of stays, it would have been even more accurate.’39 This attack was not alone; fashionability and suspect masculinity were often linked, with the male dancer particularly targeted for criticism. Showiness in dress was another crime that men could commit when at the dance hall, and they were particularly condemned for it. Advising men what to wear to dances, the 1937 dance manual Etiquette at a Dance warned: ‘Excessive use of hair oil or perfume should be studiously avoided; the whole object should be to present a neat, clean, fresh and distinctive appearance entirely devoid of flashiness. The best dressed man invariably wears clothes that are strictly correct but quite unobtrusive.’40 There was a class aspect to the clothing issue too. A reflection of their improved prosperity and the availability of cheaper clothing at high street shops such as Burtons, many working-class men were better dressed than ever before. However, they often received patronising comments from middle-class women for their lack of style. One such woman, supposedly defending the ‘palais man’s’ dancing skills, remarked, ‘He dances with a fresh gusto which is inspiring to see, and if his “gallant” tie, patent shoes, and ill-cut suit fail to speak of Saville Row, what of it?’41 If men dancing with women created concerns that masculinity was being undermined, then even more alarm was caused when men danced with each other in the dance hall. Though not common, this did occur. When and why? Men could be seen dancing with men if they were learning to dance – Mass Observation noted this at the Rye Lane dance club in Peckham, for example, in the late 1930s. This kind of learner’s behaviour did not seem to arouse any complaint and was seen as fairly normal. Men were also occasionally encouraged to dance with one another for the sake of novelty competitions. In 1927, for example, the Hull Palais de Danse held a ‘novelty night’, with men-only and women-only foxtrot competitions. A similar one was held at the Nottingham Palais de Danse in 1937, suggesting that the practice was acceptable as part of a special event, done for amusement.42 More controversial was when men danced with one another because there were not enough women to dance with. In 1920, for example, men started dancing together at a village dance in Shipley, Yorkshire owing to a shortage of women partners, an event

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notable enough to be commented on in the local newspaper.43 This was rare, however, because, as we have seen, women usually outnumbered men at dance halls. Most controversial of all were instances where it appeared men chose to dance with one another in a public dance hall despite there being plenty of potential women partners. Mass Observation found several instances when men danced with each other after they could dance properly, especially in the new swing dances of the later 1930s. It was noted, ‘One pair of chaps danced together regularly. Once a chap got up with the negro lad and they danced hot for about a minute, kicking their feet out all over the place. Both roared with laughter.’ Whilst the observer did not believe that this was a sign of effeminacy, he noted that ‘they allowed that here but not at the bigger public places’, implying that men dancing with each other was regarded with hostility.44 Yet even in one of the ‘bigger places’, the Paramount, Tottenham Court Road, some men danced with each other, again usually during swing dance programmes.45 More often than not, however, men dancing with each other caused violent reactions. For example, in 1924 a fight broke out at the annual dance of the Banbury Allotment Society when the MC approached a man for dancing with another man. As the MC argued in court, ‘The committee did not approve of men dancing together, they preferred that men should dance with ladies in the ordinary way.’ The men in question refused to stop and ‘continued to cause offence’ and when asked to leave, punched the MC, after which a fight ensued.46 Several similar episodes occurred throughout the country and over the period under investigation. In 1925, for example, a fight broke out at the Wessex Drill Hall when two men from the Wessex Royal Engineers started to dance with each other.47 Again, in 1931, a fight broke out at a dance in Shutlanger, Northamptonshire when two men danced together in a Paul Jones dance.48 Such episodes are interesting because it is not likely that the men in question were homosexual – to dance so openly together in this manner in a public place was unlikely. The violence in all of the episodes mentioned was initiated by the men who were dancing with each other, in response to official requests for them to stop. This would suggest that they objected to the implicit suggestion that there might be something suspicious about their behaviour. It also suggests that these heterosexual men had chosen to dance with each other because they wanted to. Reactions were varied, however, and there is some evidence to suggest that in some parts of the country, men dancing with each other was more acceptable. For example, it was claimed that in Wales men quite commonly danced with each other in the dance hall. Their reasons for doing so and the challenge to their masculinity are illuminating. The following Mass Observation report from 1939 is of a conversation with a Welsh man dancing in London:



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G talks with Obs … about dances back home. ‘There it was common for chaps to dance with each other. I used to dance with one chap – did so for about 3 months. He took the lady’s part and when he asked a woman for a dance he used to start backwards – he got so used to the lady’s part.’ ‘Did the fellows dance with each other because there was a shortage of women?’ ‘No. It is very common in South Wales for the chaps to dance together, that’s all.’49

Whilst for the men concerned such couplings were predominantly the result of homosocial interactions and the desire to practise, or in the case of swing dances to let themselves go, for outsiders such incidents were usually treated as a sign of latent homosexuality. This highlights that the dance hall was an increasingly heteronormative space by the 1930s. Such evidence also highlights, however, that even in heavy industrial areas such as South Wales, traditional notions of working-class masculinity were perhaps more fluid than outside middle-class observers realised. To put this into context too, women-only dance couples were a common sight on the dance floor and they did not cause concern or alarm, at least not before the war.

Dancing and a new working-class masculinity It can be seen, therefore, that dancing and dance halls, with their acute focus on heterosexual couple formation, brought relationships between the sexes and attitudes towards them under the spotlight. We should move beyond such discourse, however, to focus on the social worlds dancing created. In contrast to such negative responses to men dancing, here it will be argued that dancing and dance halls helped in the emergence of redefined notions of working-class masculinity and allowed important changes in the relationships between men and women in interwar Britain. As we have already noted, boys became interested in dancing at a young age, although taking to it later than girls, and dancing and dance halls allowed them to interact with women in a positive way. With its mostly orderly environment, the focus on ‘wooing girls’ and its glamorous surroundings, the dance hall was leading to the emergence of large numbers of smartly dressed, well-behaved men. Let’s start with an examination of how dancing helped in the transition to adulthood amongst working-class boys and youths, and how it helped them to socialise with women in positive ways that would redefine relationships between the sexes along more equal lines. Dancing and going to dance halls were social skills and practices that were a key element in the transition from childhood to adulthood for

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­ orking-class boys in interwar Britain. As Tom Harrisson noted in 1938: w ‘It is now an essential part of any youth’s social equipment, that he or she be able to go through two variations of these movements (waltz and foxtrot) with sufficient grace to avoid treading on a partner’s toe. When you leave school you learn to work, to smoke, to bet and to dance.’50 Initially, virtually all young people attended dances in groups of their peers and for the youngest, attendance in mixed-sex groups was rare. Groups were made up of school friends, workers from the same mill or factory, and sometimes mixed with family members and those of different ages. Most people learning to dance in the 1920s and 1930s first went to dances in schoolrooms, church halls, assembly rooms and so on, held close to where they lived. These venues offered the opportunity to perfect dancing skills and learn social skills. Familiarity with the etiquette and atmosphere of dances could be gained in such a way. In addition, trips to dances gave young people an important arena in which to socialise more generally. Indeed, the importance of dances as meeting places for social interaction amongst young people is shown by the large numbers not dancing. In most dance venues frequented by the young, a large proportion of those present were chatting, joking and laughing, rather than actually dancing. Groups of same-sex friends watching the dancing, commenting and gossiping about the personalities present, were a key part of the experience. Dancing also provided a clear structure for progressing from one age group to another. In larger towns and cities, growing up was accompanied by progression through a series of dance venues in a locality, moving from hall to hall, each one catering for a particular age group. In Dundee in the 1920s, for example, there were thirty-one different halls for dancing, each appealing to youths at various stages of their dancing career.51 A converted church on Lindsay Street, Kidd’s Dancing Rooms, catered for the early teens. As one Dundee man remembered: ‘This was where the younger generation frequented … if you were eighteen years old here you were considered too old and had great difficulty getting a partner … you were “past it” at Kidd’s at nearing nineteen.’52 As well as allowing peer group identities to develop, dance halls allowed boys extensive interaction between the sexes. Indeed, as young boys grew older they started to attend dances for reasons other than socialisation with their own friends. Meeting the opposite sex became increasingly important. Going to dances in groups meant that these early encoun­ ters with the opposite sex could take place in a supportive atmosphere and in one with clearly defined processes which made interaction easier. Supportive because groups of boys standing or sitting together would give each other encouragement and offer advice. Indeed, as is argued elsewhere, dances were to become a key venue for dating and they had many

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advantages over other locations for romantic liaisons.53 Moreover, dancing accustomed young men to socialising with members of the opposite sex on more or less equal terms. Indicative of the new relationships between men and women that dancing promoted, dancing friendships became increasingly common in the interwar period – young men and women who went out dancing together all night, as friends and for the love of dancing, rather than for romantic liaisons.54 Yet, romance was still a key attraction and dances allowed youths of both sexes a familiar, safe environment to progress from peer and mixed socialising to the first stages of dating and romance. As one Mass Observer put it in 1937: ‘My impression is that dancers are mostly adolescents, going to meet opposite sex, but quite innocently, young men waiting to get confidence by dancing with a lot of girls, perhaps wanting love, but very vaguely.’55 Whilst critics, as we have seen, detected in such natural shyness and hesitancy a decline of traditional masculine values, it would be better to argue that here we see the quite natural awkwardness of adolescence and the emergence of a modern form of masculinity. The social world of the dance hall was fostering masculine identities which developed from an early age in close proximity to, and interaction with, women. It was an important arena for the familiarisation of the sexes beyond school. Moreover, these dancing worlds placed boys and girls on a more or less equal footing. Indeed, the atmosphere and conventions of the dance hall meant that as adults men had to treat women with respect, and that women were given considerable agency in the process of dating and forming couples. As dance teacher Santos Casani put it: ‘A perfect dance is a fifty-fifty arrangement … Spontaneous kindness and courtesy are bred in the dance-hall.’56 However, as Klaus Nathaus notes in his chapter on social dancing in the USA, much of the impetus for the behaviour of dancers in the dance hall came from their own efforts at promoting a positive or ‘successful’ self-image – one which would be ‘attractive’ to others.57 This was strategic. Men wanted to act in ways that would secure them a dancing partner and the respect of their peers. Peer pressure also meant that men could not treat women badly, otherwise they would be spurned by women and could even be publicly humiliated via the very public process of rejection or turning down of dances by women. In addition, dance hall managements worked hard to control dancers’ behaviour by the use of stewards and MCs. This favoured women and created an ‘ideal behaviour pattern’ for men to follow. Men who held too tightly, or whose hands slipped to ‘non-approved’ places on the woman’s body, or who ‘tried it on’ against the woman’s wishes, could be reported to the MCs and other dance hall staff. Strict moral codes were employed by most dance hall managements anyway and overt intimacy was checked for and stopped. Sandy Melville from Dundee recalls: ‘In the JM

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if you got too close the stewards would come along and part you, saying “that’s enough.” You didn’t get a kiss in the dance hall. If you were getting a wee bit too close they would stop you.’58 At dances in church halls it was not uncommon to see the vicar use a ruler to make sure that men and women stayed the allowed four inches apart. Elsewhere, whistles were blown or spotlights utilised to prevent too much intimacy. Such regulations acted to rein in any ‘errant’ behaviour from men. In general, these rules were adhered to, and women came to expect that men would conform to these more equal rules of courtship. Increasingly they did. The results of the dancing profession’s codification of social dancing in the 1920s also helped this development. The process and nature of couple formulation which arose in the English style of ballroom dancing so dominant by the 1930s was one that defused the overt sexuality of the dance. Moreover, as Nathaus highlights, it allowed for a ‘dignified exit’ at the end of a dance – one where there were no expectations of sexual favours from either side as the result of coming together to dance.59 All in all, the world of the dance hall necessitated a form of heterosexual masculinity in which men paid respect to women and interacted with them in a setting that was regulated and prescribed. In addition, dancing allowed men to move in ways that were seldom permissible outside. We end, then, by examining dancing and the liberation of men’s bodies. Despite its detractors, the freedom of movement offered in dancing was a vital aspect of the liberty the dance hall offered men. As the Dancing Times put it in 1932: ‘There are thousands of men in the country who do not dance but who have a secret yearning to do so. This desire for rhythmic movement is inherent in all human beings, and dates back to those far-off days when man expressed his emotions in leaps and bounds and gestures and genuflexions.’60 This might be true – but for most men, the way they moved in the dance hall was shaped much more by what they wanted to get out of it and the circumstances of the world of the dance hall itself. Dancing necessitated individual, couple and group movement. Movement around the dance floor could be both a hypnotic and a dangerous ­experience – at once liberating and constraining. The liberation of movement offered by the new social dances of the early twentieth century was central to their terrific popularity. These new dances transformed social dance from sequence dances where everyone performed the same steps to dances deliberately formulated for couples. The dances involved much greater physical contact between partners – the bunny hug and the grizzly bear requiring dancers to embrace, for example. Utilising a completely new set of body movements, the new dances were also far freer and open to individual interpretation and undermined older notions of ‘respectability’.

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For example, notable aspects of the African tradition in dancing, such as exaggerated hip and pelvis movements, can clearly be seen in dances like the turkey trot, which involved the man ‘trotting’ towards his partner, flapping his arms in the manner of an aroused fowl, while his partner did the same in retreat. The dance hall was thus a kind of laboratory for experimentation in bodily movement. It offered an outlet for ways of moving that would not be possible or acceptable outside its walls (although, as we have seen, these very things attracted criticism as they challenged hegemonic masculinity with its emphasis on strength, fitness and ‘heroism’). No other public space offered the chance and opportunity to display such a wide range of movement for so many men. Bodies shook, swayed, promenaded, progressed – limbs and torsos rose, fell, bent – heads bobbed up and down, back and forward as the collective and individual movement ebbed and flowed to the music. Dancers thrilled at the opportunity to let themselves go. Such movement could create feelings of euphoria, boosting confidence and wellbeing. Whilst dancing, one ‘felt’ the dancing surging through one’s entire being – even down to the vibration reverberating back from the dance floor, a feeling enhanced by the fact that dance floors visibly moved when dancing took place. For young men in particular, the corporal freedom offered by dancing was especially important. A 1939 survey of attitudes to dancing conducted by Mass Observation shows that for many men, dancing was an important emotional and physical outlet. Some comments from those surveyed: ‘Self-expression should be every normal person’s business – dancing is one way’; ‘one of the most primitive of man’s expressions and it clearly seems to be nature’s way of offsetting the ever increasing and stifling repressions and inhibitions and frustrations of modern Western social life. It is an outlet…’; ‘I find it one of the most enjoyable forms of mental relaxation, apart from being a very good and natural form of exercise’; ‘each movement was a joy’.61 Leaving aside the obvious desire of some respondents to appear ‘intellectual’, it is clear that for some men dancing was a means of expression. Indeed, several dances emerged in the interwar period that ‘broke the rules’ and offered a real outlet for freedom of expression in the dance hall – the Charleston of the 1920s and the swing dances of the 1930s were some of the most important. We shall now consider how they helped in the liberation of men’s bodies. One of the first dances that proved to be particularly popular amongst the young was the Charleston. Energetic and ‘wild’, this dance was well suited to young dancers, ‘hard to dance and easy to self-choreograph’.62 Indeed, the Charleston was seen as symbolic of the new post-war generation by contemporaries. For example, in 1926 it was observed that the Charleston was ‘essentially unsuitable for any but quite young people … only the very

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young were supple enough to accomplish the “waggle” which was considered to be sine qua non.’63 In 1927 it was also noted that, although ‘all sorts and all ages’ of people danced it, ‘it is really the young people’s dance’.64 Similarly, in the late 1930s the appearance of a number of swing dances laid the foundations for the distinctive youth dance culture that was to emerge over the next twenty years. Swing music and ‘free form’ dances such as Truckin’ found some of their most ardent supporters amongst the young. In the late 1930s ‘swing’ brought a new energy to popular music and heralded the arrival of a new type of dancing in Britain’s dance halls, the first notable swing dance being Truckin’. Truckin’ derived from 1920s lindy hop dances and was an interruption of normal dancing patterns. It was an expression of happiness and joy taking the form of a strut, where the shoulders would rise and fall as dancers moved towards one another, with fingers pointing up and wiggling back and forth like a windscreen wiper. There were several features of this dance style that made it particularly popular with youth. The formalised, standardised, controlled environment typified by the ‘English style’ of ballroom dancing was one that left little room for selfexpression or for spontaneity. Truckin’ allowed a marked departure from this norm, with its freestyle movements and space for individual interpretation. One account of the dance from 1938 illustrates how it shook up the staid dancing of the ballroom: many ‘truck’, walk arm in arm, strut, wag forefingers relentlessly, shake hips; sometimes groups of couples doing this come together, form a little ­procession … Others, Truckin’, leave go, walk away from each other, turn backs, come together again … The idea of swing music is that you make it up as you go along; these people are doing swing with their feet, freelance shufflings and jiggings; it’s all a long way from the formalised foxtrotting steps.65

Younger dancers especially found this spontaneity appealing, and took to it naturally. For example, one twenty-year-old ‘Trucker’ in Peckham, London remarked, ‘It’s easy … you just waggle your feet, shake your stomach, and wave your arms.’66 Mass Observation noted that those who swung were ‘pronounced in their movements – hips shaken with marked emphasis, feet stamped, legs kicked out, trunk sinuated, heads shaken, arms waved with a trembling motion’.67 ‘Fun’ and ‘hilarity’ were also possible with such dances, just as they had been with the early social dance successes of the 1910s known collectively as the ‘animal dances’ – the turkey trot, grizzly bear and bunny hug. Such movements were amusing and allowed dancers to ‘let themselves go’ – to rebel against the physical conformity of ballrooms, offices and factories. They also allowed dancing couples to defuse any potential sexual tension that had arisen during the



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couple formation. By both partners consciously ‘making fools’ of themselves, such dances were a social leveller and thus an important strategy in dancers’ self-conscious construction of their public identities. Dances such as Truckin’ also involved an element of display, something else that appealed to some young men who were eager to impress their friends and members of the opposite sex. Being seen, being popular and being fashionable were particularly important to young men discovering and developing their identities.

Conclusion In dancing we have a fascinating example of a public behaviour that required heterosexual working-class men to conform to a ‘softer’ type of masculinity, and face potential accusations of effeminacy, in order to ‘achieve’ their very traditional role of ‘getting a woman’. Certainly, dancing opened up considerable debate about men’s behaviour and identity in interwar Britain. That debate highlights the confused and contradictory nature of criticism and discussion of masculinity. Like that debate, there were two sides to the social worlds of dancing for men. On the one hand, dance halls in this period were a heteronormative space, and the fluidity of same-sex interaction of the 1920s gradually gave way to more confinement in the 1930s, as heterosexual couple formation and romantic liaisons became more central to the dancing experience. On the other hand, dancing could be useful in liberating both men and women in interwar Britain. It allowed a renegotiation of relationships between men and women, and offered a set of conventions and expectations of behaviour that helped reshape men in interesting and largely positive ways. Despite criticism from reactionaries – of both sexes, and from the left and right – the dance hall was a social world that freed heterosexual men from some of the more brutal and restrictive demands of patriarchal culture, allowing them a space to move freely, ‘let themselves go’ and show a more respectful and caring side to their nature than would be permissible ­elsewhere in public.

Notes   1 Dancing Times (hereafter DT) (April 1927), pp. 83–4.   2 Nottingham Journal (29 January 1927), p. 7.   3 A. Light, Forever England: Femininity, Literature, and Conservatism Between the Wars (London: Routledge, 1991), p. 8.

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  4 M. Francis, ‘The Domestication of the Male? Recent Research on Nineteenthand Twentieth-Century British Masculinity’, Historical Journal, 45:3 (2002), 640–1.   5 A. Bingham, Gender, Modernity, and the Popular Press in Inter-war Britain (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004), p. 247; E. Robertson, ‘“The Isolated Men in the Back of Beyond”: Masculinity and the BBC Empire Service, 1932–45’, Gender and History, 29:2 (2017), 304–5; and J. Meyer, Men of War: Masculinity and the First World War in Britain (London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2011), p. 6.  6 R. Connell and J. Messerschmidt, ‘Hegemonic Masculinity: Rethinking the Concept’, Gender and Society, 19:6 (2005), 832–3.  7 Ibid., 833.  8 B. Griffin, ‘Hegemonic Masculinity as a Historical Problem’, Gender and History, 30:2 (2018), 378.  9 Ibid., 394. 10 D. Caradog Jones (ed.), The Social Survey of Merseyside 3 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1934), pp. 277–8. 11 Western Morning News and Mercury (20 December 1924), p. 4. 12 DT (May 1938), p. 3. 13 R. Roberts, The Classic Slum (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1983), p. 188. 14 T. Harrisson, ‘Whistle While You Work’, New Writing, new series, 1 (October 1938), 50. 15 Mass Observation Archive (hereafter MOA), University of Sussex, Brighton, England, Worktown Collection, 48/C, report by anon., ‘Shall We Dance?’, 1938, p. 2. 16 C. Cameron, A. J. Lush, and G. Meara (eds), Disinherited Youth (Edinburgh: Carnegie United Kingdom Trust, 1943), p. 105. 17 MOA, Topic Collection: Music, Jazz and Dancing (hereafter MJD), 38/1/B, report ‘Paramount AH’, 20 March 1939, p. 15. 18 Sheffield Independent (1 August 1933), p. 6. 19 Daily Mail (21 July 1925), p. 7. 20 Calculated from a sample of 100 respondents (50 male, 50 female) in MOA, Directive Reply: ‘Jazz 2, July 1939’. 21 MOA, MJD, ‘Jazz 2, July 1939’, Directive Reply by ‘G. L. Wallace’, p. 1. 22 Daily Mirror (28 September 1927), p. 4. 23 DT (February 1928), p. 684. 24 In this respect I disagree with the argument put forward by Melanie Tebbutt in Being Boys: Youth, Leisure and Identity in the Inter-War Years (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012) who argues that the transformation from the ‘gender boundary dissolving’ anarchic dances of the 1920s to the more ordered English style, and the ‘asexual’ and playful party dances of the 1930s had reasserted traditional masculine identities in the dance hall. 25 MOA, MJD: 38/1/A, report ‘Streatham Locarno I1’, 17 November 1938, p. 5. 26 Ballroom and Band (August 1937), p. 13.

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27 Dundee Evening Telegraph (25 May 1928), p. 3. 28 Reynold’s News (12 February 1939), p. 4. 29 S. F. Hatton, London’s Bad Boys (London: Chapman & Hall, 1931), p. 23. 30 DT (September 1927), p. 633. 31 Globe (14 January 1920), p. 4. 32 Liverpool Echo (12 January 1928), p. 12. 33 Derby Daily Telegraph (10 March 1931), p. 4. 34 Yorkshire Evening Post (12 February 1921), p. 4. 35 Dundee Evening Telegraph (2 October 1937), p. 8. 36 Nottingham Journal (7 July 1936), p. 5. 37 Leeds Mercury (10 January 1928), p. 1. 38 Leeds Mercury (15 February 1921), p. 6. 39 Leeds Mercury (29 November 1921), p. 6. 40 J. Davidson and M. Davidson, Etiquette at a Dance (London: W. Foulsham & Co., 1937), p. 28. 41 Nottingham Journal (7 July 1936), p. 5. 42 Hull Daily Mail (26 August 1927), p. 9; Nottingham Journal (1 May 1937), p. 7. 43 Shipley Times and Express (9 January 1920), p. 2. 44 MOA, MJD: 38/1/I, report ‘Stones, Rye Lane’, 6 March 1939, pp. 8, 4. 45 MOA, MJD: 38/1/B, report ‘Paramount’, 24 April 1939, p. 1. 46 Banbury Guardian (3 July 1924), p. 5. 47 Bath Chronicle and Weekly Gazette (28 March 1925), p. 21. 48 Northampton Mercury (4 December 1931), p. 5. 49 MOA, MJD: 38/1/E, report ‘Peckham Pavilion V9’, 28 February 1939, p. 6. 50 Harrisson, ‘Whistle While You Work’, p. 50. 51 C. F. Taylor, Round the Dundee Dance Halls from the 1920s (Dundee: personal publication, 1987), p. 11. 52 Ibid., p. 5. 53 See J. Nott, Going to the Palais: A Social and Cultural History of Dancing and Dance Halls in Britain, 1918–1960 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), especially chapters 6, 7 & 8. 54 Sheffield Independent (24 February 1926), p. 7. 55 MOA, Worktown Collection, 57/D, ‘Worktown Notes’, 4 September 1937. 56 S. Casani, Casani’s Home Teacher: Ballroom Dancing Made Easy (London: Heath Cranton, 1936), p. 48. 57 See chapter 2, p. 59. 58 Dundee, Scotland, oral history interview by author of Sandy Melville (b.1934), Dundee, 11 March 2011. 59 See chapter 2, p. 42. 60 DT (April 1932), p. 2. 61 MOA, Directive Reply, ‘Jazz 2, July 1939’. 62 B. Cohen-Stratyner, ‘“A Thousand Raggy, Draggy Dances”: Social Dance in Broadway’, in J. Malnig (ed.), Ballroom, Boogie, Shimmy Sham, Shake: A Social and Popular Dance Reader (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2009), p. 222.

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63 Aberdeen Press and Journal (22 November 1926), p. 3. 64 Aberdeen Press and Journal (24 January 1927), p. 3. 65 MOA, MJD, 38/1/A, report ‘Streatham Locarno’, 17 November 1938, p. 1. 66 MOA, MJD, 38/1/E, report ‘Peckham Pavilion, V14, AH’, 1 April 1939, p. 1. 67 MOA, MJD, 38/1/B, report ‘Paramount AH’, 20 March 1939, p. 15.

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Similar steps, different venues: the making of segregated dancing worlds in South Africa, 1910–39 Alida Maria Green The in-thing was to swing your girlfriend on the dance floor until her skirt billowed, showing a finely trimmed leg, as you danced to the music of the Jazz Maniacs. Those were the days of the jive and jitterbug when the music at weekends would play from 7pm to 4am. Edward Selelo1

In an interview with the Rand Daily Mail in 1981, South African musician Edward Selelo remembers the heyday of social dancing in South Africa between the mid-1920s and the early 1940s. While his description of couples ‘jiving’ to the ‘crazy’ jazz music draws from his memories of dance venues in the Johannesburg townships, it could equally well be a picture of social dancing in the plush dance halls that catered to the white middle class of the city. Black and white couples danced the same steps, to the same music, and largely to similar ends, though in different spaces. Their parallel social worlds were, as Selelo’s reference to jazz, jive and jitterbug suggests, strongly oriented towards a dance culture that was regarded as ‘American’. This chapter traces the rise of couple dancing and the industry surrounding it in pre-Apartheid South Africa, focusing on Johannesburg as one of the country’s four major cities. Starting from the assumption that the practice of dancing does not simply ‘mirror’ society or its time, but requires an infrastructure of venues, music, steps and social conventions, the chapter studies a variety of actors that contributed to the making of the parallel worlds of dancing, including dance teachers, musicians and entertainment entrepreneurs. In addition, it takes the important role of recording and broadcasting media for the proliferation of dance steps and dance music into account. From this perspective, the chapter will show how the expansion of theatres, dance halls, studios and social clubs as well as the proliferation of shellac records, radio equipment and film reels and dedicated dance bands contributed to the founding of a fully-fledged dance industry by the mid-1930s. The making of dancing worlds in South Africa drew on repertoires that are firmly associated with the USA. However, the development of dancing

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in South Africa cannot be described as a case of Americanisation, as this chapter is going to show. During the first half of the twentieth century, the dance scene in the country was open to a variety of global influences. Owing to South Africa’s status as a British colony, ties to the United Kingdom were particularly strong, including the institutions of social dancing. Visiting theatre groups, dance records, films and radio broadcasts from the UK and elsewhere exposed South African dance enthusiasts to a global range of ballroom music and dance styles. While the British influence was strong, it did not determine what went on in dance halls. South African dancers and local dance music providers were remote enough from the hierarchical formal dancing structures of the UK that they could select dances they deemed practical and morally suited to their southern African ballroom. To trace the making of the Johannesburg dancing worlds in its global context, this chapter uses a range of contemporary published sources and oral histories. The popular South African press, newsreels and the local South Africa dance magazine The South African Dancing Times reported on social dancing in the urban centres and thus proved to be a rich source for this study. The primary newspapers used for this chapter are the Rand Daily Mail (1902–85) and the South African Sunday Times (since 1906) as well as the Bantu World (1932–46). The latter gave insights into social dancing in the black townships. Further information about the black world of dancing is gained from the memoirs of key figures like band leader Peter Rezant (1910–98) and composer and journalist Todd Matshikiza ­(1921–68).2 As the chapter is primarily interested in the making of dancing worlds, it concentrates on the actors and factors that supported their growth. Although detractors of ‘imported dances’ and changing dance floor conventions amounted to a moral panic at times, they play a lesser role here. Their reactions are assessed in their effect on social dancing, and these sources reinforce the view that commercial couple dancing was a popular pastime. This chapter explores how the segregated urban communities in South Africa experienced, imagined and created social dances, dances that they derived from UK dance halls and American theatres and adapted to local circumstances. The first part begins before 1910 to sketch the context in which the fashionable dances following the tango arrived in Johannesburg. It shows how new steps were transformed from stage to social dances and describes the efforts to make popular dance trends ‘respectable’ in order to retain class and race distinctions on the dance floor, focusing on dance teachers from the 1920s onward. The second part shifts the perspective to the dance hall industry that grew from the second half of the 1920s and looks at how social dancing as a practice was flanked by sound film, records and broadcasting. A third part takes the parallel world of social dancing in which members of a black middle class participated into view.



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Society balls, ‘improper’ romps and the transformation of ‘crazes’ into ‘respectable’ steps With the interactions between the colonists and local indigenous inhabitants, and the import of slaves and constant influx of settlers, South Africa was a diverse and socially segregated space. Settlers and travellers brought European social dances to the colony from as early as the end of the seventeenth century. Introducing these court dances laid the foundation for the adoption of ballroom dances across communities because of their association with opulence and respectability.3 This rapid spread of dance is clear in the accounts of travel writers who commented on the similarities between dancing at the Europeans’ exclusive government balls and at ballroom events danced by the indigenous inhabitants.4 Late nineteenthcentury artefacts like invitation cards and dance programmes testify that ballroom dances continued to be a popular pastime as the colony expanded and became established in the country’s interior. It was not only the uppermiddle classes who danced ballroom; as recorded in memoirs of the years 1870–90, dancing continued to play a part in the social life of people who were less than affluent.5 By the end of the nineteenth century, the makeshift towns in the northern parts of South Africa were expanding rapidly. The discovery of diamonds and gold in 1867 and 1886, in Kimberley and Johannesburg respectively, drew people from across the world to South Africa. As these cities expanded, commercial entertainment, including gambling, drinking and prostitution, soon became an integral part of urban life. Mining outposts gradually developed into towns with amenities for socialising and entertainment.6 Social dancing was accommodated at a number of hotels, clubs and halls and deployed as a means to forge relations among the diverse populations of the mining towns. A Johannesburg miner’s daughter recalled in her travel memories, ‘what fun it was meeting fresh partners at every dance and ball – handsome faces, new steps, men from all over the world’.7 Because of the social diversity in mining towns, class boundaries seemed to erode. Furthermore, the late nineteenth-century South African mining towns were notoriously rough and lawless. The dances offered at their clubs, as suggested by the quotation, bordered on being promiscuous. Neither the traditional folk dances nor the grand lancers could fit into this unregulated, confined space. Taking into account that Kimberley and Johannesburg initially were male-dominated settlements, the ‘ladies’ of the mining towns had a variety of both men and dances to choose from. The workers in these towns prided themselves on being very far removed from the colonial powers and seemed to welcome, with a few exceptions from the right-wing Boers, the openness of these dance events. Dancing in

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these makeshift towns almost always became associated with ‘improper’ behaviour. However, social dancing in Johannesburg changed to some degree from these crude beginnings. Even though early twentieth-century South Africa lacked advanced European infrastructure, its economic development, industrialisation and urbanisation created a growing middle class who had more disposable income and defined leisure time. Alongside the growth of the cities came a more defined political and class system as the colonies became the Union of South Africa in 1910 under British rule. Government also created segregated township areas on the outskirts of cities like Johannesburg. These areas were initially only meant to be temporary shelters for migrant workers but soon became a permanent feature. Socialites organised ballroom dances at hotels and private clubs to provide members of high society with meeting and mingling opportunities. Balls, celebratory functions and Christmas events until the mid-1920s were lavish affairs. Governor Generals, the official British representatives in the Union, for example, arranged garden parties for both political figures and socialites to mingle on and off the dance floor. These dance events typically included the waltz, which had been popular since its inception in the previous century, but also the syncopated ragtime dances like the foxtrot and one-step. Small bands accompanied them. It became increasingly fashionable to use ballroom dancing not just for social events like these but also to raise funds for various causes and educate children in ballroom dancing.8 This shows how integral ballroom was becoming in South African society. Ballroom dances were, however, danced not only by the South African elite, but also by the growing white and black middle classes. Amongst the white middle classes, it was especially the English-speaking community that would support commercial couple dancing. The growing black middle classes favoured ballroom styles above the local Marabi dances, which were more popular amongst the poorer population. Marabi was a mixture of local and international music styles, characterised by a repeating chord structure. Like the Charleston, this dance style allowed a lot of improvisation, but its association with the illegal liquor dens of the slum yards made ballroom the choice for the black elite.9 Respectable social dance events for both the white and black groups were less formal than society dances and had, from the late 1920s, a definite commercial character. Initially, the middle-class dancers looked towards the dance of upper-class society to determine what was permissible and in fashion to dance. They even copied the Governor Generals’ programmes at their own dance events. In addition to makeshift dances and society events, the adaptation of fashionable stage dances most clearly contained the seeds of commercial couple dancing that was going to flourish from the late 1920s. It involved

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the import of American dance ‘crazes’ and their subsequent domestication by mainly British dance institutions. Since the late nineteenth century, American dance minstrel troupes brought new steps and the syncopated rhythms of the American South to the music hall stages of South Africa’s major cities Cape Town (Cape Colony), Durban (Natal) and Johannesburg (Transvaal), influencing social dancing in turn. Music halls, albeit rudimentary, appeared in the 1880s in Johannesburg (later than in Cape Town and Durban) and had tremendous appeal.10 Venues like the Empire Palace of Varieties, which seated an audience of 1,200, served as platforms for both local and imported artists. The stage dances were seen by both white and black patrons. Audiences watched the vaudeville sensations that music hall proprietors often announced as the ‘best’ American song and dances. From the 1910s onwards, film screenings became part of the entertainment bills. Theatre proprietors imported films, often directly from international agencies and at great expense, which underscores how important this new attraction was to them. In Johannesburg specifically, theatrical performers, including dancers, entertained patrons before the films started. An example for this coupling of dance demonstration and film screening is the performance of The Black Bottom and How To Dance It to accompany the feature film The Son of the Sheik, starring Rudolph Valentino, at the Bijou theatre in 1927.11 The African American connection that the minstrel troupes established at the turn of the century was significant because it exposed South African communities of all races to ‘concert and dance’ style performances. These performances usually took place indoors, throughout the evening. They commonly started with a vaudeville, or variety show entertainment (from 8  p.m. to midnight), followed by dancing (ending at 4 a.m.).12 Minstrel shows also inspired dance bands that emerged in the 1920s and 1930s. Their shows sensitised urban South Africans to the American beat and paved the way for ragtime and jazz dances like the Charleston around the mid-1920s as well as the jitterbug and the jive at the end of the 1930s and beginning of the 1940s, respectively.13 All these dances were first seen on stage and in films, before they were then adapted to fit social dancing. First performed in South Africa at the Empire Palace in 1910, the tango was viewed by the South African Englishlanguage press as unfit for ‘polite society’ because of its ‘lowly’ origins. At the same time, press reports underlined the global appeal of this dance, which may have inspired some local South African dancers to try it out at local dancing venues.14 Copying the dance directly from its stage presentation proved to be technically difficult though and conflicted with established ideas of middle-class decorum. A newspaper report on a tango ball held at the Carlton Hotel in 1914 noted that:

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In the crowded ballroom there were only four Tangoes danced with varying degrees of success and scarcely two couples danced it alike … Mrs Mosenthal and her partner were generally considered the most graceful dancers of this new introduction. The majority of the other dancers appeared to be learning it or teaching their partners and some of the efforts were most weird.15

Starting with the tango, fashionable dances were framed as ‘crazes’, which helped their popularity and suggested that anyone could succumb to the latest dance fad and become dance ‘mad’. In addition, the African American traits of dances like the black bottom or the Charleston as well as stereotypes that American minstrel troupes displayed met a local society sharply divided along lines of class and race. The slow syncopated ragtime was so well received in the townships that it became part of the ukureka, a local singing and performance style. The popular South African isicathamiya, male acapella groups and choirs, developed from the ukureka.16 This acceptance was not universal. Dance ‘crazes’ inspired by performances of African American dances created tensions, as some white commentators saw these dances as inappropriate for white middle-class dancers to engage in. As the Rand Daily Mail observed in 1927: Some anxiety is being experienced by a number of European householders as the result of the adoption of the Charleston by the native servants. The dance is practised in the kitchen, in the dining-room and on the veranda, at all hours and under all circumstances. [It is] now forbidden in practically every firstclass restaurant and dance club.17

The quote illustrates that the Charleston, a step associated with blackness and the lower classes, was thought to have spread like an infectious disease, weakening established hierarchies. Like their white counterparts, some black Christian leaders also warned against participation in this dance. They linked it to immoral behaviour, such as alcohol abuse, violence and overtly sexual activity.18 As we have seen, it was not the first dance ‘fad’ to meet with this reaction, nor would it be the last. The introduction of the tango had created similar anxieties, as would the jitterbug (in 1939) and the jive (in 1943). Dismissive comments about improvised steps did not deter people from wanting to emulate what they saw performed at theatres and film screenings in local hotels and clubs where dances were held. However, such critique was a powerful argument to seek professional help. Starting with the tango, instruction became a very lucrative business opportunity for South African dance teachers, who promoted this couple dance as ‘elegant’ and ‘refined’, as long as it was the ‘real’ tango. Dance instructors – who tellingly called themselves ‘professors’ and their institutions ‘academies’ – identified

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respectability as the key issue for dancers and promised to help them ‘keep face’ in the ballroom by teaching them the ‘proper’ steps.19 In this way, the tango set the precedent for how fashionable dances were introduced to South African audiences. First demonstrated on stage and on screen, the black bottom, the Charleston and the jive were then ‘improved’ by acclaimed South African dance teachers, who promised to show their pupils the ‘right way’ on South African dance floors.20 More affluent white dancers turned to London-trained dance teachers to learn ‘respectable’ versions of those ‘crazy’ steps, making them less spontaneous and thus apparently better suited for white dance events. Before the First World War, Johannesburg had at least five known ballroom dance instructors as evidenced in the local papers. After the First World War, the dance teacher profession expanded rapidly in urban South Africa. By 1927, there were 137 dance teachers in Johannesburg alone.21 One of the schools for ballroom dancing in the city was the Elsie Reed and Marjorie Ward School of Ballroom, established in 1919. Like most of the other South African ballroom teachers, Reed was a member of both the Imperial Society of Teachers of Dance (ISTD) and the South African Dance Teacher Association (SADTA).22 Her clients mainly included children and adults of the more affluent white society. She and other accomplished SADTA teachers often travelled to England to further their ballroom training, performed at ballroom exhibitions and acted as adjudicators for regional and national competitions while training young ballroom enthusiasts. Madge Mans was another key player in South Africa’s dance scene, as she helped to establish the SADTA, the South African counterpart of the British ISTD.23 The SADTA’s founding date has proved impossible to establish as all primary documentation has been lost, but it was most likely formed in 1926 in Cape Town as the Dance Teachers’ Association.24 South Africa’s professional dance teachers founded the ballroom branch of the association in December 1927. This dance organisation was for white South African dancers only. As will be discussed later, informal dance organisations existed, and black amateur ballroom competitions did take place. A Non-European Ballroom Dancing Association is mentioned as a black South African counterpart to the SADTA in the press from 1950, though its origins are unknown.25 To disseminate standards of ‘respectable’ ballroom dancing, the SADTA introduced, organised and oversaw both regional (introduced in 1924) and national (introduced in 1928) competitions for white participants. In 1932, the Astoria Palais de Danse, the city’s newly built flagship dance venue, introduced weekly amateur ballroom competitions where enthusiasts practised and performed their steps. Finals and national professional SADTA competitions took place at larger, public venues like the city hall. Smaller

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heats and regional competitions, however, took place at the Astoria and at the Loveday.26 By the end of the 1930s, ballroom dance competitors would typically dance the slow foxtrot, quick step, waltz and tango in the regional and national competitions. By that time, ballroom competitions had become so entrenched in Johannesburg city life that the ballroom dance syllabi even appeared in the press.27 More detailed discussions of proper dress and rules of dance appeared in the South African Dancing Times, and dance teachers often also played the role of dance critics and reporters in the popular press. The SADTA played an important role in organising and promoting professional dance competitions. The association had a strong orientation towards the British institutions and the British style of dancing and strictly applied the formal competitive rule book. The SADTA regarded its most important role as bringing out international adjudicators and regarded securing the services of Alex Moore, a renowned UK dancer, as one of its greatest successes. Moore first came to South Africa in 1933 to adjudicate the national amateur ballroom championships as well as several regional competitions. This opened the path for South African ballroom dancers to train at the Alex Moore School of Dancing, London and Kingston, which its owner claimed to be ‘England’s Leading School for professional training’. Moore also wrote regular pieces in the South African Dancing Times to keep South African dancers up to date with what London was dancing.28 Another London luminary, Henry Jacques, adjudicated the national championships a number of times in the 1930s.29 During his second visit, in 1937, when more than 550 people attended, Jacques noted that the ‘standard of ballroom has greatly improved [although the men’s] position of their shoulders was too high and they were inclined to hold their partners too much to one side’.30 Jacques and his dance partners not only gave demonstrations of the latest steps, but also advised local bands on the tempo of the various ballroom dances.31 His and his partners’ opinions were highly valued. Other celebrity international ballroom dancers included Arthur Murray, Victor Silvester, Leo Kehl and Gerry Gerrard.32 While the London adjudicators were mostly complimentary towards South African competitors, they did frequently comment on dress and the interpretation of the music. They noted that: the Slow Foxtrot and Tango tempi was slightly on the slow side … which accounted for the lack of sparkle in many basic figures … many of the gentlemen from a satirical point of view were badly dressed. It is incorrect to show any white waistcoat beneath the waist of the ‘tails’.33

The SADTA’s reliance on British approval created separated dancing worlds in South Africa’s urban centres. The association controlled the



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­competitive scene, keeping it under rigid rules. This was in direct opposition to the commercial dance halls that allowed the media to influence the dancing and attract new supporters.

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Media integration and the growth of a dance industry The popular press of the late 1920s to early 1940s registered both a marked growth in the number of dance events and an increase in the variety of dances.34 This growth was owed partly to cities’ expansion and evidences an acceptance of dance ‘crazes’. Moreover, it indicates ballroom dancing’s evolution from a social occasion for the elite to an industry. This development encompassed the building of venues and was flanked by sound film, recorded music and broadcasting that featured social dancing in a way that inspired emulation just as stage dances had done in the 1910s and 1920s. In the cities, entrepreneurs converted spaces to ballrooms. Repurposed venues like the Carlton Hotel and the Empire Theatre, however, did not satisfy the demand for dancing, as patrons overran them. In Johannesburg, dance commentators speculated that it was the lack of a purpose-built palais de danse that prevented local ballroom dancing from reaching the same popularity as it had in Britain. The white press reported with wonder on British ballrooms that held at least forty dances a night accompanied by two bands.35 In 1926, the African Theatre Trust, a limited liability company which controlled the majority of the theatre and film industry, launched a massive building project to establish new cinema theatres and dance palaces across the Union. New York entrepreneur Isidore Schlesinger and London boxer and music hall entertainer Harry Stoedel had founded this company in 1913 to manage theatres and source international shows and films. Schlesinger and Stoedel wanted to create a national theatre circuit that showcased international shows. Schlesinger bought several of the bigger South Africa theatre chains, including Amalgamated Theatres (established in 1911) and the Empire Theatres Company (established in 1912). In 1915, he expanded his empire by forming the African Films Trust and African Film Productions Ltd. The latter had its headquarters in Johannesburg and focused on the import and distribution of films. Subsequently, Schlesinger later combined the two agencies to form the African Consolidated Theatres. Among other venues, the African Theatre Trust built a Palais de Danse in Cape Town and two theatres in Johannesburg, one of which would become a Palais de Danse too.36 In 1927, the Post Office department installed signal cables to connect the various theatres, the Carlton Hotel and St James Restaurant to the new

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African Broadcasting Company’s radio station. Now, 20,000 listeners could hear the performances and dance to music transmissions. The broadcasting company specifically selected the St James Restaurant because the African Theatre Trust earmarked it to be the next London-inspired palais de danse.37 Dance commentators in the press welcomed these developments. They were convinced that a South African dance palace would make dancing even more popular and thus benefit the dance teacher profession. Commentators further believed that a commercial hall would give punters more variety, accommodating both beginners and advanced dancers. They also predicted that such a commercial venue would make dancing less elitist, because it required no formal invitation or adherence to an exclusive dress code. The planned hall would have a state-of-the-art dance floor that promised plenty of space for dancers, electric lighting and professional dance partners for hire. In anticipation, the proprietors imported a dance band directly from England. The band arrived with a special clause that each member of the band had to have a local under-study who played with him at least twice a week, which further underlines the orientation to English standards. To stoke the excitement for the new dance venue even more, the Astoria cinema in 1929 showed Palais de Dance (sic), a short film starring Mabel Poulton, accompanied by a synchronised recording of Teddy Brown’s American band.38 On 6 August 1932, the Astoria Palais de Danse, converted from the 1927 theatre, finally opened its doors to the general – white – public. The owners, African Caterers, appointed Clifford Burke, manager of the Palais de Danse in Hammersmith, England, to run the hall. Perhaps falling short of the size and grandeur that the 1928 reports envisioned, the Astoria Palais de Danse became a popular dance venue. It offered dancing events twice daily, which still left demand for another dance palace, the Loveday, to open its doors in the same year. The Loveday lured Burke away from the Astoria to help the new ‘palais’ to emulate the British model.39 Commercial dance halls raised the standard of ballroom dancing in Johannesburg because they created more opportunities to dance. At both halls, dances were held twice daily in the afternoons or in the evenings and also on Saturday evenings. What is more, these halls hired professional dance teachers and exhibition dancers, male and female, to act as dance partners. Unlike earlier bars that had, as mentioned, employed untrained dance partners, the dance palaces required their dance instructors to have extensive experience and professional credentials. Patrons had to book their services per dance and they could also book classes with these dancers in the morning and afternoon at the venues.40 The boom in social dancing around 1930 was flanked by media developments. To begin with, dancing helped the recording industry to grow, and

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Figure 4  Advertisement in the Rand Daily Mail (2 November 1932)

vice versa. Advertising agents for global gramophone companies appeared from just after the turn of the twentieth century in the South African press. G. W. Platt and Co. and Henry’s Mozart Pianos and Organ Co. represented Edison, and the Mackay Brothers represented His Master’s Voice, selling gramophones and records. Given their cost and sound quality, music records were initially not very popular in South Africa. However, this changed in

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the 1920s. Demand for records increased, certainly helped by dance enthusiasts who used the gramophone to stay up to date with what was danced internationally. Records were also important for the numerous bands who played at ballrooms, including Teddie Garrat’s Harmony Kings, who were regarded as South Africa’s ‘Syncopation Kings’ during the early 1930s, as well as J. Fritelli’s Blue Harmonists and Harry Gers’s New Astorians.41 These bands played the latest international hits in Johannesburg’s commercial dance halls and at venues where dance competitions were held. On the white competitive dance floor and SADTA-backed events, music selections that were played by British bands were preferred. According to dance organisers, they made functions ‘near perfect’.42 British bands like the Debroy Somers Band and the BBC Orchestra were popular.43 In c­ ontrast, at commercial dance halls, both for white and black guests, popular tunes from America proliferated, confirming a close connection between recordings (heard on shellac records or the radio) and social dancing. Band members bought imported records from local music stores, where they also purchased their sheet music. Musicians often taught themselves by listening to imported dance records. Band leader Peter Rezant remembers that he learned dance music by ear from Layton and Johnstone’s recordings on Decca in the 1920s.44 Recommendations of the best tunes to dance to were also advertised in the local press and dance magazine. This reinforced the connection between the dancing world and record industry.45 Dance music and special dance programmes were also broadcast via radio from various popular dance venues. The South African Amateur Ballroom Championship of 1936, for instance, held at the ballroom at the Empire Exhibition, was broadcast to dance enthusiasts.46 Dance music featured on radio programmes from Johannesburg every evening except on Sundays and could be received by all South Africans who lived in or close to the major cities. On Fridays and Saturdays, the dance programme on radio was longer and included live broadcasts from local hotels by local bands. However, radio not only featured local musicians, but also brought dance music from all over the world to South African homes, including waltzes from Vienna, jazz from New York (heard on Radio America) and tango from Argentina.47 In addition to records and broadcasting, sound film played a major role in popularising social dancing and distributing knowledge about steps and sounds among dancers and musicians. Dance bands incorporated popular film tunes into their playlists; for instance, the Merry Blackbirds played Chattanooga Choo Choo, a swing tune performed by Glenn Miller and His Orchestra that reached South Africa through the film Sun Valley Serenade.48 Furthermore, films heavily featured social dancing. In 1930, as the conversion to sound film began, the Rand Daily Mail noticed that

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‘scarcely any picture is now without dancing’.49 Performed by professionals, dances on film ‘quell[ed] the vulgarity of jazz dancing’, as an article in the same newspaper put it two years later.50 Apparently, Harry Richman in Puttin’ on the Ritz and Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in Shall We Dance, which were screened at local theatres, made dancing palatable for those who had feared that earlier dance ‘crazes’ would taint their reputation. In even greater numbers than before, film screenings inspired people to take up dancing and book dance classes. Dance films also inspired professionals. Ethnomusicologist Veit Erlmann notes how Isaac Mozobe’s Crocodile Singers performed an elaborate dance routine to their Johannesburg audience on stages after they saw Astaire and Rogers’s films.51 Apart from feature films, newsreels contributed to the popularisation of ballroom dancing and its music. The African Mirror newsreels, which were shown before feature films and reported on the general social and political life of, mostly, white South Africa, showcased national dance championships as well as the latest dance crazes like the lilt and the jitterbug.52

Accommodating black middle-class sociability: social dancing in the townships Like the ballroom industry that catered to white patrons, the infrastructure for social dancing in the townships around Johannesburg and other cities was expanding. Black ballroom dancers visited clubs and dance halls and called upon a variety of dance bands that catered specifically for them. A 1930s social report on the nightlife of black settlements highlighted the prominence of dance clubs near and in Johannesburg and mentioned roughly eight dance halls.53 The growth of ballroom dancing in the townships happened in spite of various economic, legal and social constraints that existed under segregationist laws and regulations. Segregationist amenity laws like the Natives (Urban Areas) Act (Act number 21 of 1923) and the subsequent 1930 amendment to this Act (Act number 25 of 1930) prohibited the movement of black South Africans, especially women, in urban areas without special licences.54 While legislation did not go as far as to restrict dancing or prescribe the type of dances allowed in the townships, it did make gatherings expensive and risky and forced dancers to adapt and be flexible. Dance clubs like the ABC Club, founded in 1932, operated without official approval. Members of this club attended dance evenings on Thursdays at the African Hall and on Fridays at the Diggers Hall. Membership also included transport to the regular dance evenings at various township halls. Apart from the ABC Club, black dancers in Johannesburg had the Inchcape

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Hall, the Bantu Men’s Social Centre, some cinemas, a few public halls and a few self-owned ‘shebeens’ (unlicensed private houses) in which to spend their leisure time.55 The standard at these venues was a far cry from the grandeur of the Loveday and Astoria, as band leader Peter Rezant recalls: Nearly every township had a municipal or community hall, and so we played for dances in all types of venue and for every class of person. The audiences were largely the local residents, regardless of social class. Pimville, as it was then, is a good example. They had a municipal hall with an earth floor. Nothing like a dance floor, nothing made of wood. The people would dance on this earth floor and after a few vigorous dances the organisers would have to dampen the floor with water, to keep down the rising dust. There were no electric lights either. Paraffin lamps were the sole source of lighting.56

In other respects, however, social dancing in the townships shared several traits with the upmarket venues frequented by white patrons. Most prominently, black South Africans danced similar steps to white dancers. At the New Inchcape Palais de Danse, the most popular black ballroom, which was also known as the Ritz, dancers engaged exclusively in the ‘European style of dancing’.57 The steps danced at black venues included the typical ballroom repertoire of the day: the waltz, slow foxtrot and tango. Rezant’s Merry Blackbirds played a considerable amount of European-style music, including tunes like Tea for Two and Bye Bye Blackbird for their black audiences. This is not to say that steps and sounds at black and white dance halls were identical. Compared with the Loveday and Astoria, where in-house orchestras’ playlists were heavily geared towards a British repertoire, the music and the dances at dance halls in the segregated areas were more varied. Patrons danced to music from both the UK and USA that well-­established local bands like the Merry Blackbirds, Jazz Maniacs and Revellers played for them. However, overlaps between the parallel social worlds of dancing were great. Another similarity between venues like the Loveday and the Astoria on the one hand and the township venues like the Inchcape on the other was that both hosted fund-raising dances and amateur ballroom dance competitions.58 A white panel of judges and dancers performed and judged some bigger regional and national competitions at these community halls and dance clubs. These included dance teacher and SADTA adjudicator Miss Doreen Fowles, the Transvaal Ballroom Champion W. Jenks, as well as South African ballroom championship couple Mr and Mrs P. J. Esterhuizen.59 Bands including the Revellers and the Merry Blackbirds played during these competitions. Members of local dancing clubs assisted with the financial and organisational aspects of the competitions.60

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In a growing city with multiple languages and cultural backgrounds, township dance venues helped to create a new identity. Popular black newspapers like the Bantu World and the New Nation described this as a ‘respectable’ new culture for the new black middle class.61 Concerts and (ballroom) dancing were, as pointed out by ethnomusicologist David Coplan, the ‘universal format of middle-class African entertainment between the world wars’.62 Black dancers who participated in ballroom dancing signalled that they belonged to the professional middle-class elite, not the poor masses. During the 1930s and early 1940s, social dancing served black middle-class dancers as a medium of sociability primarily, just as it did for white dancers. This was going to change though. As the government implemented segregationist laws, members began to use dance venues as spaces for discussions about race and politics. During the 1950s, trade unions like the Garment Workers Union and political parties such as the African Nationalist Congress and the South African Communist Party staged popular dancing events as a front to mobilise resistance.63 Interestingly, the social world of dancing in the township proved to be longer lasting than the one populated by white dancers. By the mid-1930s, both internal and external changes took place in Johannesburg’s dance halls that would affect the position of white social dancing in the city. By March 1933, only a few months after its opening, the Loveday ceased to function as a public dance hall. By April 1935, its owners had abandoned the premises, and the contents of this dance palace were auctioned. By June 1935, the Astoria had moved to the old Loveday premises. The manager of the Astoria, Harry Columbic, a ballroom enthusiast and dance promoter, also resigned during this time. The Loveday closure appears to be due to mismanagement, and while the Astoria continued to operate, its two owners parted in 1940.64 The outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 had a tremendous effect on the commercial dance hall. At a national level, the decision to join ‘Britain’s war’ caused a political rift in the governing United Party and pitted supporters of the old colonial power against those who distanced themselves from it. This had consequences for the Astoria, whose largely pro-British patronage declined rapidly. Furthermore, several professional dance teachers and their more accomplished pupils, those who would have worked as partners in the commercial dance halls, joined the Defence Force.65 The closing of Johannesburg’s big commercial dance halls marked the end of the ‘golden era’ of social dancing for the white middle class. The story of the Loveday and the Astoria points to an inherent weakness of the white commercial dance halls: they refused to expand their clientele, keeping them only white, middle-class and mostly English. Their story also demonstrates how fragile this South African outpost of the British

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dance hall was. Shattered by the war, this commercial venture was unable to recover. Social dances now continued on a less regular scale in smaller venues like the Carlton Hotel.

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Conclusion Teacher and journalist, Basil Sipho ‘Doc’ Bikithsa remembers dancing in the early 1940s as follows: In the hall, it was a pleasure. There was the local jitterbug champion who had to contend with a visiting champ from, say, Sophiatown. He had to defend our glory with all he had – antics and improvisation. We’d clear a wide circle and then would clap hands and yell encouragement as they did their things. I still remember our champs our jitterbug kings – ‘Pudding’ or ‘Jarvis the Mad Lizard’, ‘Zethula’, a one-eyed Transvaal map shaped head and limbs that seemed to have their own nerve centers. Ah, those were the days.66

Social dancing was firmly established as a popular leisure pursuit in the mid-1930s. It was, as remembered here by Bikithsa, a vibrant, colourful incorporation of international dances into the local dancing space. Media technology and South Africa’s integration in a global entertainment business played a key role in this development. The proliferation of shows, films and records meant that both white and black patrons were exposed to a variety of dancers, dance music and dance styles. At the same time, concerns about the maintenance of status and racial boundaries remained strong. Social dancing in venues frequented by white patrons was heavily codified and followed closely developments in England, under the watchful eyes of SADTA members. This formalisation did not necessarily disallow American dance ‘crazes’ but tamed the antics and improvisation that many associated with them. In this regard, social dancing among white South Africans differed from dancing among black South Africans: while the waltz, slow foxtrot, tango, jive and jitterbug were performed on the dance floors in both upmarket dance palaces and in ‘shebeens’, the improvisation of dance steps became an integral part of the social world of dancing in the townships. In the black South African social venues, it was less the dances and more the spaces and times that were controlled. The looming threat of war accompanied by financial constraints meant that the commercial halls that were exclusively used for social dancing were no longer available. South Africa’s dancers adapted. They repurposed spaces that were available to them to make dancing a commercially viable activity. Dancing became allnight affairs accompanied by dinners, dance exhibitions and music shows



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that ended in dancing to a live small band. South African dancers built a fully-fledged industry ready for the next era in social dance.

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Notes   1 ‘Bouncy Era of the Jitterbug Beat’, Rand Daily Mail (20 February 1981), p. 14.   2 Testimonies of Rezant were recorded by ethnomusicologist C. Ballantine, ‘Peter Rezant: Doyen of South African Jazz-Band Leaders’, SAMUS: South African Music Studies, 34:35 (2016), 232–3. Matshikiza’s childhood memories of early Johannesburg appear in M. Mutloatse, Reconstruction: 90 Years of Black Historical Literature (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1981), pp. 151–63.   3 A. M. Green, ‘Dancing in Borrowed Shoes: A History of Ballroom Dancing in South Africa (1600s–1940s)’ (MHCS dissertation, University of Pretoria, 2008), pp. 55–68.   4 W. Wilberforce Bird, State of the Cape of Good Hope in 1822 (Cape Town: Struik, 1966), p. 165; W. J. Burchell and I. Schapera, Travels in the Interior of Southern Africa (London: Batchworth Press, 1953), p. 38.   5 B. Theron, ‘George Jesse Heys (1852–1939) in Pretoria’, Historia, 50:2 (2005), 119–48; C. Jeppe, The Kaleidoscopic Transvaal (London: Chapman & Hall, 1906), p. 89.   6 C. Van Onselen, Studies in the Social and Economic History of the Witwatersrand, 1886–1914 (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1982); L. Cohen, Reminiscences of Kimberley (London: Bennett, 1911), p. 202; L. Cohen, Reminiscences of Johannesburg and London (London: R. Holden, 1924).   7 W. Botha, L. Husemeyer and W. Wilkinson, The City That Leapt to Life: A 1986 Diary Celebrating Johannesburg’s Flamboyant Origins 100 Years Ago (Johannesburg: no publisher, 1985), p. 26.   8 Suid Afrikaanse Argief Bewaarplek (hereafter SAB), Governor-General (hereafter GG), GG 2351, 6/171, letter from G. W. Klerck to Miss F. Moorcroft Lamb, 19 April 1938; GG. 2251, 11/3, Dance Programme, 3 May 1921; Transvaal Argief Bewaarplek (hereafter TAB), letter from H. Bertram Cox to the Crown Agents for the Colonies, 19 April 1903.   9 D. B. Coplan, In Township Tonight! South Africa’s Black City Music and Theatre (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2008), p. 114; S. Africanus, ‘A New Development of Dance Styles Takes Place among the Reef Bantu’, Bantu World (28 May 1932), p. 9. 10 M. Holloway, ‘Music Hall in Johannesburg: 1886–1896’, SATJ: South African Theatre Journal, 11:1/2 (1997); T. Gutsche, ‘The History and Social Significance of Motion Pictures in South Africa, 1895–1940’ (PhD dissertation, University of Cape Town, 1946), pp. 2–5. 11 ‘Bijou, African Theatres, Ltd: Rudolph Valentino; The Son of the Sheikh’, Rand Daily Mail (27 May 1927), p. 8.

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12 C. Ballantine, ‘Concert and Dance: The Foundations of Black Jazz in South Africa between the Twenties and the Early Forties’, Popular Music, 10:2 (1991), 122. 13 V. Erlmann, African Stars: Studies in Black South African Performance (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1991), p. 92; C. J. Ballantine, Marabi Nights: Jazz, ‘Race’ and Society in Early Apartheid South Africa (Scottsville: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2012), p. 24. 14 ‘Empire Palace: Joly Violetta’, Rand Daily Mail (17 March 1910), p. 6. 15 ‘The Invitation List for the Tango Ball’, East African Standard (3 January 1914). 16 L. Stewart, ‘Black South African Urban Music Styles: The Ideological Concepts and Beliefs Surrounding Their Development, 1930–1960’ (PhD thesis, University of Pretoria, 2000), pp. 3–37. 17 ‘Charleston Menaces the Crockery: Natives and the Dance Craze’, Rand Daily Mail (20 January 1927), p. 8. 18 Ballantine, Marabi Nights, p. 68. 19 ‘Real Dancing’, Rand Daily Mail (1 November 1913), p. 6. 20 ‘The Right Way To Do the Charleston’, Rand Daily Mail (9 September 1926), p. 10; ‘Odette Delage with Her Violin, Character Songs and the Latest American Craze Dance, the Charleston’, Rand Daily Mail (7 September 1925). 21 Treble Violl, ‘Dancing and the Ballroom: “Sprightly Springboks”, “Trebla”, Dancing “Do’s and Don’t”s’, Rand Daily Mail (11 June 1927), p. 7. 22 ‘Pioneers in Dancing’, South African Dancing Times (September 1945). 23 A. Grant-Smith, ‘Dancing Notes’, Rand Daily Mail (26 February 1924), p. 9; Treble Violl, ‘Dancing and the Ballroom’, Rand Daily Mail (5 March 1932), p. 3. 24 D. Dymond, ‘Dancing Ballroom’, in D. J. Potgieter (ed.), Standard Encyclopaedia of Southern Africa (Cape Town: NASOU, 1971), p. 558. 25 Green, ‘Dancing in Borrowed Shoes’, p. 166; ‘Native Ballroom Contest’, Rand Daily Mail (1 November 1950), p. 12. 26 Treble Violl, ‘Dancing and the Ballroom: Imperial Society for South Africa’, Rand Daily Mail (25 August 1928), p. 5; Lancer, ‘Competition in Full Swing: Making the Rand Dance-Minded’, Rand Daily Mail (22 October 1932), p. 6. 27 E. M. B., ‘In the Dance World: First Amateur Ballroom Tests Next’, Rand Daily Mail (12 February 1938), p. 6; ‘S.A.D.T.A. Ballroom Festival’, South African Dancing Times (May 1938). 28 A. Moore, ‘What Does London Dance?’, South African Dancing Times (November 1936), p. 9. On Moore and the SADTA see also ‘In the Dancing World: Step Problems and Variations’, Rand Daily Mail (29 July 1933) and B. B. F., ‘In the Dance World: Decade of Useful Work for Dancing’, Rand Daily Mail (20 April 1940), p. 12. 29 E. M. B., ‘British Couple to Judge S.A. Ballroom Championships’, Rand Daily Mail (22 May 1937), p. 6. 30 ‘First Championship Events’, Rand Daily Mail (21 August 1937), p. 7. 31 Lancer, ‘British Professional Ballroom Champions in Johannesburg’, Rand Daily Mail (1 September 1934), p. 6.

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32 A. Murray, ‘Dancing for the Inferiority Complex’, South African Dancing Times (August 1935); L. Kehl, ‘The Dancing Master’s Corner’, South African Dancing Times (August 1937); V. Sylvester [sic], ‘Showmanship in Ballroom Dancing’, South African Dancing Times (December 1945). 33 G. Gerrard, ‘The S.A.D.T.A. Festival as Viewed by a London Adjudicator’, South African Dancing Times (September 1945). 34 W. Harris, ‘Jazz Poetry: New Pastime of the Long Evenings’, Rand Daily Mail (10 January 1921), p. 2; ‘With Love from Sally’, Rand Daily Mail (5 February 1941), p. 5. 35 ‘Dancing and the Ballroom: Operatic Association Examinations’, Rand Daily Mail (30 June 1928), p. 5; E. Rowan, ‘With the Dancers’, Rand Daily Mail (4 January 1921), p. 3. 36 ‘African Theatres Trust’, University of Stellenbosch, https://esat.sun.ac.za/ index.php/Encyclopaedia_of_South_African_Theatre,_Film,_Media_and_ Performance; ‘Johannesburg To Have Two New Playhouses: Big Scheme of African Theatres, Ltd.’, Rand Daily Mail (21 September 1926), p. 8. 37 ‘To Cater for 20 000 Listeners: Early Start of New Broadcasting Co. Theatres and Hotels To Be Linked Up’, Rand Daily Mail (28 March 1927), p. 8. 38 Treble Violl, ‘Dancing and the Ballroom: A Progressive Year’, Rand Daily Mail (31 December 1927), p. 5; ‘Dancing and Ballroom: Palais de Danse for Johannesburg’, Rand Daily Mail (6 April 1929), p. 5; ‘Astoria: Mabel Poulton in Palais de Dance [sic] and Marvellous Talkie Film Teddy Brown and His Band’, Rand Daily Mail (4 May 1929), p. 8. 39 ‘Hammersmith Comes to Johannesburg: Opening of New Palais de Danse’, Rand Daily Mail (6 August 1932), p. 4; ‘Loveday Palais de Danse’, Rand Daily Mail (31 October 1932), p. 6; Companies Registration Office, Pretoria, Government Gazette 2071: Companies Registered, 21 October 1932, p. 428. 40 ‘Loveday Palais de Danse: Grand Opening Night’, Rand Daily Mail (2 November 1932), p. 12; ‘Hold Your Armistice Night Revels at the New Loveday Palais de Danse’, Rand Daily Mail (11 November 1932), p. 6; ‘Wanted: Professional Dancing Partners’, Rand Daily Mail (21 October 1932), p. 6. 41 ‘G. W. Platt & Co.: The Talking Machine Depot’, Rand Daily Mail (12 December 1904), p. 9; ‘Mackay Brothers’, Rand Daily Mail (21 July 1904), p. 6; P. Joyce, Reader’s Digest: South Africa’s Yesterdays (Cape Town: The Reader’s Digest Association South Africa, 1981), p. 126; ‘Astoria Palais de Danse: Harry Gers and His New Astorians’, Rand Daily Mail (11 February 1933), p. 8; ‘Many Armistice Night Dances’, Rand Daily Mail (11 November 1932), p. 6. 42 ‘National Ballroom Championships: Brilliant Event at Empire Exhibition’, Rand Daily Mail (4 September 1936), p. 18. 43 ‘Diary of Events’, Rand Daily Mail (1 December 1934), p. 12. 44 Ballantine, ‘Peter Rezant’, 233. 45 ‘Recommended Records for This Month’, South African Dancing Times (November 1936).

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46 ‘Today Diary of Events: Broadcasting’, Rand Daily Mail (14 November 1931), p. 10; ‘South African Ballroom Championships’, South African Dancing Times (October 1936). 47 ‘The World on the Air’, Sunday Times (26 December 1937). 48 Ballantine, ‘Peter Rezant’, 238. 49 Treble Violl, ‘Dancing and the Ballroom’, Rand Daily Mail (9 August 1930), p. 12. 50 ‘Films and Film Favourites’, Rand Daily Mail (28 March 1932), p. 5. 51 V. Erlmann, Nightsong: Performance, Power, and Practice in South Africa (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1996), p. 78. 52 National Film Archives (hereafter NFA), Pretoria, African Mirror, 1362, ‘Jitterbugs Invade Johannesburg’, 12 June 1939; NFA, Pretoria, African Mirror, 962, ‘S.A. Dance Championships: Strydom and Mclaren at Cape Town National Championships’, 7 October 1931. 53 R. E. Phillips, The Bantu in the City: A Study of Cultural Adjustment on the Witwatersrand (South Africa: The Lovedale Press, 1970), p. 293. 54 Statutes of the Union of South Africa 1930, Act No. 21 of 1923: Natives (Urban Areas) Act (Cape Town: Government Printer, 1930), pp. 178–201; Statutes of the Union of South Africa 1930, Act No. 25 of 1930: Natives (Urban Areas) Act, 1923, Amended Act, 1930 (Cape Town: Government Printer, 1930), pp. 178–201. For a more detailed discussion on how these segregationist laws influenced the ballroom see Green, ‘Dancing in Borrowed Shoes’, pp. 149–59. 55 ‘A.B.C. Club and Association’, The Bantu World (2 July 1932), p. 9; ‘The Native Is Here To Stay’, Rand Daily Mail (3 July 1946), p. 4. 56 Ballantine, ‘Peter Rezant’, 251. 57 Phillips, The Bantu in the City, p. 293. Rezant also vividly recalls his experience at the Ritz in Ballantine, ‘Peter Rezant’, 234–5. 58 ‘Clinic Appeal to Non-Europeans’, Rand Daily Mail (28 February 1938), p. 7. 59 ‘Miss D. Fowles Presents Prizes: Competition Dance Held at the Famous Inchcape Hall’, The Bantu World (24 February 1934), p. 3. 60 ‘Oxford Sailors Hold Successful Dance and Beauty Competition’, The Bantu World (25 November 1933), p. 15; ‘Who’s Who in the News This Week’, The Bantu World (13 January 1934), p. 3. 61 ‘Bantu Sports Club Requests Europeans to Visit Grounds’, The Bantu World (26  August 1933), p. 15; ‘Soccer and Dance Create New Culture’, The New Nation (23 November 1988), p. 1. 62 Coplan, In Township Tonight!, p. 128; Erlmann, Nightsong, p. 118. 63 Bantu Men’s Social Centre Records, Johannesburg, University of the Witwatersrand (WITS), A 1058, ‘Annual report 1929’ and ‘Annual report 1932’; Record of the African National Congress, Johannesburg: WITS, Ad2186 M7.5, letter from Carmeson and B. P. Bunting to O. Tambo, 14 December 1955; Records of the South African Garment Workers Union, Johannesburg: WITS, AH1092, Bbe 2.13: Garment Workers Union: Cape branches, East London Correspondence letter from A. F., Secretary Garment Workers Union East London to General Sectary, 26 November 1954.



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64 ‘The Directors of the Palais De Danse’, Rand Daily Mail (27 February 1933), p. 8; Companies Registration Office, Pretoria, Government Gazette 2268 and 2291: Advertisements, 1935; ‘Notice of Abandonment: Loveday Palais De Danse’, Rand Daily Mail (26 April 1935), p. 4. 65 B. B. F., ‘In the Dance World: Carry-on Spirit of Dance Enthusiasts’, Rand Daily Mail (16 December 1939), p. 4. 66 Doc Bikithsa, ‘Dance Your Way Back to the Roaring Forties’, Rand Daily Mail (12 July 1977), p. 16.

5 ‘European dances’ in colonial Kikuyuland: modernities, ethnicity, and politics, 1926–47 Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Cécile Feza Bushidi

Towards the mid-1920s, closed-couple dances began to flourish in colonial Kikuyuland, located in the Central Province of colonial Kenya. Locally known under various names such as dansi, fox-trot, two-step, or mwomboko, these new styles were gradually subsumed under the umbrella term ‘European dances’. They were spread via the Agĩkũyũ peoples’ mobility between their rural homeland, Nairobi, and coastal East Africa, as well as choreographic and musical cross-cultural pollinations between the Agĩkũyũ communities and the white settlers established in these areas in Kenya’s Highlands. Such developments were not without controversy, however. Many Agĩkũyũ male chiefs and elders felt concerned about these dances because they challenged male domination and control over female sexuality. The female body was regarded as a warrant of the reputation and honour of Agĩkũyũ communities, families, and clans.1 In contrast, colonial attitudes seemed less concerned with outright moral condemnation; instead, while officials viewed dansi as a sign that Agĩkũyũ youth wanted to embrace modernity, they expressed concern over its uses for Gĩkũyũ politics. This chapter is interested in Gĩkũyũ and colonial discourses about ‘European dances’ for what they tell us about African agency in the making of new local dancing cultures and for how they highlight the disruptive impact of British colonialism upon local power and gender relations. For the most part, however, I wish to examine whether ‘European dances’ in colonial Kikuyuland amplified the scope and scale of Agĩkũyũ youth ethnic expressions between the mid-1920s and 1947, the year when the Gĩkũyũled anti-colonial and nationalist association Kenya African Union (KAU) lost control of the most angry and impatient youth members of the party. By reclaiming African rhythms and adapting Euro-American partnering styles to new dance steps, those Agĩkũyũ youth engaged in ‘European dances’ were enlarging the boundaries of a contested Gĩkũyũ embodied ethnicity. Many of these new dancing worlds were also intrinsic to Gĩkũyũ militant anti-colonial struggle and advocacy for African rule, with dancing spaces hosting political activism.

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From the 1880s onwards, British settlement in Kenya’s Highlands had begun to swallow large swathes of the lands that the Maasai, Kalenjin, and Agĩkũyũ peoples had hitherto inhabited. White settlers stole about 6 per cent of Gĩkũyũ land. Fertile and well-watered, these lush green hills were the best farming land in the colony, which is why it became such good coffee and tea country for smallholders. Europeans settled mostly in Limuru, in the ­district of Kĩambu, but also in the pastoral low-country from Thika up to and beyond the districts of Fort Hall (roughly present-day Mũrang’a County) and Nyeri. Settlers exploited Gĩkũyũ labour, especially that of young men. They gradually pushed peoples into unhealthy reserves with mostly barren land and forced some families to squat on settlers’ farm holdings under various forms of unfair tenancy agreements. The colonial invention of indigenous chiefs sought to facilitate British colonial administrative efforts. The resulting model of indirect colonial rule, settlers’ labour demands, land expropriation, brutal capitalism, and colonial racism threw many Agĩkũyũ individuals and families into material poverty. But the system also created economic opportunities for some, especially individuals belonging to or close to families of chiefs and elders, often entrusted to enforce colonial directives. Indeed, some chiefs seized for themselves  the most fertile arable lands; they also sometimes looted livestock from their subjects, collected heavier taxes than required, or extracted bribes from those trying to avoid conscription for communal work. Thus, socio-economic differentiation reshaped kinship and family relationships whilst clearing the way for rural class formation, landlessness, and material ­hardship – which together informed a good deal of Gĩkũyũ mobilisation against the colonial system. The Kikuyu Central Association (KCA) was one such political association. Created in 1924 and working out of a stronghold in the district of Fort Hall, it was engaged with issues of land and inequality and opposed to chiefs who abused their privileges. In 1927, Jomo Kenyatta was appointed KCA’s general secretary. In contrast to most chiefs and elders, the membership of the KCA constituted an economically independent, urban, mission-­educated group of mobile men. KCA men often moved between their colonial Kikuyuland rural homes and Nairobi, where they secured better wages as clerks or administrative assistants. Their ability to afford European fashion, in particular, was not only a symbolic privilege of wage earners, but also marked the diverging means of accumulation between themselves and the chiefly elderly landed elite wearing goatskin clothes. Whilst involved with promoting certain traditions to advance Gĩkũyũ cultural nationalism, they tended to sport shirts and trousers, and embrace modernity.2 This chapter builds on the historiography of the evolution of Gĩkũyũ ethnicity in relation to anti-colonial and cultural political activism and

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the development of the colonial state. The sentiment of a distinct Gĩkũyũ ethnic identity that many Agĩkũyũ peoples began to entertain from the 1880s onwards was forged out of the violent British conquest of the Kenyan interior. Ranging from the social origins of the Mau Mau war and Gĩkũyũ political thought and action to encounters with Protestant and Catholic Christianity, Gĩkũyũ anti-colonial and ethnic politics during British colonial rule have attracted substantial historical inquiry.3 The increased popularity of ‘European dances’ between the 1920s and the 1940s coincided with a continuing, more forceful assertion of Gĩkũyũ ethnicity. This period was marked by an influx of white settlers and increased colonial intervention in African life.4 By the Second World War, Gĩkũyũ ethnopolitics were entwined with the developmentalist colonial state. Post-war Britain’s skewed conception of ‘welfare’ in its African colonies led to an increased presence of colonial administrators and foreign civil servants, in what historians Anthony Low and John Lonsdale have coined the ‘Second Colonial Occupation’ of Kenya.5 These policies further exacerbated material poverty and socio-economic disparities in colonial Kikuyuland.6 Throughout the 1940s, the mostly elite KAU, which succeeded the KCA (banned in 1940), tried to address this plight. Couple dancing events hosted political reunions. But the KAU did not appeal to the most destitute and impatient Agĩkũyũ elements. Taking a socio-cultural historical lens in which stories of below converse with stories from above, this chapter illuminates how the fluidity of couple dance aesthetics allowed for equally fluid African and Gĩkũyũ ethnopolitical identities. By creating, naming, relocating, and giving new sociopolitical meanings to closed-couple dances, the ‘European dance’ revellers constructed spaces in which plural manifestations of Gĩkũyũ politicisation can be observed. Thus, this discussion also resonates with a Black Dance scholarship that has known for a long time that closed-couple social dances create aesthetics and socio-political realms of complex identity and ethnicity making. As dance sociologist Katrina Hazzard-Gordon has implied, by reinvigorating foxtrot’s syncopated African rhythms, African American men and women taking space in urban dancehalls continued to shape a fluid ethnic identity and sense of community throughout a first half of the twentieth century marked by written and unwritten segregation laws that cordoned and stifled Black lives.7 The sources that inform this chapter’s claims mostly derive from correspondence between colonial officials and Agĩkũyũ individuals. Many of the latter produced handwritten or typed short official requests (often in Kiswahili) to organise dansi events by themselves. Minutes of Local Native Council (LNC) meetings – led by local District Commissioners (DCs), selected chiefs, and a few missionary-educated men – discuss some ways

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in which the new closed-couple dance genres stirred the minds and hearts of colonial and Gĩkũyũ publics. These are read critically with an eye to ideologised, real, and imaginary indigenous and colonial concerns. British anthropologist and self-styled ‘white Kikuyu’ Louis Leakey produced a compendious ethnographic volume on The Southern Kikuyu Before 1903, which reveals images of continuities in dance practices.8 The embodied histories of the Nyeri-based Kigera Cultural Group, among others, offer fragments of lived and gendered pasts of the dances’ original ambience. Their colonial-era family histories and postcolonial lives inspire reflection on performance, colonialism, and political engagement. By no means do I interpret such sources of dance knowledge in terms of a simplistic vision of dance as a vehicle of socio-cultural change for the oppressed, the poor, or the colonised. Rather, I hope to present them as socio-aesthetic and political worlds with their own integrity, which affected both Agĩkũyũ and colonial elements. The discussion begins with the ‘European dance’ called dansi, by considering some of its origins and exploring colonial and Gĩkũyũ assumptions about modern dancing youth, especially young women. I introduce the KCA-led political world that ‘European dances’ designed in the early 1930s. The second section covers the years 1937–47 and considers how the popular dansi and the emerging ‘European dance’ mwomboko shaped post-war KAU politics.

Dansi, modernity, and unruly women, 1926–37 In April 1926, the Fort Hall District Commissioner (DC) recorded that ‘certain of the young men’ were ‘importing a type of dance … new to the Akikuyu. It is called DANZI’.9 This dance was, in his words, ‘a copy of European forms of dancing’ also locally known as ‘Fox Trot or Two Steps’. As the seductions of dansi had ‘been brought to the notice of the natives by witnessing Europeans performing similarly’, he further stated, the youth would likely continue to show an inclination to ‘copy European forms of dancing [such as] Fox Trot’.10 As I have argued at length elsewhere, the rise of dansi resulted from significant dynamics specific to colonial Kenya in the wake of the First World War.11 For one thing, the 1919 Soldier Settlement Scheme, which granted farms to demobilised British soldiers and retired officers, led to an increase in the settler population.12 Foxtrot and waltz numbers enlivened settlers’ exuberant social lives at the whites-only clubs in Gĩkũyũ rural districts and, further south towards Nairobi, at the Muthaiga Club.13 Whether employed as waiters, labourers, or servants in settlers’ homes, by 1926, increased numbers of young Agĩkũyũ men indulging in dansi observed and further developed closed-couple dance genres.

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Furthermore, those who had been enlisted in the Great War as porters (askari) in the East African Labour Corps in Mombasa had already encountered the box guitar and the accordion and acquired new dance techniques, such as holding female partners close to their chests while wrapping one arm around their back waist and holding their hand with the opposite bent arm.14 Their trip back to their rural homes passed through Pumwani, one of Nairobi’s African neighbourhoods. There, they joined in social ballroom dance evenings and dance-band accordion concerts held in the Pumwani Memorial Hall, built in 1924. Despite the high cost of living, temporary work in Nairobi was more attractive than exploitative agricultural labour on settler farms or dealing with rural land shortages. As in other colonial African cities, however, most African workers in Nairobi were, in theory, compelled to return to their rural homes and families after the end of their contracts.15 Thus, to build on an essential idea of dance historian Julie Malnig, dansi ‘reflects and absorbs daily life as well as shapes, informs, and influences social patterns and behaviors’.16 The popular dance was a product of new modes and spaces of Gĩkũyũ sociability and interactions with new peoples and cultures, and reflected migrant workers’ mobility and travels between town and countryside. By virtue of its foxtrot content, the style was also a subtle African reclaiming of foxtrot’s syncopated rhythms given new spirit through African American movement vocabularies.17 At a time when colonial ideologies conceived the Agĩkũyũ peoples predominantly as a ‘tribe’ anachronistically stuck in an immemorial ancestral era, colonial officials seem to have expressed satisfaction at seeing Agĩkũyũ youth engaged in dansi. By dancing modernity, they thought, the youth showed a desire to emerge ‘from savagedom’.18 That dansi induced ‘frivolous minded young women to participate in it in preference to their own native dances surely attested to the colonial view that Agĩkũyũ women were embracing change for the better as construed in colonial thinking: ‘progress’ and ‘civilization’.19 Reflecting such colonial beliefs as well as broader European discourses around closed-couple dancing, colonial administrators even compared dansi women to the settlers’ daughters swinging in Nairobi’s dance clubs. It was very unlikely that ‘the average Kikuyu girl’ danced more than ‘English girls in Nairobi’. Dansi, they opined, had barely ‘more evil effect on them than dancing [has] among Europeans’.20 Local chiefs had indeed complained that much alcohol was consumed at dansi events, prompting the question whether foxtrot dancers should be sanctioned for alcohol drinking. But the DC of Fort Hall did not find that dansi caused harm: ‘so long as people have the spirit and energy to dance, they are probably comparatively happy, and in good spirit’.21 Dansi’s modernity, I suggest, reflected and validated a powerful underlying colonial thinking: the Agĩkũyũ people were a ‘malleable’ ‘tribe’ who

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could be ‘improved’. In the colonial milieu of Kikuyuland, this paternalist viewpoint saw officials envisaging that the Agĩkũyũ peoples would become the most ‘westernised’ Africans in Kenya. By 1925, colonial records of square brick and stone houses with wooden doors were all wildly overinterpreted as testaments of Gĩkũyũ modernity and ‘civilisation’.22 Yet, from the colonial perspective, modernising Africans also ought not surpass ‘real’ Europeans, for such an inverted colonial hierarchy would enervate Europeans’ ascendance. In colonial minds, the progress of the ‘tribes’ had to be gradual and closely monitored to prevent rapid, complete ‘cultural degeneration’ and detribalisation.23 So-called traditions were valuable to avoid cultural and social collapse – a hugely problematic idea prone to colonial and perhaps also Gĩkũyũ abuse. Dansi, as ‘a copy of European forms of dancing’, gave weight to this evolutionary argument steeped in colonial thinking and anxieties. Whilst reminiscent of ‘higher’ dance forms integral to settlers’ dancing cultures, dansi encoded indigenous creativity. For example, a distinct dansi style ascribed to war veterans in the Fort Hall district seems to have incorporated a unique sequence during which dancers stood – and marched – in single file. Literary scholar Peter Mwangi Mũhoro recorded oral histories of dancers moving to lyrics about soldiers’ experiences in the First World War, or alluding to local love affairs and satirising Europeans. Accompanying accordionists, musicians struck iron tins or bells with metal ringers to create high-pitched sounds.24 Close-partner dances being by no means novel to Agĩkũyũ communities, dansi drew from a long-established, precolonial closed-couple dance known as gĩcukia, a courtship dance intended to facilitate young people pairing off and getting married. One of the socio-aesthetics of gĩcukia seems to have been usually performed as a slow-paced close-partnered ballroom-like dance during which, as Louis Leakey writes, the girls began by slipping their cloaks off their shoulders, so as to leave their breasts and backs bare, and then tucked the upper part of the cloaks into their skirts to prevent them hanging down too low and getting in the way. The men then placed their hands on the girls’ shoulders, and the girls put their hands on the men’s hips, and so they held each other fairly close with the girls’ breasts brushing the men’s chests as they danced.25

The young men displayed beautiful bodies anointed with red ochre mixed with fat. They wore feathers attached to their hair, bead earrings, a shieldshaped piece of goat- or calfskin over the buttocks, and nothing or a small bunch of leaves over the genitalia. Women, equally painted in ochre and fat, beamed with their beaded earrings and belts around their waists and wore a goat- or calfskin apron on their hips.26 Performed at moonlight in

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the courtyards of large homesteads, gĩcukia was a communal event which everyone could attend. By 1925, gĩcukia, along with other ancient dances, was still performed across colonial Kikuyuland. Colonial authorities gladly sanctioned such traditional dances. In their minds, this helped establish an ideological middle point where the Agĩkũyũ youth could both maintain their ‘tribal’ identity and be exposed to styles perceived as fostering assimilation, such as foxtrot. But on the whole, dansi had less to do with Gĩkũyũ aspirations to Europeanness than with the creation of a new genre out of past experiences of war and ancient Gĩkũyũ youth couple dances. In continuity and amalgamation with Gĩkũyũ dance aesthetics, the style creatively enlarged Agĩkũyũ youth identity in ways that also aligned with colonial ideologies of ‘tribal’ progress. Dansi thus expanded Gĩkũyũ ethnic identity in ways that did not threaten colonial prestige. From the mid-1920s onward, the moral concern surrounding dansi related more to inter-Gĩkũyũ trouble than colonial challenge. In a polygamous cultural landscape in which human beings were a form of wealth, dansi fostered changes pertaining to wealth distribution, individual mobility, and corporeal emancipation. Under colonialism, as before, African women’s bodies and sexuality remained under the control and gaze of men, both Africans and colonists. Women thus also carried the burden of Gĩkũyũ male anxieties about ‘European dances’, especially as they began to leave the countryside for Nairobi to escape rural poverty and abusive fathers and husbands and brothers. To many Agĩkũyũ elders, Nairobi, the symbol of urban modernity, individual entrepreneurship, and cash wages, was associated with ‘European dances’. Some women travelled to Nairobi to sell vegetables and engage in occasional prostitution.27 The idea that Nairobi and ‘European dances’ induced women to prostitution echoed the metaphorical meaning of Pumwani, the notorious African district of Nairobi and also a dance hall. Drawing on the Kiswahili verb kupumua (‘to breathe’), Pumwani alluded to a place of imagination, desire, and rest.28 This might sound rather positive. But for many Agĩkũyũ individuals in the more conservative rural hinterlands, such associations symbolised sexual depravity, ­unconventionalism, and laziness, violating Agĩkũyũ values of hard work and communal labour.29 Independent cash-earning women dancing modernity embodied male anxieties that unmarried and unguarded women had too much opportunity to act out their own dangerous desires – scantily dressed, immodest, and loose. By 1933, chiefs and headmen from Kĩambu, proximate to Nairobi, were complaining about the danger ‘of allowing young men bringing new European or Swahili dances from Nairobi … on Sundays’ for ‘girls were often induced to return with them as prostitutes in Nairobi’.30

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Dansi also produced alternative hubs of Gĩkũyũ sociability that excluded chiefs and elders. Most dansi events took place outside, at night, in remote, informal locations such as forests. But this was also likely a cover for KCA-led politics. The KCA’s demands for greater access to high quality land, better commercial and employment opportunities, and education for all, required organisation. The holding of private dancing events alongside political meetings was one means of achieving this, and they began to come to the notice of colonists in the early 1930s. In 1931, for instance, a Roman Catholic missionary from the Consolata Missionaries at Ichagaki, Fort Hall, claimed to have seen ‘educated natives … holding dances and political meetings and collection of money in the vicinity of the mission’.31 Four years later, the Presbyterian Church of Scotland missionary Arthur Barlow reported that ‘European dances’ were ‘performed secretly at night’ near Kahuhia, also in Fort Hall.32 Missionaries rarely fully understood what was actually happening in Africans’ private spaces, but it is likely that by that time, Fort Hall’s ‘European dance’ events indeed hid KCA-led political meetings. Some of the dansi sessions held secretly in the bush at night were likely associated with KCA money collections, as the Fort Hall chiefs prevented the KCA’s collection of subscriptions from individuals. That dansi in the 1930s increasingly hosted secret political meetings in the Kĩambu and Fort Hall districts unfolded in continuity with the KCA’s recourse to dance to do politics. Since 1929, the well-recorded mũthĩrĩgu dance-song had been giving bodily and aural form to local KCA resistance against Christian missions and colonial crusades against the clitoridectomy of Agĩkũyũ girls. This practice was a central tenet of traditional Gĩkũyũ culture. During the ritual called irua, young women underwent this rite of passage that marked their entrance into the adult world. They then became individuals and full members of the community who were henceforth expected to respect the rules and the norms of the group and were granted the rights and the privileges that went with their new status. Missionary and colonial efforts to prohibit the clitoridectomy of Agĩkũyũ girls fractured Agĩkũyũ society between those supporting the ban – this included many chiefs, who tended to align with mission elements – and those against it, including the KCA.33 The KCA-led appeals to safeguard this central tradition conveyed some of the earliest expressions of Gĩkũyũ cultural nationalism. The association encouraged thousands of supporters to protest against its prohibition by performing the mũthĩrĩgu dance-song in front of mission stations and chiefs’ homesteads of Fort Hall, southern Kĩambu, and southern Nyeri. The protracted crisis, and its embodiment in performance well into the late 1930s, bolstered the KCA’s reputation in Fort Hall where Gĩkũyũ independent churches emerged as sites of religious solidarity and opposition to chiefs.34 In response to this situation and to the

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failure of the 1932 Kenya Land Commission to address the unequal distribution of land between settlers and Africans, the KCA embraced a more militant activism.35 By 1936–37, the association was leading strikes on large coffee plantations and sisal estates in Kĩambu district.36 Of importance for the KCA, but to the dismay of officials and chiefs, mũthĩrĩgu mobilised KCA supporters. In response to this, colonial officials unsuccessfully attempted to ban any potentially political Gĩkũyũ dance. Dansi, like all ‘European dances’, did not figure among the forbidden genres. But by the late 1930s, these events had to unfold more secretly due to administrative suspicion of any kind of Gĩkũyũ dancing. The next section considers this period of increased politicisation of performance.

‘European dances’, social halls, and political activism, 1937–47 Gĩkũyũ ‘European dances’ in colonial Kikuyuland and Nairobi articulated political activism. ‘European dance’ events politicised the activities of ­mission-educated, wage-earning KCA members. After the KCA was banned by the colonial authorities in 1940, the Kenya African Union (KAU) continued the practice of mobilising the populace through dancing evenings. At the same time, life became harder for Agĩkũyũ communities and the ­conditions of squatters dramatically deteriorated from 1937, when white settler farmers were granted the rights to restrict the number of acres squatters could use, get rid of squatters’ stock, or force Agĩkũyũ labourers to work on farms almost nine months a year. Early in the Second World War, new factors created further problems: the displacement of squatters mandated by the Land Commission, increased white immigration, the mechanisation of European farming, and the government-led schemes to control smallholder husbandry and soil erosion all worsened the situation.37 In this polarised climate, under the cover of dancing events in private homes, the KCA drafted petitions and publications, collected funds, and shared its members’ activities across colonial Kikuyuland and the Rift Valley. Authorisation from a colonial official was required to hold a dansi party, but officials had become highly suspicious of these gatherings. Several Agĩkũyũ men based in the Nairobi, Thika, and Fort Hall districts sent letters to the DCs to secure permission to organise private, at-home dansi events during this period, but all their requests were turned down.38 Officials were clearly wary of communication between Agĩkũyũ male wage workers from different districts. One dansi request was even rejected on the grounds that ‘strangers are not encouraged’ in the Fort Hall district.39 But many such dansi soirées still took place secretly.40 In April 1941, in response to a Nairobi-based man seeking ‘to make a dance in Kahuhia’, a

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KCA stronghold in Fort Hall, the local DC explicitly rejected the demand, saying that ‘if it is a European dance, NO, and if not, Karanja’s (a chief) permission has to be obtained’.41 As of 1944, the Gĩkũyũ-dominated, moderate KAU had sustained the practice of using ballroom-style dance events as places and moments to discuss how to press demands for African political representation, better wages, increased land access for Africans, and repeal of racial discrimination.42 Some KAU members had been educated at the elite Protestant missionary Alliance High School in the district of Kĩambu. For some of them, local clans, missions, and education committees had often funded their studies, at home or abroad. Their moral duty thus remained anchored in their rural constituencies.43 ‘KAU before 1947’, Lonsdale writes, ‘was largely an embodiment of the old school tie’.44 By virtue of their time spent in England to further their education, intellectual luminaries such as London School of Economics alumnus Jomo Kenyatta and Oxfordeducated Eliud Mathu – the first African nominated to colonial Kenya’s Legislative Council in 1944 – had savoured the Euro-American couple dancing cultures prevalent in interwar London. They had been exposed to Europe-based Pan-African political, intellectual, and cultural milieux that few Agĩkũyũ individuals had access to during that time. Perhaps the KAU’s general elite orientation informed its use of Christian, African middle-class, or ‘western’ festive occasions such as Christmas, birthdays, or retirement parties as pretexts to plan ‘European dance’ meetings in Fort Hall between 1944 and 1947.45 Despite such concessions to ‘western’ customs, all KAU demands to organise dansi events were refused by the DCs, as had been those of the KCA before.46 In practice, however, many KAU-led dansi meetings still occurred during this time in the Fort Hall district, notably in Kahuhia, where birthday and Christmas celebrations – quintessential ‘white stuff’ – were otherwise very minimal or non-existent at that time.47 By organising rural-based, at-home dance parties, the KAU reached out to the non-elite masses. After the dance events, members would go and raise public awareness of the respective difficulties faced by landless squatters, African traders, and urban workers. As elsewhere in a post-war sub-Saharan Africa engulfed by anti-colonial movements, nationalist tides, and developmentalist colonial policies, city colonial officials built social and community halls, mainly for use by Africans. In Kenya, amid a hardening of white settler domination sweeping from Southern to East Africa, how the Second World War precipitated the development of leisure spaces requires some explanation. The commencement of the war marked the start of a more aggressive phase of colonial state presence in Africans’ lives. The influence of Whitehall in theorising and materialising ideas about economic and political developments in

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British African colonies was paramount. During this ‘Second Colonial Occupation’, which sent experts in various fields to Kenya, increased capital expenditure came to Kenya out of local revenues and from London. Despite, and because of Britain’s weakened post-war economy, British East Africa – and Kenya especially – were considered essential investments to draw economic reserves for the British Empire, as historian Joanna Lewis tells us.48 The Colonial Development and Welfare Act passed in 1940 and expanded in 1945 – when Britain launched its own welfare state at home – was a laboratory for colonial notions of ‘welfare’ for Africans.49 When questions were asked in the British Parliament about the progress the Kenyan colonial government had made in the domains of ‘welfare’ and housing for African workers living in Nairobi, recommendations were made to organise leisure for them.50 With the post-war stabilisation of urban labour, Nairobi’s Municipal Council was under pressure to ‘ameliorate’ the daily life of an increased permanent African population. Already a British institution, social halls and community halls mushroomed in colonial Kenya from the late 1930s.51 These venues became key spaces of dissemination and popularisation of accordion music, dance bands, and ‘European dances’, thus often serving as dance halls. Towards the end of 1945, a social hall to hold ‘dances of European type’ was built in Othaya, in the Nyeri district, costing the welfare fund and the Local Native Council (LNC) £1,000.52 The same year, the towns of Nyeri and Karatina erected social centres to host ‘European dances’.53 In November 1946, the DC of Fort Hall reported that ‘the African population of Fort Hall feel the necessity of having somewhere to have a space to hold dances and social gatherings’. Entrance to these venues cost one shilling, couple-dance competitions took place, and the proceeds went to purchase prizes for dancers and to pay the bands.54 Dance competitions had long been central to Gĩkũyũ physical movement cultures. In precolonial times, competitions of codified jumps and wrestling between boys from different territorial units were highly valued by society.55 As in African American social dances and British ballroom dancing cultures of the first half of the twentieth century, colonial Kikuyuland’s ‘European dances’ were often performed in competitive modes. There, too, as performance scholar Nadine George-Graves puts it, ‘the competitive spirit influenced much of the creativity in the steps, and dancers were constantly trying to outdo one another and come up with the next craze.’56 Contests between groups of around twenty dancers from different Gĩkũyũ reserves were occasions to share and codify movements and sequences and to create new moves and to display dancers’ talents. Thus, by the mid-1940s, many closed-couple dance genres of the ‘European type’, which the Agĩkũyũ youth had taken as their own, had shifted from outdoor locations to indoor venues.

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In Nairobi’s Kaloleni estate, the newly built Kaloleni social hall, first used in 1947, hosted film screenings, jazz concerts, and classes teaching home economics, weaving and hygiene as part of ‘welfare’ directives, under the aegis of developmentalist social programmes. Most evenings, like in the city’s halls, Kaloleni presented dancing events and competitions of foxtrot, quickstep, and waltz. By the 1950s, these steps had made way for Afro-Cuban ballroom styles and rhythms such as rumba reindigenised à la Congolaise by Nairobi-based singers and electric guitarists from the Belgian Congo (present-day Democratic Republic of the Congo).57 Often, single women also took their chances in Nairobi, organised dancing evenings in these community spaces, and worked there as traders of all sorts. Kaloleni’s dancing and music events brought together in one place middle-class campaigners for political and social change with Africans from all walks of life exhausted by the colonial burden. By 1947, the hall hosted KAU dance meetings together with leisure activities such as billiards, tea parties, and art exhibitions. As Bodil Folke Frederiksen aptly writes, ‘Kaloleni was perhaps the most important meeting place of nationalist activists in the late 1940s and the 1950s, becoming colloquially known as the House of Parliament’.58 Like the nationalist leaders of Tanganyika and Angola, the KAU hosted frequent rallies in state-built dancing halls and private dancing clubs.59 The KAU-fostered spread of anti-colonial rhetoric at Kaloleni social hall, Fort Hall, and environs had gained such momentum that Fort Hall officials decided to forbid any public gatherings other than regular church and school activity because of the ‘trouble’ induced by ‘public meetings held in Nairobi at Kaleloni’.60 Rural district authorities had grown overwhelmed by the proliferation and politicisation of ‘European dances’. Famously, a September 1947 Fort Hall missionary report made public how Nairobi-based militants who had organised ‘a dance at which there is drinking’ were then joined by a large crowd involved in Europe-style dances to assault chief Ignatio Murai near his home.61 This chief, who tended to be publicly loyal to the colonial government, is locally remembered as harsh, lacking generosity, and stealing from the poor.62 ‘European dances’ encapsulated to a great extent the social tensions in post-war colonial Kikuyuland. These largely resulted from increased economic inequality that was in turn caused by development programmes that pitted individuals against each other. Chiefs and other African ‘welfare’ officers enforced colonial orders of long days of backbreaking compulsory terracing and the construction of cattle dipping vats. The impoverished, the hungry, the landless, and the angry hated them.63 When the chiefs of the Gĩkũyũ districts unanimously pressed their DCs ‘to issue a general prohibition of all types of European dancing in the Native Lands’ in November 1946, there is no doubt that they were expressing the

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struggle to contain popular unrest that these genres had inflamed.64 The expectations that social ‘welfare’ activities composed of ‘a combination of hard work and plenty of games’ would take the youth away from dancing were overly optimistic. In February 1947, the welfare officers in Fort Hall expressed frustration because young men especially preferred dancing instead of attending sporting activities. Attendance at sports meetings in Fort Hall consisted of 75 per cent school children and only 25 per cent young men.65 To the displeasure of many chiefs and elders of the district, young men ‘were more keen on European dancing or a native form which is similar to a European dance’.66 This was probably a reference to mwomboko, a development from the very distinct form of dansi performed on the accordion and iron tins or bells with metal ringers. Barlow translated the term ‘muomboko’ as ‘an eruption, breaking out’.67 Mũhoro asserts that the term ‘mwomboko’ derives from the Gĩkũyũ word kuomboka, which he translates as to get burnt, to be happy, or to dance.68 Both translations embody the essence of mwomboko’s most cherished movement dynamics: the swinging of the upper torso and arms generated by a joyful and sharp footwork. And, as practised by the Kigera Cultural Group, the legwork performed by the couple in co-ordination could entail two quick steps as they shifted their formation sideways, followed by a sudden stoop, then a quick spin of one or both partners. All these steps were executed in rapid succession in the 1940s. In another material artefact of modernity, the karĩng’arĩng’a, a metallic instrument made from the old starter of a car’s fly-wheel, replaced the bells and the iron tins that had, at times, accompanied dansi in the 1920s and 1930s. For South African musicologist Hugh Tracey, touring Central Kenya in 1952 to record ‘native music’, the karĩng’arĩng’a was used more ‘as a noise maker rather than melodic or harmonic accompaniment’. According to him, the instrument deafened nearby observers – hence his conclusion that the ‘Kikuyu appear to tolerate an intensity of sound far beyond the normal, in fact bordering on the threshold of pain in the ears’.69 But the genre’s high-pitched double beats produced by the karĩng’arĩng’a were absolutely thrilling to the dancers. With dancers’ physicality pushed to extremes, mwomboko took a breathless and intoxicating turn of speed. As one Fort Hall male resident observed in 1944 when seeing the women dancing mwomboko in the reserves of the Fort Hall district: ‘when young girls hear the bells of that dance ringing, they jump up like a person possessed. Neither are they able to eat enough food at that time, because of how much they love it!’70 Mwomboko caused much anxiety about foreign, European dancing cultures. When dancing traditional dances, chief Njiri argued, young people knew ‘the code of behaviour … and adhered to’ it. He assumed that the

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youth attending dances of European origin learned too much about the ‘European code of behaviour’ after dances, that is to say ‘foreign fondling’ or full sexual intercourse. Therefore, in his view, they completely forgot about the ‘African code’ and the Gĩkũyũ code of chastity before marriage, thus breaking ‘down manners and customs’.71 One problem here may not be whether or not, as many colonists and conservative Agĩkũyũ persons believed, the Agĩkũyũ youth involved in closed-couple dancing were emotionally mature enough to engage in foreign, ‘European’ dances responsibly. Instead, what chief Njiri suggested here was that ‘European dances’ by definition lead to immoral excess. Of course, the African communities knew very well about white settlers’ reputed lifestyles, involving hard partying, hard drinking, and hard sexual licence – which inspired the London musical theatre line, ‘Are you married, or do you live in Kenya?’ and shocked many not only in London but in Kenya as well.72 ‘European dances’ heralded the gradual threat and death of nguĩko, the traditional post-dance institution for unmarried youth that allowed them to fondle without full penetration. As usual, the dire consequence of pregnancy out of wedlock was perceived as an ill effect of women’s so-called loss of bodily reserve or control on the public dance floor. Fort Hall’s mwomboko young women were unfairly decried as ‘possessed’ and ‘uncontrollable’ when hearing the thrilling beats of the karĩng’arĩng’a. In parallel to public responses to the Charleston, jitterbug, and jive that historian James Nott has examined in the context of Britain in the 1920s–1940s, any spirited bodily response to the music by dancing women was seen as putting them at risk of opening themselves ‘to family ways’ outside the bounds of marriage.73 No Agĩkũyũ women who had given birth before marriage could nurture any hope of becoming a man’s first wife.74 According to these views, mwomboko enticed Fort Hall girls to so-called unruly sexual behaviour. In addition, mwomboko exposed the hardening schisms between the Agĩkũyũ individuals who showed public commitment to the colonial government and those radically opposed to the colonial system. The same Fort Hall man who criticised the mwomboko women for being ‘possessed’ complained at a baraza (public meeting) that the dancing youth failed to pay their ‘government rent’. He went as far as begging ‘young men of Githumu, Gacharage and Mukangu [the names of Fort Hall reserves] of Chief Reuben, to work at chasing away this enemy [mwomboko] or help this glorious government’.75 All these debates that swirled around mwomboko must be seen in light of increased socio-economic divisions which affected what Agĩkũyũ people thought and expressed about their changing society and their individual and collective places in a profoundly divisive colonial system. Indeed, many mwomboko men and women belonged to the most impoverished Agĩkũyũ communities of Fort Hall, Kĩambu, and southern Nyeri.

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They felt ignored and disposable in a system that seemingly rewarded a minority of colonial allies. They were landless and had no choice but to work in slavelike conditions on settlers’ coffee plantations for a miserable salary. Men could hardly afford bridewealth (the payment to the bride’s family to ratify a marriage). Women juggled various trading activities to support themselves and their dependents. Many of them attended KAU dansi events and rallies. But the elite party’s rhetoric and constitutional politics, focused on African political representation and sovereignty, did not respond to their pressing material and existential needs.76 By 1947, many male mwomboko dancers had joined the radical Nairobi-based militant group known as anake a forti, mostly consisting of war veterans, the lumpenproletariat, and petty traders. Named after the decade of the 1940s and anake – an ancient name for the Gĩkũyũ class of circumcised and unmarried young men, the warriors – the anake a forti rose out of the group’s loss of patience with a KAU representative of the privileged class to which its members belonged.77 The anake a forti belonged to those radicals who, in the words of historian David Anderson, ‘appealed to ethnic solidarity but also to the embryonic class consciousness of the unemployed, the disadvantaged and the dispossessed’.78 Their rise to radicalism signified a fracture in KAU politics in 1947. Impoverished and landless, the anake a forti were no longer accountable to any authority. They used physical intimidation, armed robberies, assassinations, and mass oathing to voice political opposition in Nairobi. They carried radical ideas to the Gĩkũyũ districts, where their message resonated with the expelled peasants ‘united by the fear and lived experience of poverty’.79 The significance of the mwomboko couple dance of the 1940s extends beyond the space of creativity, enlarging the expressions of Gĩkũyũ politics. For many Agĩkũyũ men and women, this dansi genre carved out spaces of class belonging rooted in a common ethnicity and radical political stance. Yet by no means did the genre signify a rejection of the broader ethnopolitical identity shared with the KAU’s members and its dansi organisers. The politics of closed-couple dancing in colonial Kikuyuland thus staged an appeal to common ethnicity that nonetheless tended to diverge along lines of class and choice of political methods.

Conclusion This chapter has shown some forms of inventions of popular ‘European dances’ by the Agĩkũyũ people in colonial Kenya between the mid-1920s and 1947. I have argued that ‘European dances’ enlarged the scope and scale of a contested embodied ethnicity among the Agĩkũyũ during this

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period. By drawing on Africanist dance genres that had been appropriated by global crowds and on precolonial youth dance and sociability, Agĩkũyũ youth challenged some communal boundaries of local expressions of embodied ethnicity. They used ‘European dances’ as assertive hubs of militancy. I have suggested that dansi in colonial Kikuyuland, as a broad East African closed-couple dance concept, can eventually be viewed as a ‘European dance’ and a space dominated by the moderate, politicised elites. In contrast, the ‘European dance’ mwomboko can be seen as a quintessentially Gĩkũyũ genre gradually embraced, throughout the 1940s, by a more radical and less privileged population. As a whole, the concept of ‘European dances’ endows colonial-era debates about the evolution of Gĩkũyũ ethnicity with aestheticised bodily forms that reflected significant cultural change, creativity, and dissent. Such concepts illuminate the ways in which the development of Gĩkũyũ ethnicity in the decades from the 1920s to the 1940s produced various socio-choreographic aesthetics and spaces that fed into highly visible but also imagined bodily comportments. Social dances as a practice and space to do politics is by no means novel in the global history of dance. The performance of Gĩkũyũ ethnicity acquires political significance if one views it as a dynamic corporeal, aesthetic, and social process that reflects some Agĩkũyũ individuals’ experience and excludes that of others, while remaining the business of the whole colonial Agĩkũyũ community, both Gĩkũyũ and colonial elements. It had the potential to fashion different kinds of Agĩkũyũ communities within which common and diverging expressions of gender, ethnic, political, and class consciousness could be enacted. By creating and naming closed-couple dances out of African- and Gĩkũyũ-rooted genres and rhythms and ‘western’ dance idioms, the Agĩkũyũ men and women immersed in ‘European dances’ constructed spaces from which to view the multifocal manifestations of Gĩkũyũ ethnicity, political organisation, and, to an extent, class and gender belonging. Much remains to be said about how Gĩkũyũ anxieties about these dances were rooted in ancient markers of Gĩkũyũ generational belongings and politics that uneasily played out with colonial politics and local expressions of cultural nationalism.

Acknowledgements I wish to thank James Nott and Klaus Nathaus for inviting me to join this edited volume. At the Kenya National Archives, I thank Richard Ambani and Peterson Kithuka for their assistance. I am grateful to chief radio producer Bill Odidi for facilitating my access to the Kenya Broadcasting Corporation archives in Nairobi. To John Lonsdale, who has kindly

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accepted to read and comment on this work-in-progress, I extend my most sincere gratitude. I thank the members of the Kigera Cultural Group of Nyeri for sharing fragments of their lives with me. As ever, none of this would have evolved without ongoing discussions with Catherine Wangari Wachuka and Father Joseph Njoroge wa Ngũgĩ. No one but myself bears full responsibility for any errors herein of fact, interpretation, or judgement.

Notes  1 After circumcision, young men and women belonged to the group of unmarried youth. Polygamous male elders had a stake in controlling the bodies of the marriageable youth, most especially women’s bodies.   2 D. Peterson, Creative Writing: Translation, Bookkeeping, and the Work of Imagination in Colonial Kenya (Portsmouth: Heinemann, 2004), p. 77; D. Anderson, Histories of the Hanged: The Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire (New York: W. W. Norton, 2005), p. 11.   3 See, for instance, T. Kanogo, Squatters and the Roots of Mau Mau (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1987); E. S. Atieno-Odhiambo, ‘The Production of History in Kenya: The Mau Mau Debate’, Canadian Journal of African Studies / Revue Canadienne des Études Africaines, 25:2 (1991), 300–7; G. Kershaw, Mau Mau from Below (Oxford: James Currey, 1997); Y. Droz, Migrations kikuyus: des pratiques sociales à l’imaginaire (Neufchâtel: Éditions de l’Institut d’Éthnologies, 1999); J. Lonsdale, ‘The Moral Economy of Mau Mau: Wealth, Poverty and Civic Virtue in Kikuyu Political Thought’, in B.  Berman and J. Lonsdale, Unhappy Valley: Conflict in Kenya & Africa, Book Two: Violence and Ethnicity (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1992), pp. 315–504; Peterson, Creative Writing; Anderson, Histories of the Hanged.   4 M. F. Hill, The Dual Policy in Kenya (Nairobi: Highland Press, 1944), pp. 14–15.   5 D. A. Low and J. Lonsdale, ‘Introduction: Towards the New Order, 1 ­ 945–1963’, in D. Low and A. Smith (eds), History of East Africa (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), p. 12.   6 J. Lewis, Empire State-Building: War and Welfare in Kenya, 1925–1952 (Oxford: James Currey, 2000), pp. 108–10.   7 K. Hazzard-Gordon, Jookin’: The Rise of Social Dance Formations in African American Culture (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1990), pp. 129–30. See also, for example, R. A. Long, The Black Tradition in American Dance (New York: Rizzoli International Publications, 1989); N. George-Graves, ‘“Just Like Being at the Zoo”: Primitivity and Ragtime Dance’, in J.  Malnig (ed.), Ballroom, Boogie, Shimmy Sham, Shake: A Social and Popular Dance Reader (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2009), pp. 55–71; B. Dixon Gottschild, Waltzing in the Dark: African American Vaudeville and Race Politics in the Swing Era (New York: St Martin’s Press, 2000); T. DeFrantz, ‘Popular Dances

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of the 1920 and Early ‘30s: From Animal Dance Crazes to the Lindy Hop’ and ‘Popular African-American Dance of the 1950s and ‘60s’, in R. Carlin and K. Holmann Conwill (eds), Ain’t Nothing Like The Real Thing: How the Apollo Theater Shaped American Entertainment (Washington DC: National Museum of African American History and Culture, 2010), pp. 182–5.  8 The son of Church Mission Society missionaries in Kenya, Harry and Mary Leakey, Louis S. B. Leakey completed The Southern Kikuyu Before 1903 (London: Academic Press, 1977) in 1939, but the book was only published five years after his death in 1972. Although Leakey acknowledged that his account was incomplete, we should bear in mind that his description is largely a product of his conversations with Agĩkũyũ male elders. Just before publication, two Agĩkũyũ elders further amended the collaborative text, depicting an orderly society governed by rules, ceremonies, fines, and fees.  9 KNA PC/CP/6/4/5, DC Fort Hall to Senior Commissioner (SC) Nyeri, ‘Dancing in the Reserve’, 23 April 1926. 10 KNA PC/CP/6/4/5, DC Fort Hall to Senior Commissioner (SC) Nyeri, ‘Dancing in the Reserve’, 23 April 1926. 11 C. F. Bushidi, ‘“The Sport and Fun of the Countryside!”: Dance, Novelty and Cosmopolitan Lifestyle in Interwar Rural Kenya’, Critical African Studies, 11:1 (2019), 10–30. For stories about the emergence of dansi on the East African coast and in Tanganyika (present-day Tanzania), see T. Ranger, Dance and Society in Eastern Africa, 1890–1970: The Beni Ngoma (London: Heinemann, 1975); K. Askew, Performing the Nation: Swahili Music and Cultural Politics in Tanzania (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2002); and E. Callaci, ‘Dancehalls Politics: Mobility, Sexuality, and Spectacles of Racial Respectability in Late Colonial Tanganyika, 1930s–1961’, Journal of African History, 52:3 (2011), 365–84. 12 Hill, Dual Policy, pp. 14–15. 13 Imperial War Museums Archives, 43 (41) 4/4–8, Royal Air Force (RAF) Dance Cards, dance cards from various balls held at the RAF bases; D. Connan, ‘La décolonisation des clubs kényans: sociabilité exclusive et constitution morale des élites africaines dans le Kenya contemporain’ (PhD dissertation, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, 2014), p. 67. 14 CD and Booklet, Something is Wrong: Vintage Recordings From East Africa (Honest Jon’s Records, 2010). 15 L. White, The Comforts of Home: Prostitution in Colonial Nairobi (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1990), pp. 45–7. 16 J. Malnig, ‘Introduction’, in Malnig (ed.), Ballroom, Boogie, Shimmy Sham, Shake, p. 6. 17 That the foxtrot is credited to African American innovations in dance has been well established. And so have the African roots of the animal dances developed by the 1910s: see Hazzard-Gordon, Jookin’, pp. 129–30; and George-Graves, ‘“Just Like Being at the Zoo”’, pp. 59–61. 18 KNA PC/CP/6/4/5, DC South Nyeri to SC Kikuyu Province of Nyeri, ‘Native Dance’, 10 April 1926.

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19 Ibid., DC Fort Hall to SC Nyeri, ‘Dancing in the Reserve’, 23 April 1926. 20 Ibid., Senior Commissioner (hereafter SC) Nyeri to CNC Nairobi, ‘Dances in the Native Reserve’, 10 June 1926. 21 KNA PC/CP/6/4/5, DC Fort Hall to SC Nyeri, ‘Dancing in the Reserve’, 23 April 1926. 22 KNA VQI/29/17, Political Record Book Fort Hall 1925–1927. 23 C. Martin Shaw, Colonial Inscriptions: Race, Sex, and Class in Kenya (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1995), p. 200. 24 P. Mwangi Mũhoro, ‘The Poetics of Gĩkũyũ Mwomboko: Narrative as a Technique in HIV-AIDS Awareness Campaign in Rural Kenya’, in K. Njogu and H. Maupeu (eds), Songs and Politics in Eastern Africa (Dar es Salaam: Mkuki na Nyota, 2007), pp. 78–9. 25 Leakey, The Southern Kikuyu Before 1903, p. 417. 26 Ibid., pp. 415–16. 27 White, Comforts of Home, pp. 75–6. 28 B. F. Frederiksen, ‘African Women and Their Colonisation of Nairobi: Representations and Realities’, in A. Burton (ed.), Urban Experience in Eastern Africa, c. 1750–2000 (Nairobi: British Institute in Eastern Africa, 2002), p. 225. 29 Agĩkũyũ communities themselves have long cultivated the virtue associated with work on the land. With land plentiful and given by Ngai (God), laziness and material poverty were despised, while wealth and morality went hand in hand. For this, see Lonsdale’s seminal essay, ‘Moral Economy’. 30 KNA VQI/28/32, Minutes from the Kiambu LNC held at Kiambu between 12 and 14 January 1933, ‘Young men from Nairobi dancing in the reserves’. 31 KNA DC/FH/2/1/1, DC Fort Hall to Rev. Father Catholic Mission of Ichagaki, 23 March 1931. 32 EUL GEN 1785, Papers of Arthur Barlow Kikuyu–English Dictionary. 33 David P. Sandgren, ‘Twentieth Century Religious and Political Divisions among the Kikuyu of Kenya’, African Studies Review, 25:2/3 (1982), 195–207 (200–2); Y. Droz, ‘Circoncision féminine et masculine en pays kikuyu: rite d’institution, division sociale et droits de l’Homme’, Cahiers d’études africaines, 158: XL-2 (2000), 215–40 (217–19); Anderson, Histories of the Hanged, pp. 18–21. 34 Ibid. 35 Anderson, Histories of the Hanged, pp. 22–3. 36 A. Clayton and D. C. Savage, Government and Labour in Kenya, 1895–1963 (London: Cass, 1974), pp. 214–15. 37 T. Kanogo, Squatters and the Roots of Mau Mau, 1905–1963 (London: James Currey, 1987), pp. 105–7; Lonsdale, ‘Moral Economy’, pp. 406–7. 38 KNA DC/MUR/3/10/2, Kiraki wa Gathuri Fort Hall to DC Fort Hall, 23 June 1939; Kiraki wa Gathuri Fort Hall to DC Fort Hall, 21 December 1939; Kaingi Guthera Nairobi to DC Fort Hall, 22 December 1940; Malius Kinuthia Nairobi to DC Fort Hall, 24 October 1941. 39 Ibid., DC Fort Hall to Kaingi Guthera Nairobi, 30 December 1940; DC Fort Hall to Kaingi Guthera Nairobi, 30 December 1940.

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40 KNA DC/FH/2/1/1, Kiraki wa Gathuri Fort Hall to DC Fort Hall, 23 June 1939; Kiraki wa Gathuri Fort Hall to DC Fort Hall, 21 December 1939; Conversations with George and Mofat at Karure, Weithaga, March 2012. 41 Ibid., Malius Kinuthia Nairobi to DC Fort Hall, 26 April 1941; DC Fort Hall to Malius Kinuthia Nairobi, 29 April 1941. 42 KNA DC/MUR/3/10/2, Kiraki-wa-Gathuri Fort Hall to DC Fort Hall, 12 June 1944; Kiraki wa Gathuri Fort Hall to DC Fort Hall, 24 October 1945; Plicon Gitau/FH to DC FH, 6 November 1945; E. Njuguna/Thika to DC FH, 17 November 1945; KNA, DC/FH/2/1/1, Gathore Ndegwa/Nairobi to DC FH, 17 April 1947; Gathore Ndegwa/Nairobi to DC FH, 17 April 1947. 43 J. Lonsdale, ‘KAU’s Cultures: Imaginations of Community and Constructions of Leadership in Kenya after the Second World War’, Journal of African Cultural Studies, 13:1 (2000), 107–24 (121). 44 Ibid. 45 KNA DC/FH/2/1/1, Kiraki wa Gathuri Fort Hall to DC Fort Hall, 24 October 1945; E. Njuguna Thika to DC Fort Hall, 17 November 1945; KNA DC/ MUR/3/10/2, Gabungo Gibson Fort Hall to DC Fort Hall, 13 January 1947. 46 KNA DC/FH/2/1/1, DC FH to Gathore Ndegwa, 28 April 1947; DC FH to Muhohi Ngonjiri/Nairobi, 29 January 1947; KNA DC/MUR/3/10/2, DC FH to E. Njuguna/Thika, 20 November 1945; DC FH to Kiraki Gathuri, 25 October 1945; DC FH to Plicon Gitau/FH, 8 November 1945. 47 Conversations with George and Mofat at Karure, Weithaga, March 2012. 48 Lewis, Empire State-Building, p. 302. 49 Ibid., pp. 42–52. 50 B. F. Frederiksen, ‘Making Popular Culture from Above: Leisure in Nairobi 1940–60’, Occasional Paper: Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta, 1994; Lewis, Empire State-Building, pp. 66–7, 232–9. 51 Ibid., pp. 232–9; Frederiksen, ‘Making Popular Culture from Above’. In Southern Africa, colonial architectures of leisure for urban Africans began earlier, from the mid-1920s. Joburg’s Bantu Men’s Social Center (1924) and Harare’s Mai Musodzi Hall both hosted old, syncretic and emerging social dance and music genres; see V. Erlmann, African Stars: Studies in Black South African Performance (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1991), pp. 54–95 and M. Chikowero, African Music, Power and Being in Colonial Zimbabwe (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2015), pp. 112–30. 52 KNA VQI/28/38, Minutes of a meeting of the South Nyeri LNC held on 1 March 1945, ‘Social Centre Othaya’. 53 KNA VQI/28/38, Minutes of a meeting of the South Nyeri LNC held on 22 November 1945, ‘Dancing in the reserves’. 54 KNA DC/MUR/3/10/2, Letter from the Office of the DC Stage Plays and Cinematograph and Broadcasting, DC Fort Hall to the Municipal African Affairs Officer of Nairobi, 6 November 1946, ‘Dance Halls and Sports Clubs’. 55 J. Bale and J. Sang, Kenyan Running: Movement Culture, Geography and Global Change (London: Frank Cass, 1996), p. 49.

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56 George-Graves, ‘“Just Like Being at the Zoo”’, p. 56. For a collection of essays on how music competitions in East Africa stimulated innovation in musical performances, see G. Barz and F. Gunderson (eds), Mashindano!: Competitive Music Performance in East Africa (Dar es Salaam: Mkuki na Nyota, 2000). 57 Frederiksen, ‘African Women’, pp. 224, 229. B. Ng’weno, ‘“Dancing is Part and Parcel of Someone who is Cultured”: Ballroom Dancing and the Spaces of Urban Identity in 1950s Nairobi’, in Kahithe Kiiru and Maina wa Mutonya (eds), Music and Dance in Eastern Africa (Nairobi: Twaweza Communications, 2018), pp. 34–8. For an excellent article on how Afro-Cuban music was imported to Kinshasa, see B. White, ‘Congolese Rumba and Other Cosmopolitanisms’,  Cahiers d’études africaines, 168 (2002), 663–86. For similar developments on community centres, evening classes, and dances held in such social halls in late colonial Tanganyika, see A. Burton, ‘Townsmen in the Making: Social Engineering and Citizenship in Dar es Salaam, c. 1945–1960’, International Journal of African Historical Studies, 36:2 (2003), 331–65; and E. Callaci, ‘Dancehall Politics: Mobility, Sexuality, and Spectacles of Racial Respectability in Late Colonial Tanganyika, 1930s–1961’, Journal of African History, 52 (2011), 374–5. 58 Frederiksen, ‘African Women’, 229. 59 Askew, Performing the Nation, p. 94; Callaci, ‘Dancehall Politics’, 369; M. Moorman, Intonations: A Social History of Music and Nation in Luanda, Angola, from 1945 to Recent Times (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2008), pp. 90–1. 60 KNA DC/FH/2/1/1, DC Fort Hall to PC Nyeri, 7 October 1947. 61 This is a well-known event recorded in the oral history of Fort Hall. KNA DC/FH/2/1/1, Bernard Kangethe to DC Fort Hall, 25 September 1947; Ibid., DC Fort Hall to Commissioner of Police/Nairobi, 1 October 1947; Anderson, Histories of the Hanged, p. 34; Lonsdale, ‘Moral Economy’, p. 421. 62 Conversations with George and Mofat at Karure, Weithaga, March 2012. 63 Anderson, Histories of the Hanged, pp. 32–5. 64 VQI/28/38, Minutes of a meeting of the South Nyeri LNC held at Nyeri between 11 and 14 November 1946 ‘European Dancing’. 65 KNA DC/MUR/3/1/5 DC, Fort Hall to the Social Welfare Adviser, Nairobi, 12 February 1947. 66 Ibid. 67 EUL GEN 1785/2, Papers of Arthur Barlow, Kikuyu–English (Dictionary). Barlow also defined the term as ‘a car with left-hand drive (so called because of the speed with which such are often driven – they rip along)’. 68 Conversations with Peter Mwangi Mũhoro, Nairobi, August 2017. 69 Kenya Broadcasting Corporation Archives (hereafter KBC), Johnnie Murithe Wambu and Kbunga Waita, Hugh Tracey recordings, Embu 1952. 70 KNA DC/FH/2/1/1, Extract from Baraza, 15 July 1944. 71 KNA VQI/28/36, Minutes from a Local Native Council (hereafter LNC) held at Fort Hall on 19 and 20 November 1940, ‘European Dancing’. 72 Martin Shaw, Colonial Inscriptions, pp. 213–14.

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73 KNA DC/FH/2/1/1, Extract from Baraza, 15 July 1944. J. Nott, Going to the Palais: A Social and Cultural History of Dancing and Dance Halls in Britain, 1918–1960 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), pp. 229–30. Such societal anxieties about women dancing and the institution of marriage and family can be observed elsewhere; see for instance J. Griffiths, ‘Popular Culture and Modernity: Dancing in New Zealand Society 1920–1945’, Journal of Social History, 41:3 (2008), 611–32; and S. Jacotot, Danser á Paris dans l’entre-­ deux-guerres: lieux, pratiques et imaginaires des danses de société des Amériques, 1919–1939 (Paris: Nouveau Monde, 2013). 74 J. Davison, Songs from Mutira: Change in the Lives of Rural Gikuyu Women, 1910–1995 (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1996), p. 62. 75 KNA DC/FH/2/1/1, Extract from Baraza, 15 July 1944. 76 Conversations with Amos Gikaria, Gatitu, March 2012; Conversations with George and Mofat at Karure, Weithaga, March 2012. 77 F. Furedi, ‘The African Crowd in Nairobi: Popular Movements and Elite Politics’, Journal of African History, 14:2 (1973), 282–4. 78 Anderson, Histories of the Hanged, p. 190. 79 Furedi, ‘African Crowd in Nairobi’, 287, 286; M. Green, ‘Mau Oathing Rituals and Political Ideology in Kenya: A Re-Analysis’, Journal of the International African Institute, 60 (1990), 72.

6 Domesticating the social dance: the case of New Zealand between the two World Wars Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

John Griffiths

During the 1920s, New Zealand, like many other components of the British Empire, experienced the arrival of a strain of popular culture that had originated in the United States of America, imported either directly or indirectly. This was the arrival of jazz. Jazz bands toured, overseas music publishers circulated jazz music and gramophone manufacturers released jazz recordings. ‘Hot jazz’ was most popular in the 1920s, before it mutated into ‘sweet jazz’ as the 1930s progressed. Alongside this, a number of new dance ‘crazes’ (that is to say, dances that perhaps had only one season of popularity before disappearing) that had also originated in the USA were performed in the Dominion. Such dances were depicted in films of the period shown in New Zealand’s cinemas. Fast-paced, ‘frivolous’ and ‘fun’, these dances gave way to more sedate forms in the 1930s. In tandem with these developments, anxieties regarding dances and dance halls rose and fell during the years between the two global wars. This chapter investigates this transformation and argues that it was caused as much by changes in the music and entertainment ecology – for instance, the rise of radio and the growing synergies between dancing and film – as it was the efforts of dance teachers and regulators to keep the public from performing ‘improper’ steps. The first section examines the arrival of jazz and the new and existing spaces provided for public dance. The arrival of jazz contributed to disorder and conflict in the dance halls of the Dominion and was part of a wider moral panic generated in sections of the popular press. The latter section of the chapter moves on to examine the various ways in which this disorder was calmed, partly through the efforts of dance teachers, venue operators and the state, and partly through incorporation into contemporary media structures, most obviously cinema. New Zealand’s encounter with jazz and the rise of new kinds of social dancing amounts to what might be described as ‘cultural entanglement’ as various elements of popular culture from North America, Australia and Britain created hybrid cultures that owned their existence to something of a ‘mélange’ of national styles.



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The arrival of jazz, new dance venues and the rise of moral concern What were the salient features of dancing as a leisure activity in the 1920s that created a sense of unease amongst sections of the population? The international origins of modern social dancing caused concern at a time of perceived cultural flux in New Zealand’s history. It has been argued that in the 1920s New Zealand imported influences from several other zones of the Anglo-world. Imports from North America were added to existing cultures derived primarily from Britain and Australia. Whilst Philippa Mein Smith and others have disputed James Belich’s notion of the ‘death’ of the Tasman world, rather arguing for the continuance of exchanges between Australia and New Zealand throughout the first half of the twentieth century, it is evident that North American culture was now exerting a greater influence than before 1914.1 Indeed, historian Miles Fairburn has noted that, ‘paradoxically […] what made New Zealand distinct is the abnormal degree to which its people have borrowed from other cultures and the particular combination of cultures they have borrowed from’.2 Peter Gibbons goes so far as to suggest that New Zealand’s history is best understood by placing the ‘local’ in the context of the ‘global’.3 Whilst North Americans were admired for their progressive outlook, there was also a co-existent concern that their exported ‘modernity’ would tend to undermine a more traditional way of life in New Zealand, already experiencing population growth and urbanisation in the 1920s. One of the most significant imports of the decade following the ending of the First World War was jazz. Quite what jazz meant as it arrived in the Dominion after 1918 is debatable. Some understanding of the term can be gained by referencing the comments of contemporary musicians. Contemplating its meaning in 1925, for example, the American jazz band leader Bert Ralton, who toured Britain extensively in addition to South Africa, Australia and New Zealand during his career with his English Havana Band, noted that: Jazz today is, properly speaking, a very different matter from jazz as it was originally promoted years ago by the Southern negroes. At that time tune and harmony were sacrificed mercilessly to secure rhythm, at times with horrible unmelodious results, but today ‘jazz’ can more properly be described as a glorified and higher form of symphonic ragtime music.4

The historian of jazz music in New Zealand Aleisha Ward also notes that the meaning of ‘jazz’, as the term was used in the Dominion, was rather nebulous: In the case of jazz in New Zealand, New Zealanders were at both a physical and cultural distance from the jazz that they were acquiring from the United States of America, Great Britain, and Australia. Jazz was decontextualised

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from its cultural origins as it was imported into New Zealand, making New Zealanders only partly informed about the original musical and cultural content. Because of this partial information New Zealanders then began to create alternative models of jazz, recontextualising it to the situation and sensibilities of New Zealand culture and society.5

What transpired in New Zealand was that ‘any up-tempo popular music … could be turned into jazz by the use of “jazz effects”, which included syncopation and/or improvisation’.6 The important aspect of the music for our purposes was that patrons were able to dance to it. Over time, music writers in the popular press began to claim authority over its definition. The first appearance of jazz in the Dominion was in the form of jazz dance clubs which formed in the major cities in or around 1920 and 1921. Descriptions of these clubs note that they were primarily venues where those who appreciated up-tempo music could dance. Adaptation was to the fore. In one contemporary description of the Auckland jazz club for example, it was noted that the jazz band were assisted by a ‘real Hawaiian ukulele and guitar band’ whilst Hawaiian melodies were sung, and hula dances performed.7 In order to cater for jazz dancing, new venues were opened. From the early 1920s there were essentially two types of dance venue to be seen in New Zealand. There were the pre-existing multipurpose suburban halls that largely catered for sequence dances of the kind performed before the outbreak of the First World War and there were newly established cabarets, opened in the larger centres of the Dominion. Jazz dancing was undeniably facilitated by the opening of the latter venues. Cabarets attracted a more cosmopolitan crowd who tended to want faster or, to use the term of the period, ‘hotter’ dance music, which contrasted with the taste of provincial suburban crowds where more traditional, slower sequenced dances such as waltzes and schottisches were favoured. H. C. D. Somerset’s study of the fictional settlement of Littledene (in reality Oxford in the province of Canterbury) noted: Dances are not the vivacious meetings one might them to imagine to be. No-one leaves the hall, that is frowned on by the older people who are always on the watch lest any evils associated with city dances should invade the country. Littledene is perniciously moral; dancing appears to be a serious business and one notices much inhibition that is missing in the large communities.8

In contrast with this provincial scene, in New Zealand’s largest city, Auckland, there were over fifty venues to attend between the early 1920s and early 1940s (see Figure 5), ranging from purpose-built cabarets to multipurpose halls. The term ‘Palais de Danse’ denoting a large purposebuilt dance hall was not used in Auckland, but was adopted in Wellington and Dunedin. The Wellington Town Hall, for example, staged dancing

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Figure 5  The location of Auckland’s cabarets and dance halls, c. 1920–42

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under that heading in 1921 and the Kilbirnie Hall also staged a longer-term programme during the 1920s. The Embassy Salon in Dunedin’s Moray Place advertised a ‘Palais de Danse’ on the pages of the city’s newspaper the Evening Star in 1928. A notable difference between Britain, Australia and New Zealand was that in the latter, the term did not denote a purposebuilt hall, but rather an existing hall that was used for jazz dancing. Given the small population sizes of the Dominion’s cities, it would have been economically unfeasible to construct such a venue. Adopting a continental name would have lent a certain mystique, romance and internationalism to the evening’s proceedings. In Auckland a cluster of cabarets opened their doors across the 1920s. They too adopted a European or North American style, with glamorous interiors, compared to the more spartan venues that had existed before 1914. Venues such as Rush Munro’s Conservatoire de Danse, opened in 1921, was the first jazz venue in the city, soon followed by the Dixieland Cabaret in 1922.9 The latter was initially located on the main central Auckland thoroughfare of Queen Street. In 1926 the Click-Clack Cabaret, based in Newmarket in Auckland’s inner east, opened its doors to patrons. Located above the Rialto cinema, this venue anticipated the construction of ‘cinema cabarets’ in the 1930s.10 After the Dixieland had relocated to the western beach suburb of Point Chevalier in 1925, a new city centre cabaret called the Peter Pan opened in August 1930. Such purpose-built cabarets were created primarily as dance spaces with refreshments on offer, although they were not licensed venues, and were evidently trading on the idea of ‘cosmopolitanism’ for a social elite. In its internal design a cabaret differed from a dance hall in that, as the Auckland-based jazz musician Desmond ‘Spike’ Donovan recalled, a cabaret had tables and chairs for patrons to sit at, whilst in a dance hall the chairs were placed at the edge of the dance floor.11 Cabarets were often smaller than dance halls. The confined space gave rise to a form of dancing known as ‘crush dancing’, whereby steps were cut down to suit the size of the room. Couples danced closer together than in a dance hall. Other terms used for this kind of dancing were ‘crowded room fox trot’ or ‘restaurant dancing’.12 Such venues could include some kind of floor show or exhibitions of dancing during the evening. The interiors of dance halls and cabarets were deliberately constructed to encourage romance and escapism, using lighting and decoration. On the occasion of the Dixieland’s opening, newspaper reports noted ‘electric chandeliers’ suspended from the white ceiling which provided a soft light, and shaded lamps on each table, in addition to a rich carpet and designed curtains.13 Dance cards, which were used in dance halls to ensure the circulation of dance partners, were redundant in the cabarets. As a consequence, dancers could effectively remain with the same partner all night.

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The Dixieland additionally offered classes in cinema acting, dramatic art and jazz dancing. Cabarets therefore combined elements of a dance hall and those of a European-style cabaret. Contemporary descriptions of the cabarets do not give much information about those who attended, but adverts for these venues wanted patrons to experience luxury and internationalism within. On the occasion of the Dixieland’s opening, the New Zealand Herald provided readers with a description of the interior, described as the ‘finest cabaret outside America’ and a venue which ‘compared favourably with anything in the world’. It noted the cabaret’s lavish decoration on a grand scale, with ‘rich carpets’ throughout. Two lounges overlooked the dance floor. Catering was provided in a ‘quick and efficient’ manner.14 After its relocation to the western suburbs, the cabaret staged an ‘All Nations Night’ at which cosmopolitan airs were played by the bands. The Peter Pan cabaret was noted to have included a grillroom that imitated continental venues.15 The high standard of the design of the Peter Pan may well have been provoked by the opening in 1929 of the Winter Garden cabaret, located in the basement of the Civic Theatre on Queen Street. The Civic was called an ‘atmospheric cinema’, constructed in an exotic style, imitating a Moorish garden, with turrets, minarets, spires and tiled roofs, in addition to two lifesized Abyssinian panther statues. The foyer was, in the words of contemporary journalists, ‘a revelation of the decorative plasterer’s art’.16 Previous work on jazz and its relationship to dance has shown how dancing became entangled with a range of concerns regarding the morality of youth in the jazz decade.17 Jazz was heavily linked to the idea of excitement, in the realms of consumer pick-me-ups for example, and the word also appeared in advertisements for female and male fashion to signify ‘the latest thing’.18 It was also undeniably bound up with racist rhetoric. New dance ‘crazes’ were described by one observer as a ‘nerve-racking monstrosity’ including wild dances such as the bunny hug, the turkey trot and the grizzly bear.19 Newer dances to emerge in the 1920s included the Bambalina, collegiate walk, the Baltimore, and the heebie jeebies. Concern reached its apogee as the Charleston arrived in the mid-1920s. The dance originated in the challenge dances that were an aspect of African American dances called ‘juba’. The dance had first appeared in the Broadway musical titled Runnin’ Wild in 1923, and it was first performed in New Zealand in November 1925 at the Savoy Cabaret in Dunedin, by dancers Fred and Ngaire James who had recently visited America.20 Whilst it was ‘greatly enjoyed by Savoy patrons’, the dance provoked controversy. Within a year it had been banned from a large number of halls in the Dominion.21 A number of reasons were provided for banning the Charleston, among them being structural damage of the halls (some claimed that dance halls

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in the USA had sunk by up to four inches); physical danger caused to other dancers in the hall, such as the kicking of shins; and the harm that women might sustain performing the dance, ranging from swelling ankles to infertility.22 But there was also a racial aspect. Jazz was seen as an expression of African American dancing tradition, in comparison with the more sedate and formalised European dances that had prevailed in the previous century. To conservative dancers, it appeared that jazz allowed improvisation of movement, without the need to use formally taught dance steps. In this way jazz could potentially democratise dance, also a concern and a debate which I will return to in the second section of the chapter. Certainly an older, pre-1914 generation of New Zealanders believed the arrival of jazz in the 1920s to be a sinister and unwelcome presence in the Dominion. Across the western world a common concern was that the First World War had loosened morality and especially changed the nature of femininity. Dance halls were increasingly perceived as a threat to family stability in the 1920s.23 These concerns arguably overrode the more positive aspects of dancing, such as the romance of the venues, where there was an opportunity to meet the opposite sex and perhaps begin a courtship that might result in marriage. Dancing arguably benefited health and resulted in improved physical condition.24 Many critics overlooked these positive features, preferring to accentuate what they perceived to be the more negative aspects. At least one newspaper columnist, possibly a member of the pre-1914 dance generation, lamented the death of romance in the halls of the early 1920s. The columnist, observing proceedings, believed that it was impossible to see any of the patrons enjoying themselves, such was the concentration needed to observe the ‘intricacies of the latest “hug” or “trot”’. Moreover, the same writer believed that the ability to purchase a professional partner who ‘can be bought for sixpence or a shilling’ was another factor that had killed the spirit of romance. In his view, dances were staged too regularly to be considered special.25 Those who defended the cabarets and halls from criticism argued that the behaviour of patrons was similar to that of previous generations. It was simply a question of being more open in the desire to meet a partner than had been the case in the 1890s.26 It is evident, however, that young women now increasingly attended a dance without a chaperone. As a result of this decline in surveillance they were now freer to meet a partner at the dance rather than before. While suburban dances started at 8 p.m. and ran until 11 p.m., cabarets opened at 9 p.m. and ran until midnight or beyond, because they were not located in residential areas. Dance hall patron Marjorie White noted a significant difference between the cabarets and the suburban dance halls was that the sexes were segregated at the suburban dances, recalling that, ‘normally the girls sat round the walls of

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the hall, while the boys crowded around the doors’.27 When the Dixieland opened its doors, an advertisement proclaimed that ‘if you have had the opportunity of dancing in the best Cabarets on the Continent you will feel at home in the Dixieland’.28 This venue was owned by a Canadian dentist, Frederick Rayner. Rayner had experienced American nightlife at first hand and was keen to introduce the latest ideas in entertainment to his adopted city. Del Foster, an American, was employed as manager and dance tutor. He had introduced jazz cabaret nights at the town hall, and was given the responsibility for providing music at the Dixieland.29 Foster initially chose an Australian band, the Southern Dixieland Band, to provide the jazz, perhaps feeling that New Zealand musicians were not capable of doing the job at that early stage of the decade.30 In addition to a looser style of dancing there was a concern that the more carefree atmosphere in the halls was being facilitated by liquor consumption. Social purity groups in particular believed drinking to be rife at dance venues. Drinking was prohibited in such venues, but this led to liquor being smuggled into the cabarets and dance halls.31 Under the terms of legislation introduced in 1917, pubs and hotels were required to close at 6 p.m. (nicknamed the ‘six o’clock swill’), and since the 1890s some New Zealand districts had taken advantage of a local option to prohibit the sale of liquor within its boundaries. In her research into curtailing of evening drinking in the Australian context, Tanja Luckins has noted that many citizens, particularly working-class men, saw the limitation as essentially ‘un-British’. The pub was predominantly a masculine space in this era. Elite males could frequent private clubs that were out of bounds to working men. The legislation was perceived as denying a sense of ‘British fair play’ and affected the ‘freedom of the subject’.32 Evidently dance hall patrons also thought that an evening would be vastly more enjoyable if they could drink at a dance. Despite achieving a victory in 1917, the prohibition lobby was still strong in the 1920s as the phenomenon of ‘sly-grogging’, that is to say, the sale and consumption of alcohol in dry districts, was increasing. A journalist who reported for the Auckland Star noted liquor being consumed in Auckland dance halls and cabarets. The drink had not been supplied on the premises but had been smuggled in. ‘Drunken youths’ and ‘half tipsy girls’ were witnessed.33 Desmond ‘Spike’ Donovan recollected one police raid on the Peter Pan cabaret, where a male patron had asked a woman, the ‘daughter of a well-known member of the judiciary’, to hide a bottle of wine up her skirt to prevent discovery. When the police asked the patrons to stand up to allow the police to search underneath the table for liquor, the bottle crashed out of the woman’s underclothing.34 Interwar dance hall patron Marjorie White recalled, ‘at cabarets drinking was strictly illegal, but the door-man must have had two glass eyes, because the amount of alcohol that was

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smuggled in was quite excessive. The girls’ coat sleeves covered thin arms and fat bottles’. White stopped attending balls where heavy drinking was taking place, ‘not because I was a moralist but because I just like my dance partners sober’.35 That drinking took place in and around dance venues was because, unlike the situation in Britain, it was not possible to drink at a pub before a dance. Some male dance patrons left the hall at various stages of the evening to partake of drink. However, there appears to have been a growing intolerance of drinking near and within dance halls. Venue owners could be fined for permitting drinking on their premises by local magistrates in the 1920s and 1930s and by the end of the decade national legislation had been implemented, in the form of the Statute Amendment Act of 1939. A £20 fine was imposed on managers of halls if any patron was found to possess liquor. The patron would be fined £10. Indeed, both the Dixieland and Peter Pan cabarets were prosecuted for allowing drink to be consumed on the premises in the later 1920s and early 1930s.36 The manager of the Peter Pan Club was fined £15 in 1931, after a raid on the Peter Pan Club in Auckland discovered liquor on the premises. The fear that women were consuming liquor at dance halls particularly exacerbated fears. In 1926 the Reverend T. W. Armour, a Presbyterian minister, cited a letter sent to him by an unnamed Auckland man, who had fought in the First World War. He complained in the letter that dance halls were the cause of a ‘great many divorces and broken lives in this city of Auckland. I know plenty of married men who otherwise would be happy but for the above reasons’. Women were the worst offenders, he argued, ‘because they derive the greatest sexual excitement from the dances’.37 If dance halls were a threat to happy marriages, they were no less a concern for the effect they had on younger single women. In 1929, an article appeared in Dunedin’s Evening Star titled ‘The Modern Girl’. It noted that young women were no longer chaperoned at dances and that ‘the modern girl who goes to the popular resort is much more independent than even her mother was’.38 A debate ensued throughout the period as to how far women partook of liquor. At the mid-point in the period under scrutiny here, Auckland police investigated whether young women frequented hotels in the city, concluding they were not doing so. However, the press thought otherwise, some journalists believing that ‘flappers’ were noted drinkers.39 It was in this context that the New Zealand Truth played an important role in escalating contemporary concern about dance halls nationally during the 1920s. This publication was part of a stable of Australianowned papers. The first Truth had been published in Sydney in 1890 and subsequent versions were launched in other Australian locations such as Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Tasmania.40 New Zealand’s

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version had appeared for the first time in 1905. The paper was owned by Australian John Norton, who had then been succeeded by his son Ezra in 1920. The paper traded on a mixture of ‘crime, divorce, sex, sport … and populism’, capable of simultaneously celebrating and condemning aspects of the modern society between the two World Wars.41 The New Zealand Truth set itself against aspects of modernity in the 1920s. Cars and drunk-drivers were castigated, whilst the arrival of jazz in the 1920s also provoked censure.42 Indeed, jazz and motor vehicles were strongly linked in the period, as symbols of modernity. Since drink was prohibited in the dance halls and had to be smuggled in, cars were invariably used as liquor stashes. Dance hall patrons would often drive to the venue, partaking of drink in and around the motor vehicle before, during and after a dance. Driving after partaking of intoxicating liquor was not a criminal act in itself but injuring another person as a result of reckless driving was punishable under the terms of the Motor Vehicle Act introduced in 1924.43 City councils had to act to reduce the noise that was created by patrons who left the dances. Christchurch City Council introduced a by-law in the later 1920s which required dance halls to close at 11.30 p.m. on a Saturday night. It also withdrew licences from venues where patrons disturbed the peace. Such a fate befell the Dorothy Dance Hall located on the city’s Cashel Street in 1931. A witness at the court hearing described men standing near a car outside the hall in a drunken condition who used ‘insulting language’ when the witness refused a drink.44 Similar laws were introduced by the city councils of Wellington and Dunedin in this period. In memoranda generated by the Wellington City Council it was noted that ‘There appears little or no restraint on the movements of patrons of these Halls, so that persons having motor cars parked in the vicinity can have easy access to liquor, which they may have concealed in their cars’.45 The problem was compounded by the lack of toilet facilities in some halls, giving patrons an excuse to leave the hall.46 The history of laws relating to liquor consumption is a rather complex one in a New Zealand context and reflects influence from outside the country, particularly the gathering momentum for prohibition in the USA, advocated by groups such as the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) and the New Zealand Alliance for the Total Suppression of the Liquor Trade.47 Only after the Second World War were debates staged where the idea was mooted that total prohibition was ineffective and controlled drinking should be permitted.48 It is evident therefore that the presence of intoxicating liquor at dance venues played a significant role in the anxiety generated about dancing and dance halls in the 1920s. Using a story from Melbourne, the New Zealand Truth showed how jazz and decadence went hand in hand. ‘Jazz was undesirable on many counts:

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it was foreign black music, it encouraged inter-racial association and it led to wild drinking and loose morals’.49 The Truth had also attacked the first cabaret to be opened in New Zealand, located on Wellington’s Goring Street, and later turned its focus further north, noting ‘an orgy of jazz and fizz’ at Auckland’s Dixieland.50 The reason for criticising the cabarets was, as Richard Joblin argues, the perception that venues such as these were the resort of the idle and debauched rich, a group that the paper disliked.51 In the 1930s the Truth shifted its focus to the personal lives of cabaret owners and dance teachers.52 In the context of the perception, if not the reality, of a rise in illegitimate births, and the Truth’s fascination with affiliation orders and paternity suits, the paper also focused on the question of ‘what happened after the dance’.53 Before concluding this survey of concerns generated by jazz and dance halls, it should be noted that the dance hall was becoming associated with the dangers of the big city, particularly the notion of ‘anomie’. Such a notion heightened during the 1920s, when statistical surveys revealed that more New Zealanders lived in urban as opposed to rural settlements. Anxiety was demonstrated in tangible form in the case of the disappearance of Elise Walker. Walker had left her rural homestead on the Bay of Plenty in mysterious circumstances, and her body was subsequently found on the outskirts of Auckland. The question of what had happened to Walker was speculated upon by the New Zealand Truth. In her survey of this case, Bronwyn Dalley notes that: These [Truth’s journalistic treatment of Walker’s disappearance and apparent murder] narratives built upon images of urban danger that had proliferated in New Zealand for a number of years. As New Zealand became increasingly urbanised in the first two decades of the twentieth century and as growing numbers of young women and men moved from rural areas into towns and cities in search of employment and pleasure, commentators pointed to the incipient dangers lurking in urban locales … Elise’s pathetic and unsolved death stood as a warning of what could await the innocent when they left the security of their domestic rural hearths to seek out the city.54

Thus, the new spaces to perform jazz dance which were located in the larger cities were perceived by some as sites of moral turpitude. The chapter now turns to examine the efforts made by dance teachers and venue operators to return to what they considered to be a more genteel and respectable standard of dance and behaviour in the halls and cabarets. As we shall see, a concerted effort was made to reimpose English values on New Zealand dance patrons who had turned elsewhere for cultural inspiration.



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Re-establishing order, romance and gentility in the dance venues The previous sections have shown that the arrival of new dance styles posed a number of challenges to the existing dance culture in the Dominion. The First World War had arguably begun to loosen morality and into that vacuum had rushed the sounds and experiences of jazz, the more liberated woman, the glamour of the cinema, the rise of the large city and the diffusion of the motor car. These aspects of modernity were summarised in one newspaper column as the ‘Charleston Mind’. As it noted, ‘the kinema, dancing itself, motoring, wireless and the cheaper press all cater for a mind loth to serve essentials, glad to indulge superficialities’.55 The newer styles of dance, as we have also seen, found a home in New Zealand’s recently opened cabarets, largely located in the larger centres. The establishment of such venues represented a challenge to pre-1914 dance culture, epitomised by the more sedate old-time dances that took place in suburban and country halls. The problem of the new styles was recorded by Wellington dance tutor, Phyllis Bates, who, in a series of articles published in the New Zealand Truth, described how many of the new dances represented a ‘democracy’ of dance, in that they were introduced by the dancing public. She believed that ‘it is fact that in the “olden days” it was the teachers who dictated what the public should dance’.56 Mediating between dance hall ‘democracy’ and ‘authoritarianism’, Bates evidently perceived her role as to tame and civilise what she thought were uncouth dances, originating in the United States. How could these forces be tamed or perhaps nullified? In the face of a perceived growth of moral turpitude, a number of responses were forthcoming. One of the most important, as far as behaviour on the dance floor was concerned, was to restore order from chaos. This was the primary aim of those who taught dance in this period. In an interview published in the weekly paper New Zealand Truth in April 1930, Margaret O’Connor, one of Auckland’s leading ballroom teachers, reflected on her recent European sojourn.57 Having visited Brussels, Berlin, Paris and Venice, O’Connor admitted that whilst she admired the rhythm of the continental dancers she did not like their style. She was particularly glad therefore to have arrived in London, where she passed her examinations set by the Imperial Society of Teachers of Dance (ISTD) Ballroom Section.58 Here she was taught that it was better to concentrate on technique and style ‘in our own standard dances’ rather than invest in ‘new and complicated steps’. O’Connor thought this was a move ‘for the good of dancing ­generally’ and added: It is only a matter of time before ballroom dancing in New Zealand will be equal to that of any other part of the world. My impression is not a

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­comparison between one country alone and New Zealand, but of many countries, particularly England, which I was fortunate to visit. The English style of ballroom dancing is now recognised the world over as the best and English couples win all the European championships. In most of the fashionable hotels in Switzerland, during the winter season well-known English professional couples are engaged to act as dance host and hostess, as well as teachers and demonstrators.59

O’Connor’s reflections on dance style in Britain and Europe mirror the experience that was ubiquitous in the later 1920s and early 1930s, amongst those who claimed responsibility for teaching dance in the British world. Having witnessed a decade of change in the dance styles being exhibited in New Zealand and wishing to reintroduce gentility and restraint to public dance style, O’Connor duly gained credentials in English methods. The New Zealand Dancing Journal records the leading dance teachers who operated in the country by the late 1920s, many of whom boasted English credentials in order to provide dance tuition. These credentials were used for promotional purposes in the regional press.60 Fellow dance tutor and former councillor of the ISTD Edith Baird, who was described as ‘very active on the Auckland dance scene’, wrote a series of articles on dance in the New Zealand Pictorial News in 1927.61 She stated that many people looked back to the days when the order of the  dances was set and sequenced dances were included. In those times, dance programmes consisted of quadrilles, lancers and cotillions, interspersed with mazurkas and valses, often beginning with a gay polka and finishing with a merry gallop.62 Baird claimed that members of the older generation ‘regret the passing out of fashion the decorum and grace of the ballroom to give way to the modern idea of “go as you please”’. She charted the course of dance from the Victorian era, when, ‘all was law and order’, through to the loosening of dance style during the Edwardian years. This was followed by the outbreak of the First World War, ‘when everyone danced with mad endeavour’, and culminated in the Armistice with citizens experiencing a ‘wild joy and spirit’, exhibited in the ‘gayest abandon in the dance’.63 Baird believed that just as it took time to restore ‘chaos to cosmos’, so too had it taken some years to ‘tidy up dancing’. However, she was confident this was being achieved. To conclude her first article, Baird cited dancers such as Victor Silvester and Josephine Bradley, both key members of the ISTD, and pointed to competitions staged at the Queen’s Hall in London, as examples of the care taken over dance steps and style.64 In a subsequent article written for the series, Baird called the Imperial Society’s Congress the ‘most important annual event in the dancing world’ as it was there that innovations to dance were debated and vetted by the dance profession.65 Whilst Baird was not at the congress, she was nevertheless kept informed of decisions

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made within the ISTD and was therefore able to show the reader the newly approved dance steps. Baird’s articles thus casts light on the ways in which dancing was regulated in the later 1920s and some of the wilder aspects of dance modified. The Yale blues, another dance of the mid 1920s, despite its American sounding name, actually originated in England, and was significantly adapted by Major Cecil Taylor, the President of the ISTD between 1909 and 1945. In an interview he gave to the British social research movement Mass Observation, Taylor noted that ‘modern ballroom dancing is due to American influence without question, but on every occasion it has arrived in England it has been pulled to pieces by the experts and has had cuttings and trimmings – cuttings taken off and trimmings added to – which have made it worthy of acceptance’.66 James Nott has noted that the British dance profession believed that dances that originated overseas could be improved by standardising them and Anglicising them.67 The control exerted by the English method was further strengthened by other organisations, such as the British Association of Dancing Teachers, which also criticised the dance ‘crazes’ of the 1920s. The term ‘craze’ was often used as a derogatory term in the popular press to criticise novelty. In some instance the word more accurately described a dance that found short-term popular appeal. This united English attitude stood in contrast to the failure of continental regulation at the International Dance Congress in Paris in 1923, which had ‘failed to arrive at a simplification of the present methods’.68 After initially endorsing dances such as the heebie jeebies, the black bottom, the banana slide and the new blues, the committee ultimately decided to veto them. A greater degree of indecision thus emanated from the continental professors of dance, compared with the British attitude.69 It is not surprising that Baird gave the Yale blues her seal of approval, and noted that it ‘promised to supersede the Charleston’, whilst dances that were contemporaneous with the Yale blues, such as the black bottom, were dismissed in reference to their origins in the African American communities in the southern states of America – that is to say, with reference to race.70 New Zealand’s press duly reported the measures taken by the ISTD to introduce a kick-less version of the Charleston, in which the feet did not leave the ground.71 Moreover, it is evident that the dance in its rawest form was prohibited in certain dance spaces, most notably in official ‘civic space’, such as Auckland’s Town Hall. James Nott has demonstrated that there was a prejudice against the imported American style, which was partly based on the issue of race, these dances having originated from the American South.72 Other ways in which the English method was promoted during the interwar decades was by the circulation of Victor Silvester’s book Modern Ballroom Dancing, first published in 1927, which subsequently ran

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to some sixty ­editions during the author’s lifetime. By 1945, one million copies of the book had been sold. It was widely distributed by booksellers in the Dominion, to be read by tutors and dance hall patrons alike.73 This book explained the appropriate steps for dances such as the Yale blues, the one-step and the black bottom. In the revised and enlarged edition published in 1942, Silvester was able to proclaim that ‘dance-teaching today is standardised. This means that wherever you learn to dance in Britain, on the Continent and in the Colonies – if you go to recognised teachers who are qualified – you will receive the same basic instruction’.74 He additionally stated, rather bombastically, ‘the English style (as it is known on the Continent) has been copied and taught by practically every good dance teacher throughout the world because it is admittedly the best’.75 The majority of dance teachers were certified by the ISTD in London. Moreover, by the later 1930s dance tutors seeking English credentials did not have to travel back to London to obtain these, now being examined by visiting ISTD members within the Dominion. In 1938, Miss Phyllis Haylor, an English-based Fellow of the ISTD, travelled to both Australia and New Zealand as the first ballroom examiner to conduct examinations.76 When dance competitions took place in New Zealand, for example in Palmerston North in 1929 and Wellington in 1933, the judge was a Miss Constance MacDonald, a member of the ISTD. Ballroom teachers’ statements about their efforts in the later 1920s certainly give the impression they were succeeding in instilling a more Anglicised ‘correct’ way of dancing. Phyllis Bates demonstrated the flatter Charleston in 1927 on the pages of the Truth and advocated the slower foxtrot in 1929, when ‘hot bands’ were increasing the tempo. Bates was clearly satisfied that the English style had triumphed over the American steps. The teachers were helped in their efforts in that the fascination with jazz had begun to decline in the last years of the 1920s and some of the wilder dances were no longer performed in the halls. In a Truth issue of August 1929, she declared confidently that ‘In New Zealand we follow the English dancing’. As far as the mid-1920s Charleston was concerned, she observed that ‘the modification process has been continuous and now the Charleston of which little more than the original name remains is merely a variation introduced occasionally in the one-step’. Bates reflected at the end of the decade that the ‘public have decided what they want, while the dancing teachers have seen to it that they get it in a manner consistent with our British standards’. She emphasised that many of the ‘wilder’ dances had largely been taught by ‘individual teachers’ but, with the exception of the Charleston, had made no impression whatsoever.77 This was echoed in an English context by the editor of the Dancing Times, P. J. S. Richardson, in his survey of ballroom dancing between the two World Wars.78 Bates

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hailed the ISTD as an organisation that had effectively codified new dances. She approved of its periodic examination of new dances, and the fact that its examiners were appointed by a committee. In her view, the process of vetting effectively eliminated, or tamed, those who would seek to subvert English gentility. So too, the committee had the right of refusing or cancelling membership of those teachers ‘whose work is not calculated to improve the status of the profession’. She concluded that the ballroom branch of the society was taking a stand against new dances unless they were likely to have a public appeal. Both O’Connor and Bates therefore saw themselves as imperial ‘missionaries’ for the English style on the dance floor, ensuring that corrupting foreign influences were kept at bay. Another way that such American styled dances were restricted was by the halls’ Masters of Ceremonies (MCs), who were keeping order on the dance floors. This often meant holding the English line against the provocation of the new American dances. The conflict and its social costs are illustrated by the case of Leo Meanes, a dance patron who, in 1929, continued to perform the heebie jeebies in a hall in Pakuranga, located in Auckland’s south-east, after the MC had told him to stop. The dance, when performed in its fullest form, consisted of six phases, with a notable ‘stomp’, and had been devised by Swedish ­choreographer Floyd Du Pont. The required body movements were published in 1926. Meanes responded to the dance stewards’ intervention by using ‘filthy language’ in front of the 150 people assembled in the hall. When he  was being escorted to the exit, several other men and youths attacked the MC so that the police were called.79 To prevent incidents like these, some dance hall managers specifically mentioned in newspaper advertisements that this dance was prohibited and that the management reserved the right to refuse admittance to anyone who lowered the tone or morale of a dance. This warning applied to a number of the new dances that appeared in the mid-1920s. This was by no means an isolated event. Newspaper columns reported disturbances at dance halls and subsequent court appearances by those arrested on a monthly basis. The cause of these disturbances was invariably ascribed to drunkenness on the part of the defendant. By the 1930s social dancing appears to have been relatively calmed. This was not, however, solely due to providing patrons with more uniform and orderly dance steps. It is unlikely that any more than a small percentage of the total population of dance patrons acquired lessons before entering a hall. A rather more influential factor was that by the early 1930s jazz music was mutating. It transformed at this point into the ‘big band’ sound. The improvised solos that had been a feature of the 1920s jazz band’s performance began to disappear, and jazz as a genre was combined with

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other musical styles to achieve wider appeal. Talk of the decline of jazz had been heard since around 1926 and there were a number of theories posited as to why it had begun to lose its appeal in its initial form, ranging from the impact of radio’s tendency to employ formally trained musicians to a change in popular taste. Radio broadcasting in New Zealand was heavily influenced by the Reithian values of the BBC. Jazz was often perceived by station controllers as undermining these values. An indication of the suspicion of jazz was that it was exclusively broadcast after 9 p.m. Among the most commonly heard artists were the British band leader Jack Hylton and the American band leader Paul Whiteman, who were known for recordings, which could be purchased in the Dominion, that drew on several musical styles, mostly of a ‘conservative’ nature.80 The change in music had the effect of modifying what was perceived to be, in the period under scrutiny, the ‘wild’, unpredictable nature of jazz. In comparison with the ‘hot’ jazz of the 1920s, a ‘sweet’ variety of jazz, as it became known, was more disciplined and included the use of instruments that had not been part of a jazz band to that point. Most notably the violin now found favour with dance crowds. In the context of the Depression, it was those musicians who could adapt their repertoire to a variety of audiences both old and young who continued to find employment, owing to the more limited crowd who could afford leisure. The managers of dance venues also began to shift their strategy by offering old-time dances in addition to the newer style of the recent past. Public appetite for an older style dance might have been created by the economic climate of the early 1930s, when patrons wanted the comforting reminders of better past times. Be that as it may, surveying contemporary advertisements for dances of the early 1930s, it is evident that many halls began to list both ‘modern’ and ‘oldtime’ dancing being offered during the evening. This even extended to the cabarets located in the city. The Peter Pan cabaret, which opened in 1930, advertised old-time and modern. It also staged ‘Monte Carlo’ dances, which enabled dancers to exchange partners, with prizes awarded. At Auckland’s Chez Paree in January 1939, for example, the programme for the evening included both old-time and modern dancing and the Pirate Shippe cabaret on Auckland’s North Shore began to specialise in old-time dance carnivals too. The description of dance evenings held at the Peter Pan cabaret were devoid of any mention of the word ‘jazz’ in the 1930s. The dances that found mass participation in the 1933 season were evidently the lilt and the rumba, both of which arrived from London. Of the rumba it was noted that there was ‘nothing over exaggerated about it, so it is much more likely to be popular over here than the Moochi [based on a Zulu war dance] or similar freak dances which never made wide appeal’. Having visited Phyllis Bates in Auckland, dance tutor Beth Parkes returned

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to her studio in Palmerston North in 1936 with knowledge of new dances, including a new version of the Charleston. This version, she stressed, was nothing like its American version, ‘with all its twists and flourishes’ but had now been ‘toned down’ by English teachers so that it was ‘more quiet and rhythmical’.81 Before concluding, one additional factor in the modification of dance in the 1920s and 1930s should be noted – the role of the cinema. In common with British, European and North American dance hall patrons, New Zealand constructed picture palaces during the later 1920s and early 1930s. These palatial cinemas had growing synergies with dance halls, as Jill Julius Matthews has shown for Australia.82 To be sure, links between dancing and cinema can be traced back to well before the 1920s. On the eve of the First World War, the film How to Dance the Foxtrot was shown in cinemas. During the course of the showing, the audience also witnessed onstage demonstrations by professional dancers performing the ‘Hesitation Waltz’ and the ‘Turkey Trot’.83 However, the relationship between film and social dancing grew stronger in the 1920s, with the staging of ‘movie balls’. Sydney had pioneered such balls in 1923, and they were subsequently imitated across the Tasman sea. Wellington held its first movie ball in the city’s town hall in 1924. Auckland then followed in 1927, where a cash prize of £50 was awarded to the patrons best resembling such actors as Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, Lon Chaney and Betty Balfour.84 Dancing took place against a backdrop of theatrical ‘sets’ whilst patrons were required to wear fancy dress. The movie balls were held for philanthropic purposes, the proceeds of Auckland’s event being donated to the Mayor’s Unemployment Fund and Wellington’s ball towards the child welfare organisation the Plunket Society. Dancing was therefore more acceptable from the perspective of those who had previously criticised it as immoral. The influence of cinema in both New Zealand and Australia was pronounced throughout the 1920s and 1930s. As Matthews notes, ‘Dance instructors, hairdressers and dressmakers all studied the screen and magazine styles and reproduced them for their customers, who wore them to the dance palaces’.85 Gordon Mirams, Assistant Editor for the New Zealand Listener, noted that by the end of the 1930s, most New Zealand towns of a certain size had a ‘Hollywood frock shop’ which allowed customers to purchase film-star fashions.86 These garments were invariably worn in dance halls. In the 1930s, cabarets such as the Peter Pan and the Dixieland in Auckland and the Majestic in Wellington were hired out by their owners to the film industry to host annual dances.87

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Conclusion This chapter has shown the value of adopting the global framework advocated by those such as Peter Gibbons and placing New Zealand ‘back in the world’ rather than studying it in isolation. The Dominion imported global dance cultures in the years after the First World War, largely emanating from North America, England and Australia. It would be unhelpful to reduce this examination down to the question of ‘who won the battle for dance?’. However, it is possible to conclude that by the mid-1930s the dance scene had been modified owing to a range of factors, and English dance teachers certainly played role in this, although their role should not be over-emphasised. Despite being told that it was ‘improper’ to practise certain dances, only a fraction of the dancing public ever took lessons. National factors in the changing nature of dance culture should also be included. The New Zealand state, in both its national and localised forms, also played its part by introducing punitive laws to restrict the consumption of liquor in or near a dance hall, thus reducing drunk and inappropriate behaviour. Nevertheless, by the outbreak of the Second World War, jazz had reappeared in the Dominion in a new form, that is to say, swing music and dance, and this raised a new set of concerns about the reappearance of mass culture from the USA. Jazz in its first incarnation was one of a number of cultural trends that can be identified arriving in New Zealand during the 1920s. A transnational phenomenon, jazz and the dances that accompanied it provoked reactions that were certainly shaped by local conditions.

Notes  1 See P. Mein Smith, P. Hempenstall and S. Goldfinch, Remaking the Tasman World (Christchurch: University of Canterbury Press, 2008). A useful review of this work is provided by C. Daley in Pacific Affairs, 83:4 (2010), 81–3.   2 M. Fairburn, ‘Is There a Good Case for New Zealand Exceptionalism?’, in T. Ballantyne and B. Moloughney (eds), Disputed Histories: Imagining New Zealand’s Past (Dunedin: Otago University Press, 2006), p. 167.   3 See P. Gibbons, ‘Cultural Colonization and National Identity’, New Zealand Journal of History, 36:1 (2002), 18–36; P. Gibbons, ‘The Far Side of the Search for Identity: Reconsidering New Zealand History’, New Zealand Journal of History, 37:1 (2003), 38–49.   4 Daily News, Perth (12 September 1925), p. 2.   5 A. Ward, ‘“Any Rags, Any Jazz, Any Boppers Today?”: Jazz in New Zealand 1920–1955’ (PhD dissertation, University of Auckland, 2012), p. 19.   6 Ibid., p. 117.   7 New Zealand Truth (22 January 1921), p. 2.

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  8 H. C. D. Somerset, Littledene: Patterns of Change (Wellington: New Zealand Council for Education Research, 1974), p. 56.   9 For this venue see New Zealand Herald (30 August 1921), p. 10. 10 For the Click Clack’s opening night see New Zealand Herald (17 August 1926), p. 5. 11 D. O. Huggard (ed.), Desmond ‘Spike’ Donovan: The Thoughts of Musician Desmond ‘Spike’ Donovan (Auckland: Dennis Huggard, 1998), p. 37. 12 Nelson Evening Mail (20 April 1932), p. 7. For ‘crush dancing’ in a British context see J. Nott, Going to the Palais: A Social and Cultural History of Dancing and Dance Halls in Britain, 1918–1960 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), p. 124. 13 New Zealand Herald (12 April 1922), p. 12. 14 New Zealand Herald (12 April 1922), p. 9; New Zealand Herald (1 May 1922), p. 7. 15 Auckland Star (1 October 1932), p. 13; Auckland Star (21 August 1930), p. 11. 16 New Zealand Herald (13 December 1929), p. 18. 17 See J. Griffiths, ‘Popular Culture and Modernity: Dancing in New Zealand Society 1920–1945’, Journal of Social History, 41:3 (2008), 611–32. 18 Ward, ‘“Any Rags, Any Jazz, Any Boppers Today?”’, pp. 107–8. 19 Dunstan Times (6 July 1925), p. 8. 20 Evening Star (Dunedin, 30 November 1925), p. 4. 21 Evening Star (Dunedin, 30 September 1926), p. 3. 22 Forty-four people were killed in 1925 when the floor of the Pickwick Club, Boston, USA collapsed. As a result, the Charleston earned the nickname the ‘dance of death’. The cause of the collapse was actually the building being structurally unsound, owing to an excavation having taken place next door. See New Zealand Truth (10 October 1925), p. 1. 23 For concern in other ‘Anglo zones’ see, for example, S. Theil-Stern, From the Dance Hall to Facebook: Teen Girls Mass Media and Moral Panic in the United States 1905–2010 (Boston, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2014), pp. 24–5; A. Abra, Dancing in the English Style: Consumption, Americanisation and National Identity, 1918–1950 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2017). 24 For the benefits of dance for the body see New Zealand Dancing Journal (16 September 1929), p. 31. For the romance of the dance see, for example, the description of the celebration to mark the first year of the Click Clack cabaret in New Zealand Pictorial News (27 August 1927), p. 27. 25 ‘Dismal Modern Dancing’, Dunstan Times (20 November 1922), p. 7. 26 The Press (8 October 1929), p. 13. 27 M. White, ‘Dancing Between the Wars’, in Auckland City Library, Auckland Heritage Collection OH 1352_003, Oral History 1985, ‘Reminiscences by Desmond “Spike” Donovan’, p. 2. 28 New Zealand Herald (7 June 1922), p. 12. 29 See C. Bourke, Blue Smoke: The Lost Dawn of New Zealand Popular Music 1918–1964 (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2010), pp. 18–19.

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30 For a history of the Auckland ‘Dixieland Cabaret’ see A. Ward, ‘Dixieland Cabaret’, www.audioculture.co.nz/scenes/dixieland-cabaret (accessed 21 October 2019). 31 G. White, Light Fantastic: Dance Floor Courtship in New Zealand (Auckland: Harper Collins, 2007), p. 70. 32 T. Luckins, ‘“Satan Find Some Mischief”: Drinkers Responses to the Six o’Clock Closing of Pubs in Australia, 1910–1930s’, Journal of Australian Studies, 32:3 (2008), p. 303. For the continuing strength of prohibition advocates see P.  Cristoffel, ‘Prohibition and the Myth of 1919’, New Zealand Journal of History, 42:2 (2008), pp. 154−75. 33 ‘Conduct Criticised: Auckland Dance Halls, Drinking by Men and Girls’, Evening Post (4 June 1925), p. 4. 34 Huggard, Desmond ‘Spike’ Donovan, p. 27. Donovan explained that women wore ‘scanties’ at a ball, but heavier bloomers with a bigger elastic waist band at a dance, due to the kind of dresses they wore to each. This explains why the bottle fell out at this particular instance. According to contemporary accounts the favoured style of dress for women to wear to a cabaret was a silk georgette. See New Zealand Truth (12 May 1927), p. 6. 35 White, ‘Dancing Between the Wars’, in ‘Reminiscences by Desmond “Spike” Donovan’, p. 5. 36 For the Dixieland see New Zealand Herald (3 June 1927), p. 11; for the Peter Pan see Waihi Daily Telegraph (12 September 1931), p. 3. 37 ‘Modern Dance Halls: Adverse Criticism’, Nelson Evening Mail (4 March 1926), p. 2. 38 Evening Star (6 February 1929), p. 12. 39 New Zealand Truth (12 June 1930), p. 2. 40 R. Yska, The New Zealand Truth: The Rise and Fall of a People’s Paper (Nelson: Craig Potton, 2010), p. 17. For the career of John Norton see M.  Cannon, That Damned Democrat: John Norton, an Australian Populist 1858–1916 (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1981), and for his son Ezra, see S. Hall, Tabloid Man: The Life and Times of Ezra Norton (Auckland: Fourth Estate, 2008). 41 Hall, Tabloid Man, p. 136. 42 By 1939 there were 40,470 cars registered in Auckland. See G. Bush, Decently and in Order: The Centennial History of the Auckland City Council (Auckland: Collins, 1971), p. 367. The population of the city in 1936 stood at 210, 393. 43 R. M. Burdon, The New Dominion: A Social and Political History of New Zealand Between the Wars (Wellington: A. H. Reed & A. W. Reed, 1965), p. 108. 44 For the court appeal see Evening Star (24 August 1932), p. 8. For the original decision to close this venue see New Zealand Herald (12 December 1931), p. 10. 45 Wellington City Council Archives File 00001: 1918: 60/1039, ‘Conditions in the Immediate Vicinity of Dance Halls Within the City’, Memorandum, 28 October 1936.

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46 Wellington City Council File 0000: 1918 60:1039, ‘Consumption of Intoxicating Liquors in Cabarets and Dance Halls’, Memoranda, 30 June 1930. 47 At a meeting convened in Sydney in 1939 the WCTU welcomed the prohibition by the New Zealand government of drink at or near a dance hall. It was believed that ‘The fear of being called a “Sissie”’ because they would not take intoxicating liquor was ‘leading our young men to destruction’. See Bay of Plenty Times (20 October 1939), p. 6. 48 Waikato Independent (11 November 1939), p. 5. For the possible relaxation of the law see The Press (29 August 1945), p. 8. The amendment to the licensing law was put forward by the National Council of Women to the Royal Commission on Licensing. The NCW argued that New Zealand’s licensing laws should be brought into line with other countries since prohibition had been ‘notoriously ineffective’. The British model of providing education which showed the dangers to health of drink was preferred to total repression. 49 The Press, 29 August 1945, p. 8. 50 Ibid. 51 R. Joblin, ‘The Breath of Scandal: New Zealand Truth and Interwar Society’ (PhD dissertation, University of Canterbury, 1990), pp. 238–52. 52 For the extramarital affair of cabaret owner Rodney Pankhurst, see New Zealand Truth (18 June 1931), p. 1; for the wrongful dismissal of Pat White as dance partner to Phyllis Bates, see New Zealand Truth (5 September 1934), p. 17. 53 The claim for a rise on illegitimacy during the 1920s was made in Arthur Butcher’s book Education in New Zealand: An Historical Survey (Dunedin: Coulls, Sommerville, Wilkie, 1930), p. 469. Butcher’s assertion of a rise in illegitimacy since the First World War was refuted in the Truth (23 October 1930), p. 1. Examples of the panic generated by the dance hall in the newspaper were located in an issue of May 1931 where a headline ran, ‘Dance Hall Meeting Culminates in Indiscretion and Paternity Responsibility – Motor Car Drive and its Sequel’. Another story from March 1931 ran under the headline, ‘Newton Climbed into the Back Seat after Driving Grace Home From Dance’ whilst a third from May 1935 ran with the headline, ‘Incident with Old School Friend After Dance – Dramatic Allegation – Attractive Typist Convinces S. M’. Violence in the dance hall was also a theme that garnered headlines, such as that published in August 1934 (‘Attacked by Youth in Fit of Jealous Rage’). 54 B. Dalley, ‘The Cultural Remains of Elsie Walker’, in B. Dalley and B. Labrum (eds), Fragments: New Zealand Social & Cultural History (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2000), pp. 153–4. Also Joblin, ‘Breath of Scandal’. 55 Waipa Post (29 November 1927), p. 7. 56 New Zealand Truth (29 August 1929), p. 10. 57 ‘On With the Dance: What the World Is Doing With Its Toes’, New Zealand Truth (24 April 1930), p. 17. 58 The Imperial Society of Dance Teachers was formed in 1904, at the Hotel Cecil, London, with Robert Morris Crompton as its first President, and published a journal called The Dance Journal from 1907. The organisation changed its name to the Imperial Society of Teachers of Dance in 1925.

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59 New Zealand Truth (24 April 1930), p. 17. 60 For an excellent analysis of the ways in which the ISTD attempted to instigate controlled body movement on the dance floor, see T. Cresswell, ‘“You Cannot Shake That Shimmie Here”: Producing Mobility on the Dance Floor’, Cultural Geographies, 13 (2006), 55–77. 61 C. Devolitis, Dancing with Delight (Auckland: Polygraphia, 2005), p. 70. Baird was also a member of the imperial organisation the Victoria League, which had been formed in 1901. 62 Brian Salkeld observed that dancing in New Zealand before the First World War was a ‘fairly sedate activity’. See B. Salkeld, ‘The Dancing Decade 1920–1930’, Stout Centre Review (August 1992), 3. 63 New Zealand Pictorial News (6 August 1927), p. 24. 64 Ibid., p. 24. Bradley in fact visited New Zealand as part of a global tour in the early 1940s and was hosted by Margaret O’Connor and Phyllis Bates. 65 New Zealand Pictorial News (12 November 1927), p. 28. 66 Abra, Dancing in the English Style, p. 148. 67 See Nott, Going to the Palais, p. 223. 68 New Zealand Herald (21 June 1923), p. 7. 69 Stratford Evening Post (6 June 1927), p. 5. 70 As Richardson noted in his survey, Josephine Bradley had achieved a similar feat by shaping dances of the mid-1920s such as the heebie jeebies and the Charleston into more ‘refined’ dances. P. J. S. Richardson, A History of English Ballroom Dancing (1910–45): The Story of the Development of the Modern English Style (London: Herbert Jenkins, 1946), p. 64. 71 New Zealand Herald (10 December 1926), p. 9. 72 Nott, Going to the Palais, p. 259. 73 For its distribution in New Zealand see Auckland Star (7 May 1927), p. 22; The Press (3 August 1934), p. 11. 74 V. Silvester, Modern Ballroom Dancing, revised and enlarged edition (London: Herbert Jenkins, 1942), pp. 8–9. 75 Ibid., p. 9. 76 Auckland Star (5 April 1938), p. 10; New Zealand Herald (6 April 1938), p. 6. 77 New Zealand Truth (12 May 1927), p. 7; (1 August 1929), p. 10; (22 August 1929), p. 10; (24 October 1929), p. 8. Bates was present at the dance competitions staged at the Dixieland cabaret in the 1920s, which offered a £50 prize for the winning couple. See, for example, New Zealand Pictorial News (14 January 1928), p. 25. 78 Richardson, History of English Ballroom Dancing, p. 68. 79 New Zealand Truth (29 August 1929), pp. 8, 10; New Zealand Truth (24 October 1929), p. 8. 80 In his study of twentieth-century popular music, Elijah Wald goes so far as to say that Whiteman transformed dance music and the world attitude to jazz in the space of a decade. E. Wald, How the Beatles Destroyed Rock ‘n’ Roll: An Alternative History of American Popular Music (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 83.

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81 Manawatu Times (23 January 1932), p. 11; (17 March 1936), p. 11. 82 J. J. Matthews, Dance Hall and Picture Palace: Sydney’s Romance with Modernity (Strawberry Hill: NSW Currency Press, 2005), p. 138. 83 Waikato Times (29 June 1914), p. 4. 84 See New Zealand Truth (4 October 1924), p. 8; Auckland Star (18 October 1927). 85 Matthews, Dance Hall and Picture Palace, p. 16. 86 G. Mirams, Speaking Candidly: Films and People in New Zealand (Hamilton: Paul’s, 1945), p. 31. 87 White, Light Fantastic, p. 71.

7 Demarcating status: tango music and dance in Japan, 1913–40 Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Yuiko Asaba

On 14 August 1913, one of the first press reports about tango in Japan appeared in the morning edition of the Asahi Shimbun newspaper. Entitled ‘The Euro-American Scandalous New Dance: Towards the Collapse of Public Order’, the article noted that: [a] transitional change has happened in the European and North American fashionable circles that are always restless with anything new and strange. The different styles of dance that started to become popular four or five years ago [within these circles] are now tormenting the heads of the patriots, as they, the European intellectuals, consider these different types of dance to be problematic: such dances are the turkey trot, tango, negroid [sic] and Boston.1

The article then moved on to acknowledge the ‘originary’ site of tango: It is said that tango … comes from the South American country of Argentina. Dancing tango requires grace with strength, as well as proficiency in order to perform it in front of the public. Moreover, some say that only the South American people can understand such [unique] feelings. At any rate, it is not mistaken to say that [tango] will cause public moral corruption in our [Japanese] society.2

This warning of the ‘corrupting’ influence of the new dance did not prevent its arrival in Japan, which happened in the following year when it was performed for a diplomatic gathering of sixty foreign guests and a few Japanese officials. This first performance was given by ‘Mrs Weld[e/o]n, known to be an eminent tango dancer in the United States, and her son’ at a ball held in the Grand Hotel in Yokohama on 5 May 1914.3 The two dancers had been on an international tour, and prior to Yokohama the dancers had visited Shanghai and Manila. Their performance, along with tango, consisted of what were described as the ‘new dances’ (新しき踊り) such as the hesitation waltz, maxixe and the Pavlova gavotte. Despite being called ‘new’, it was reported that ‘to the Japanese eyes who are unfamiliar

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with [tango], it seemed like an extended version of waltz, polka, or any other conventional dance’.4 These first newspaper reports on tango in Japan reveal a certain association between the dance and Euro-American upper-class fashionability, together with images of danger. Notwithstanding the media warning of public corruption, however, tango rapidly became popular in Japan, reaching lower social classes and spreading widely. The popularisation of tango was accompanied by a proliferation of styles codified by American, French or British dance teachers, and subsequently followed from the late 1920s onwards by the emergence of a domestic scene of tango music connoisseurs who appreciated Argentinian tango music for being ‘authentic’. This scene was encouraged by the wide dissemination of tango recordings, first brought to Japan from Argentina by wealthy Japanese dance aficionados, and soon after disseminated by record companies such as the Japan Victor Company (hereafter JVC). Fed by impulses from Europe and the Americas, the tango discourse in Japan from 1913 to the beginning of World War II became charged with domestic politics of class, race and gender. This chapter aims to disentangle the tango phenomenon by studying how its cultivation as news story, stage performance, leisure pursuit and music genre impacted social relations in Japan. Key actors and transnational networks played a central role in this story, as did technological change and the regulation of dance and entertainment. The chapter builds on and adds to the pioneering works on social dancing by Yosikazu Nagai, James Nott, Andrew Field and others.5 Drawing on these studies allows this chapter to look at the Japanese case in its global contexts and trace the various routes via which tango arrived in Japan. From the start, the tango that was taken up by Japanese dancers had been nurtured in a transatlantic network of social dancing. The institutionalisation of social dancing that had occurred in this network played a critical role in tango’s assimilation in Japan in the early twentieth century. The first part of the chapter looks back to the latter half of the nineteenth century to show the political nature of the introduction and rejection of ballroom dancing in Japan. This historical dynamic laid the foundation for tango’s arrival in the 1910s, and the subsequent social discourses surrounding tango in Japan. The second part starts with the import of tango as a stage dance and follows its development into popular social dancing. Highlighting the importance of the idea that tango was either a manifestation of a person’s ‘elegance’ or ‘vulgarity’, it is argued that the elegant/ vulgar opposition shaped the institutionalisation of tango dancing in Japan. The third section homes in on the emerging scene of tango music aficionados and looks at how their commitment to ‘authentic’ Argentinian tango music related to middle-class dance enthusiasts’ preference for the British

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ballroom style. The chapter demonstrates that throughout its early history, tango in its various guises in Japan illuminates the creation of social divisions between those who danced and those who listened, as well as the systematisation of an elegant/vulgar opposition within and through dancing.

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Paving the way for tango: the politics of ballroom dancing in Japan, 1860s–1900s The arrival of Euro-American ballroom dancing in Japan in the mid- to late nineteenth century was critical to the introduction of tango that followed. It was political in nature and embedded in the context of the ‘modernisation’ of the country.6 Western ballroom dancing’s spread in Japan coincided with the Meiji Restoration in 1868, which signalled the start of the Meiji era (1868–1912). After the Restoration, Japanese society changed into a new class system, consisting of kazoku (the Imperial family, nobles including courtiers), shizoku (former samurais), and heimin (commoners), with most of the former samurais relegated to heimin during the 1870s. This class system continued until 1947. Ballroom dancing in the late nineteenth century initially became popular among the upper echelons of this new society; however, it gradually spread to the wider public through the establishments of cafés and dance halls later on. It is important to note that couple dancing (i.e. social dancing and ballroom dancing) did not exist in Japan prior to the mid-nineteenth century. The very concept of two people facing one another hand in hand, swaying and stepping along to music for leisure or otherwise, was unknown to Japanese people who had been accustomed to dancing individually at festivals, celebrations, or through witnessing female and male geisha dances at banquets.7 Inevitably, therefore, couple dancing created controversy. Thus, there are several contrasting accounts from the mid-nineteenth century of the earliest Japanese encounters with western ballroom dancing in and outside of Japan during diplomatic and governmental trips.8 However, it was when ballroom dancing was finally introduced to Japan towards the end of the Edo era (1603–1868), in around 1862, that the divisions between those who welcomed the foreign dance convention and those who insisted on keeping the traditional social gatherings came to the surface most strongly. While there had been balls hosted by Dutch and French ministers in the cities of Yokohama and Kanagawa, evening parties organised by Japanese officials did not happen until after the Satsuma Rebellion in 1877,9 when the political climate stabilised. In 1879, the Japanese industrialist Eiichi Shibusawa and his colleagues held a New Year’s Eve Party at the Mitsui Bank and, in 1881, another New Year’s Eve Party at the En’yō

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Kan was inaugurated by the mayor of Tokyo, Michiyuki Matsuda. These balls were the first of many that were organised to mark the New Year or the Emperor’s birthday, in which European dance music was played as part of the entertainment.10 It is notable that the first western style venue for social meetings, a large two-storey building called the Rokumeikan, was built in 1883 with the construction order led by Kaoru Inoue (1836–1915) – who became the Minister of Foreign Affairs in 1885 – to entertain foreign guests and ambassadors. The Rokumeikan became a symbol of the ‘westernisation’ policy in Japan. Many balls and evening parties were held in this building, making it the primary venue for aristocratic social activities where Japanese and westerners mingled.11 At this time, the Meiji government was in the midst of revising the Treaties of Amity and Commerce, signed by Japan and the United States, followed by the Netherlands, Russia, Britain, and France, in 1858. The agreements were considered unequal in Japan due to their extraterritorial provisions and the limits they imposed on Japanese trade.12 During the Meiji period, the revisions of the treaties became one of the gravest issues in Japan, impacting on domestic cultural policies. According to Yoshikazu Nagai et al., the Rokumeikan was used as part of the Japanese government’s strategy to pursue the revisions by projecting the country as having an ‘equal cultural standard to the West’.13 Establishing the Rokumeikan, and the introduction of ballroom dancing in Japan at this time, were thus of huge political significance. In this context, the adaptation of ballroom dancing was one of many cultural elements to ‘westernise’ Japanese social relations. To introduce the western concept of society, the Meiji government members practised western ballroom dance steps with their wives and daughters, and dance parties were held at governmental residences such as the Prime Minister’s Office and the residence of Shūzō Aoki, the vice foreign minister. It is important to note, however, that these parties touched the elite only, as they were held and enjoyed primarily by Japanese governmental officials and kazoku, the wealthy upper classes of the Meiji period. At the same time, however, the Meiji government’s move to transform Japan into a ‘civilised country’ also resulted in their prohibition of the rural ancestral festival dance genre, bon-odori, which impacted on a wider group of people. Bonodori is a style of Japanese dance that is enjoyed by many during the obon festivals to honour the spirits of the ancestors. Bon-odori became one of the first of several popular national amusements to be censored. There were limits to these efforts to ‘westernise’ Japanese society, however. At the beginning of the Meiji period, most of the strongest supporters of the new government were former samurais who were not as willing to accept the imported manners. Western etiquette and ways of

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dressing were all alien to them, not to mention the new dances. Their clumsiness was viewed as ‘vulgar’ by foreigners, and this superficial ‘westernisation’ was ridiculed by satirical painters and cartoonists such as Georges Ferdinand Bigot and novelist Pierre Loti. The impetuous internalisation of western manners was also criticised in Japan. Such criticism was raised to a political level by the end of the nineteenth century, as no signs of progress were apparent on the revisions of the ‘unequal treaties’. The revived political interest in the treaty revisions made criticism of the government’s ‘westernisation’ policy even stronger. Furthermore, the person in charge of the treaty revision and the key figure behind the establishment of the Rokumeikan, Kaoru Inoue, became utterly absorbed in the newly imported ballroom dancing, which became mired in scandal. In 1887, a masquerade ball held by Prime Minister Hirobumi Itō led to such parties being associated with immorality. The extravagant ball became the target of the anti-Rokumeikan group, whose members associated ‘westernisation’ with the expensive lifestyle of high officials. The Jogaku Zasshi, a popular magazine for women in the Meiji era, ran several extensive articles following the rumoured love affair during the ball between Itō and the Countess Kiwako Toda, criticising the ‘corrupting’ nature of couple dancing. One of the articles claimed that sexual tensions were inevitable in this form of dancing, where the physical intimacy between men and women triggered sexual arousal even if unintended.14 While these articles were censored by the Japanese government – the magazine was ordered to stop its publication for one month after the first article which criticised couple dancing appeared – these articles nonetheless catalysed an image of ballroom parties as ‘vulgar’: that is to say, a cultural phenomenon that threatened public morality. Eventually, the suspension of the ‘unequal treaty’ revisions came under political and public scrutiny, leading Kaoru Inoue to resign the post of the Minister of Foreign Affairs in 1887. With Inoue’s resignation, the Rokumeikan lost its primary supporter. In turn, ballroom dancing itself lost its political function, leading many to move away from it, apart from smaller scale ball parties held by aficionados and foreign officials. In 1890, the Rokumeikan was first leased to the Kazokukaikan, an association consisting of Japanese aristocrats, who then bought the building in 1894. The near disappearance of ballroom dancing among the Japanese aristocrats was thus political in nature. Once ballroom dancing had appeared to have lost its political significance it was no longer considered to be an essential socialising tool. However, at the beginning of the twentieth century social dancing started to become a commodity in Japan, and popular among wider sections of the Japanese population. Japan’s first dance hall was built as part of the

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first amusement park in Japan, the Kagetsu-En in Tokyo, by Hirotaka and Shizuko Hiraoka, a wealthy couple and the owners of the Kagetsu restaurant. Hirotaka Hiraoka first encountered an amusement park during his trip to Paris in 1913. Deeply impressed by it, he built a large amusement park in the middle of Tokyo on his return. Just after World War I, when the Hiraokas visited Paris again, they experienced couple dancing for the first time, which motivated the entrepreneur to build Japan’s first large-scale dance hall in 1920 on the premises of the amusement park. The hall was intended as a ‘ballroom venue for ladies and gentlemen’ as well as a social dance ‘learning place’ for married couples. As can be seen, it did not yet possess the characteristic of the dance halls as a ‘meeting-place’. Rather, Japan’s first dance hall began as a place where married couples learned couple dancing. The import of the dance hall played an important part in the dissemination of social dancing to larger sections of Japanese society during the Taishō era (1912–26). Tango’s introduction in Japan happened amidst the time when the act of couple dancing was gradually becoming embraced by the wider public, albeit only in enclosed settings, as we shall see below.

Commodification, legal enclosure and the distinction between ‘elegance’ and ‘vulgarity’: the reception of tango, 1913–27 Early scholarship on tango in Japan has identified tango’s first introduction to the country with the ‘authentic’ French–Argentinian tango and has highlighted the role of Baron Tsunayoshi Megata (1896–1969) in this process.15 Megata had learned tango in Paris in the 1920s and began teaching what his disciples claimed to be the ‘authentic’ tango to Japanese aristocrats from around the latter half of the 1920s. To be sure, Megata became one of the pioneering figures in tango’s dissemination in Japan. However, the first influential exposures to tango in Japan happened some fifteen years earlier. This becomes apparent when we acknowledge multiple modes of dissemination of tango in Japan, including tango’s appearances in major newspapers and on the stages of popular theatres in the 1910s,16 as well as in films that featured tango in the early 1920s, greatly impacting Japanese dance circles at this time. These kinds of public exposure became critical in the processes of tango’s adaptation and for the nature of tango dancing in Japan. In addition, the idea of ‘respectability’ encompassing social dancing at this time, a notion which had first developed in the British–American dance teaching profession in the early twentieth century, deeply influenced the perception of tango in Japan and elsewhere. In particular, the binary established by the celebrated dance couple and dance pedagogues Irene and

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Vernon Castle, who framed social dancing as ‘elegant’ or ‘vulgar’, was critical to Japan’s embrace of tango. The Castles were key actors in promoting to wider publics the dances that they had adapted to suit the accepted ethos of the time: the promotion of education in the United States from around 1900.17 ‘Good’ or ‘healthy’ dancing in the US discourse developed in this context, and had come to signify a good/bad dichotomy.18 Like other dance teachers of the period, the Castles marketed that ‘goodness’, suggesting that it could be taught and acquired.19 Such a dynamic in the United States must also be understood within the context of the increasing popularity of ragtime at this time, the dynamic of which further catalysed the public discourse on the Castles’ career and the dance styles. In this public discourse, any irrational, ‘uncontrolled’ (i.e. improvised) dancing was associated with primitivism and other racialised ideas about blackness. In the words of Vernon Castle, ‘[v]ulgar people will make any dance vulgar’.20 Along this line, the Castles claimed legitimacy for tango by means of bodily discipline. The ‘elegant’ and ‘vulgar’ dichotomy surrounding tango had already appeared in the Japanese press in 1914, in the article referenced in the introduction to this chapter. It quoted the American tango dancer Mrs Weld[o/e]n, who stated that ‘tango dance is not vulgar. When it is danced by an elegant (ereganto) person it becomes elegant, but when someone vulgar (vuarugā) dances it, it turns into a vulgar dance’.21 The opposition between ‘elegant’ (ereganto, エレガント) and ‘vulgar’ (vuarugā, ヴァルガー) corresponded to Japan’s class and racial politics in the 1910s, which regarded anything associated with ‘the West’ and the white body as ‘elegant’ and belonging to higher social classes. There were, however, many Japanese people who expressed criticism of the exclusive association of elegance with ‘the West’. Beginning among university students, those who opposed Japanese people embracing ‘western elegance’ created a movement called ban-kara (蛮カラ, or ‘savage collar’). Among other forms of expressions, ban-kara people showed their disapproval of Japan’s ‘westernisation’ by wearing clothes that they considered ‘not elegant’, as well as speaking and acting in ways that were considered rough. The word ban-kara was created as the opposition to the hai-kara (ハイカラ, from the English phrase ‘high collar’), a cultural trend that motivated many Japanese people to dress and act in ‘elegant’ ‘western’ styles and that had become fashionable prior to the ban-kara movement.22 Against this backdrop of contestation, the idea that tango could be executed in ‘elegant’ and in ‘vulgar’ ways opened up ways for many Japanese people to approach the dance. In fact, it was this tension between ‘elegance’ and ‘vulgarity’ that attracted many to tango, as can be seen in a reportage of a tango performance at a show on 13 June 1914 in Tokyo. At the Yūrakuza Theatre, one of the first western style theatres in the city, an American

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dance couple known as ‘Mr Rector (rekutā)’, aged around seventeen or eighteen, and ‘Miss Dorothy Smolar (sumorā)’, aged twenty, gave the first performance of tango to a wider Japanese public. They were accompanied by a small ensemble in western line-up and gave, apart from tango, a ­demonstration of the one-step, the hesitation waltz and the maxixe, which was billed as the Brazilian tango. The Japanese audience was made up of those admiring the fashionable flair of the western higher social classes, and those wanting to witness for themselves the ‘vulgar’ dance that had been the subject of heated rumours. As the Asahi Shimbun reported, the American couple performed in front of a ‘packed audience’ made up of those who had ‘heard and read about the obscenity of tango’. However, instead of siding with this audience and condemning the ‘corrupting’ effects of tango, the reviewer compares it with two of the well-known Japanese geisha dances: I witnessed the dance couple performing, as if they were male and female butterflies accompanied by the orchestra, and it came to mind that [tango] is not as sexually explicit as ame shobo or kappore, but it nonetheless stimulates our senses more than waltz or polka.23

The article then condemns a group of Japanese ‘low-class actresses’ whom the reviewer suspects of having attended the performance in order to copy the steps in less respectable venues: [T]here were many unknown, low-class actresses present who were watching the dance earnestly so that they can also dance it elsewhere. It would be utterly disgusting to see, one day, the tango dance being danced by these inferior actresses in vulgar places like Asakusa.24

Asakusa was considered a lower-class neighbourhood in Tokyo. It was also the place where many of the popular theatres thrived in the first half of the twentieth century, providing the foundation for today’s Japanese musical theatre.25 Eventually, tango became integrated into the repertoire of Asakusa musical theatres,26 signifying and contributing to its growing popularity among the Japanese public. However, the cited article draws a clear class demarcation as it highlights a certain prestige granted to ‘elegant’ tango while distinguishing it from geisha dances. The article reflects how the Japanese press embraced the new genre, while setting out public moral guidance concerning this newly arrived dance and defining what was acceptable as regards social relations in Japan. Notwithstanding this guarded reception, tango found its way into cafés, bars and, later, into dance halls as these dance venues gradually became combined with the food and beverage industry. Furthermore, the notion of immorality that continued to be associated with tango must be understood in the context of commodification of social

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dancing. This brought with it police regulations on social dancing from the mid-1920s, following the increase in unlicensed prostitution that took place at kafês (カフェー).27 A kafê was a type of café where waitresses offered sexual services as well as serving food and drink. Many of these establishments also contained large halls on separate floors. Kafê owners turned these spaces into dance halls that eventually supplanted the kafê business. For waitresses, it became part of their job to dance with customers. They did this with improvised steps and accompanied by hand-cranked gramophones. Waitresses of the kafê-cum-dance halls came from varied socioeconomic backgrounds and included former geishas and musical theatre actresses, as well as divorced women.28 The transition from kafê to dance hall took place alongside the establishment of large purpose-built western-style dance halls that employed professional dancers as dance instructors. The major trend in the history of popular dance venues in Japan during the 1920s and 1930s was the commodification of couple dancing, which had, as we have seen, initially arrived in Japan as an upper-class diplomatic social custom. One of the key movements was the introduction of the ‘dance ticket system’ in 1926, brought to Japan from the United States by Hyōjirō Katō, a Japanese dance aficionado and wealthy kimono shop owner. In this dance ticket system, each dance hall employed professional male and female dancers to dance with their customers, who paid for this service through purchasing tickets issued by the hall.29 The dance ticket system was adopted in Japan to determine dancers who were popular, and to create a certain prestige surrounding the dance halls. Some of the ‘unpopular’ dancers were sometimes made redundant, with many of them moving on to work at what were considered less respectable venues, such as the kafês. While there were sexual relations between professional dancers and clients that followed from encounters at the dance halls, Japanese dance halls at this time were not particularly associated with prostitution. Professional dancers who were employed at these venues prided themselves as not being kafê waitresses, whose job involved offering sexual services. Working as professional dancers at the modern dance halls thus afforded them with certain social status.30 Moral suspicions that arose surrounding the dance halls in the 1930s were primarily based on the fact that dancing involved two people embracing one another. While dance halls were regarded as more respectable than kafês, they were still strictly regulated, because the police suspected that ‘anything could happen’ when a man and a woman embraced each other. Another significant factor of change was the way in which couple dancing became combined with the food and beverage industry. When couple dancing and the catering industry came together, dance halls were

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subjected to strict laws and tight policing. In the mid-1920s, the government established a system for concealing the business of prostitution from the public. This ‘system of enclosure’ (囲い込み方式) was initially applied to brothels and dates back to the Edo era.31 The idea of enclosing, hiding and separating a ‘pleasure district’ was later extended in the late nineteenth century to hide the interiors of modern brothel buildings. At the same time, the basic concept of hiding ‘immoral’ venues was also applied to kafês and dance halls. To be sure, kafês and dance halls differed in the nature of their business from brothels, which meant that the police could not segregate them from surrounding neighbourhoods. However, couple dancing was regarded as immoral and in violation of ‘Japanese aesthetics’. For this reason, dance halls in 1925, followed by kafês in 1933, were ordered to make the interiors of the venues unseeable from outside. As a matter of fact, such policies were in effect until 1985, which is also the time when the visit of ballrooms for people under the age of eighteen became legal.32 Despite the desire to ‘hide’ dance venues, visual representations of tango reached a wider public in Japan through tango-like dances used in films including The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921) and Blood and Sand (1922), both featuring Rudolph Valentino in an exoticised portrayal of ‘Latin masculinity’. In The Four Horsemen Valentino plays an Argentinian ranch owner and performs a tango that made an impression on Japanese dancers when the film was shown in the country in 1922. Shinkichi Tamaki (1885–1970), an influential ballroom dance teacher of this time, recalls: All the dance lovers wanted to imitate the tango depicted in Valentino’s Blood and Sand [Tamaki appears to confuse the film with The Four Horsemen] which was a hugely popular film in Japan, but it [the dance] was extremely difficult […] The tango was the ‘Spanish tango’, and so we began incorporating five or six easier dance moves taken from French dance manuals.33

Tamaki’s reference to French dance manuals suggests that, prior to the publication of Victor Silvester’s Modern Ballroom Dancing (1927), which Tamaki translated into Japanese and published as Modern Social Dance (Modan shakō dansu) in 1931, Japanese dance aficionados used a number of different sources as guides. The publication of dance manuals spread the prestige and international status of the British style with the effect that an increasing number of Japanese dance aficionados and teachers preferred it. The new focus on the British style of social dancing, in certain respects, was a counterbalance to social dance trends that had come from the United States: the North American style of dancing that had been considered most legitimate in Japan until this time. As the British style became more dominant, the elegant/vulgar opposition began to shape the institutionalisation of social dancing in Japan.

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Dancing British tango to Argentinian tango music: Japanese dance aficionados and tango music listeners, 1928–40 With references to French manuals, the presence of American stage dancers and films, and with the arrival of the British ballroom style, many people in Japan in the late 1920s were unaware that tango had originated in Argentina. However, the book How to Dance Argentinian Tango, published in 1930 by Junzaburō Mori, asserted that a hybrid of French and Argentinian tango was the ‘true’ tango dance style. This motivated many Japanese dancers to look to Argentina to begin to search for tango’s ‘originary’ site.34 Yet the concern with tango’s ‘authenticity’ developed, as will be seen, primarily around tango music, and not so much around the dance. Regarding tango dancing, the British style came to be regarded the most legitimate in Japan, a view that persisted until the 1980s. Before we look more closely at the creation of tango’s authenticity in the realm of tango music, we focus first on the intensive debate about British and French styles of dancing. This heated discourse concluded with the British tango style becoming legitimised, thus defining the key context for tango’s assimilation in Japan at this time. In the 1930s, a dispute between supporters of the British or the French style of social dancing arose in Japanese dance aficionado circles. Dubbed the ‘British versus French dance battle’, the debate involved Japanese aristocrats and middle-class dancers.35 In this ‘battle’, those who danced the French style – the society of which was called the Seikosha (清交社), made up of aristocrats and wealthy intellectuals – was headed by Baron Tsunayoshi Megata. Prior to this, in 1929, Megata had begun to teach the ballroom style that he had learnt during his sojourn in Paris to his fellow Japanese aristocrats, as well as wealthy Japanese businessmen and intellectuals at the exclusive clubs: the Mokuyōkai (木曜会) and Kojunsha (交詢社). Megata’s students were not obliged to pay for their lessons. Furthermore, his classes were intended for the known members of the society only, with the purpose of teaching members western etiquette. Megata and his dance disciples claimed that his style was the French and authentic ballroom dance style. The Seikosha regularly met and danced at the newly established Nichibei dance hall (日米ダンスホール), a relatively small venue on the fifth floor of the Nichibei Shintaku building in Tokyo. On the other hand, the British supporters called themselves the ‘Modern Waltzers’ (モダン·ウォルツァーズ), and were led by a young university graduate, Nagatoshi Kawakita (1905–2001). Kawakita had encountered the British dance theory books, including those written by the ardent supporter of the British style, Shinkichi Tamaki, and Silvester’s Modern Ballroom Dancing, at a bookshop in Tokyo and was immediately attracted



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to the style. Kawakita began attending the Nichibei dance hall that was situated near his workplace and met his fellow British style supporters at this very venue, regardless of the fact that it was the base of the Seikosha French style dancers. The early 1930s saw a ‘battle’ between the two dance styles on the Nichibei dance floor, with the Seikosha on one side of the hall and the Modern Waltzers on the other. A contemporary account by Shinkichi Tamaki noted the ensuing tension: While the [British style] disciples danced in the British style, the other side was dancing in the French style. ‘Well then, we must not be defeated!’ I think that was the kind of feeling … In the Boston waltz (in the French style, the Slow Waltz) one would only dance with two steps [in the French style] but us British style dancers would step on all of the three beats, like this ‘zum ta tta’ [onomatopoeia of the Waltz’s three beats, with an emphasis on ‘zum’]. If asked whether they were elegant, yes the other [French] side was certainly elegant, while each movement in our style was more powerful. ‘Those guys’ dances are like gymnastics’, they used to say.36

Contrasting ‘elegance’ with ‘power’, Tamaki’s description is informed by the opposition between ‘elegant’ and ‘vulgar’ dances that dates back to the early days of tango in Japan. Soon, the debate between the French and the British style was taken up in the popular dance press, leading to an even wider discussion. In 1932, The Prelude to the Social Dance Study 「社交舞踏学への序 ( 曲」) was published, written by Junzaburō Mori, to promote his teacher Baron Tsunayoshi Megata’s style. In this book, Mori suggested that the French style supporters were ‘the talented ones’, claiming that they were able to learn the dances through ‘natural talent’ without dance manuals. In contrast, the supporters of the British style were dubbed ‘the ordinary’ and ‘industrious’ dancers – which associated them with labour – accusing them of overly relying on dance manuals and dance theory books.37 The irony that Mori wrote this in a book on a dance style seems to have escaped him. While the word ‘vulgar’ was never used, the ‘elegant/vulgar’ opposition lingered in this heated debate on the legitimacy of the French or British style. To prove the French style’s ‘elegance’, Junzaburō Mori attempted to authenticate Megata’s dance style by alluding to Megata’s prestigious family background. Baron Tsunayoshi Megata was the grandson of Kaishū Katsu (1823–1899), a naval engineer and an influential statesman from the end of the Edo to the start of the Meiji era. His father, Baron Tanetarō Megata (1853–1926) was a Harvard Law School graduate lawyer and an influential politician. This family background as well as the fact that Megata had learnt to dance in Paris were used as the key reasons to a­ uthenticate and legitimise Megata’s style.38

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Mori’s claims infuriated the supporters of British dance, leading Nagatoshi Kawakita to publish an article titled ‘The Study of Modern Waltz: In Response to Mr. Junzaburō Mori’ 「モダン·ワルツの研究—森潤三郎 ( 氏に問う」) in the popular dance magazine, The Dance 『ザ·ダンス』 ( ) in December 1932. Kawakita’s article referenced Victor Silvester’s writings to debate on the theoretical contradictions in Mori’s book. It showed that the steps could be danced by anyone from any socio-economic background by using the dance manuals, as opposed to having to belong to exclusive members’ club – which dancers like Kawakita could not join. Thus, the supporters of the British style attempted to break the ‘elegant/vulgar’ opposition embedded in the early reception of social dancing in Japan. The establishment of the Japan Association of Teachers of Dancing (the JATD, 日本舞踏教師協会) in 1930, headed by Shinkichi Tamaki, a supporter of the British style, was another decisive move in the institutionalisation of the British style in Japan. The JATD provided social dance teaching certificates to those who passed the JATD’s dance exams in an attempt to raise the status of social dancing.39 With the further proliferation of British dance manuals, the British style was to become dominant in Japan. Outside of dance politics, however, both styles’ supporters cultivated concern over the prioritisation of Argentinian tango music’s authenticity in Japan through knowledge production. Thus, our attention now turns to the point at which listening and knowledge came together. The culture of listening in early twentieth-century Japan was nurtured by the proliferation of records, music cafés and the organisation of record concerts, where the language of debating about music was fostered, the dynamics of which we shall examine later. The culture of listening motivated many Japanese men to debate about music and become connoisseurs. These music aficionados occupied a central position in the field of non-Japanese music knowledge in Japan at this time, with many of them collaborating with – or providing knowledge to – scholars as well as to the music industry.40 Tango music connoisseurs were no exception in this regard. Record companies like JVC were the driving force behind the dissemination of ‘authentic’ Argentinian tango music in Japan. They offered dance aficionados from both sides in the ‘dance battle’ opportunities to write record reviews and liner notes for tango releases – opportunities which both British and French style supporters were eager to take. Central to JVC’s interests in Argentinian tango were recordings that ballroom dance enthusiasts Hyōjirō and Yae Katō had brought back from Buenos Aires in 1935. While a small number of Argentinian tango records had already been released in Japan in 1928,41 it was the Katōs’ recordings that prompted JVC to produce records of a collection of twelve Argentinian tangos in 1936 (six 78rpm discs in one set) and distribute them, using the JVC membership system.



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A panel of judges was responsible for selecting the best Argentinian tango records and providing liner notes. Dancers Hyōjirō Katō, Baron Tsunayoshi Megata, Junzaburō Mori, Shinkichi Tamaki and Tadao Takahashi – who later became a well-known Argentinian tango music critic in Japan – were among the judges.42 In a record magazine, Tamaki introduced these Argentinian tango recordings thus: It seems as though our country’s dance fans have begun to have an ear for tango music and are now craving for true tango sounds from Argentina. Those who have fallen in love with tango are now ordering tango records directly from South America, paying five yen for each record.43

The aforementioned set of six 78rpm records, however, was advertised by JVC for the price of ten yen. A total of 35,000 reservations were made for these recordings through their membership system, and a second volume was subsequently produced. A reissue of the first volume was released in 1938, leading to even wider dissemination of Argentinian tango music in Japan.44 In the magazine Dansu to Ongaku (Dance and Music), Hyōjirō Katō introduced these recordings, stressing that ‘Argentinian tango is Argentinian, and its uniqueness comes from Argentina’.45 He compared this music with ‘European’ tango, which he claimed to be ‘not the same’ as Argentinian tango, emphasising the primary importance of authenticity regarding tango music and its performance style. Following this wider dissemination of Argentinian tango recordings, the Japanese composer Masao Koga visited Argentina in 1939. There, he met and collaborated with the tango musician and composer Mariano Mores, who later recorded Koga’s compositions in Argentina. The four pieces by Mores were also released in Japan.46 Recorded music allowed for a separation of tango listening from dancing. The ongaku kissa (music café) – a type of café restaurant which played records – had just started to become popular. Their proliferation was helped by the fact that live music performances at this time were strictly regulated by the police, which privileged the use of recorded music for public entertainment.47 Music cafés catered to those who were keen to experience western customs such as coffee, chairs and tables, as well as admiring aprons that were worn by café waitresses. However, they also made listening to music more accessible to many. They became an ideal place for dance music listeners, who were not dance devotees and not keen on the physical act of social dancing.48 They offered different music genres, including western art music, chanson, jazz and tango. Another phenomenon, and one not entirely separate from the ongaku kissa, was the gradual spread of record concerts (reko-kon,レコード·

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コンサート, or レココン), organised by record collectors as well as record companies who were keen to cultivate people’s habits of listening to recorded music. Reko-kon were not restricted to playing tango records and can be traced back to the 1910s. Initially, western art music records were played at these events, at locations ranging from open-air public parks to private settings such as wealthy people’s homes. In the late 1920s in the Shōwa era (1926–89), the value systems surrounding a group of people listening silently to records were cultivated further, aided by the proliferation of audio equipment in Japan.49 Reko-kon and ongaku kissa thus provided a ‘hub’ for the Japanese intelligentsia and university students who competed on knowledge about music for leisure.50 These ‘hubs’ encouraged the practice of contemplative listening and music appreciation, creating tango music aficionados who continued the production of tango knowledge after the war. While ongaku kissa and reko-kon widened access to records, these settings were nonetheless dominated by the better off. For most Japanese, it was unaffordable and thus uncommon to visit western-style cafés, let alone to spend considerable amounts of time listening to music at record concerts. For many Japanese people, their first encounter with tango-like music was through its uses in the Japanese popular ryūkōka song genre that was frequently broadcast through the radio.51 At the same time, while the dissemination of Argentinian tango music was successful in Japan at this time, it took until the late 1980s for Japanese dancers to take up the Argentinian style, helped by the musical hit Tango Argentino, which premiered in Japan in 1987. Up until then, the British style of tango remained dominant among Japanese dance aficionados. The main reason for the continued preference of British over Argentinian steps was national prejudices. When the Katōs tried to promote the Argentinian dance style in the second half of the 1930s, their critics dismissed it by suggesting that they had ‘nothing to learn from less developed countries’.52 It appears that dance and music were judged by different criteria. The same Japanese dance authorities who opposed the Argentinian dance style claimed that they nonetheless preferred the Argentinian style of music to dance to, while expressing their dislike of British tango music and how it was played.53 Thus it was common in Japanese dance halls for dance aficionados to adhere to the British ballroom conventions, while moving to the sound of Argentinian tango music. Therefore, Argentinian music and the ways in which it was interpreted were given prestige, while the physical act of dancing the Argentinian style of tango was dismissed as ‘vulgar’ and considered to create confusion, while the British style was deemed legitimate. The earlier elegant/ vulgar opposition, imported with the first appearance of tango dancing, proved to be highly persistent. Involving international, racial as well as body politics, it sidelined Argentinian tango dance and legitimised the British style.

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Shifting the focus from recorded to ‘live’ music, we see many Japanese musicians turning to Argentinian tango music. This was motivated not only by the popularity of Argentinian records, but also by a performance given in June 1931 at the Florida dance hall in Tokyo by three French musicians, who had arrived on board a French merchant ship and played an Argentinian tango repertoire. By this time, western-style, large-scale dance halls in Japan had become associated with the hugely popular and newly coined word modan (from English ‘modern’), as a kind of cultural movement in Japan. The loan word modan became fashionable following the Taishō Democracy (1910s–1920s), an era which was characterised by liberalism that influenced Japanese intellectual ideologies, artistic movements and trends. The Florida venue was among these modan dance halls and considered an elite institution. As was the case with other modan venues, the Florida was frequented by a relatively wealthy section of the rising middle  class, while ‘elite’ status was claimed through grand, elaborate western-style architecture, professionally trained dancers and high-class orchestras. The first dance hall performance of Argentinian tango music

Figure 6  ‘Mobo, moga no kanrakukyō taru dansuhōru (The dance hall, the pleasure hometown of the modern boy and girl) – The Union dancehall a[t] Ningyō-chō’, in Y. Takakura (ed.), Dai Tōkyō Shashinchō (‘The Pictorial of Tokyo’) (Tokyo: Chūseidō, 1930), n.p. (Courtesy of the National Diet Library Digital Collections).

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was followed by the first appearance of a Japanese tango group, the Montparnasse Tango Ensemble, led by the cellist Yosuke Matsubara in October 1931, fittingly at the Florida dance hall.54 As one of many former ship musicians who had worked on the Pacific during the 1910s and 1920s, Matsubara had encountered fashionable dance music styles, including the Argentinian tango, while travelling abroad.55 Classically trained in Japan, he and his colleagues brought many dance music scores back to their home country from their trips. While many ship musicians went on to become members of classical symphony orchestras, such as the Shin Kōkyō Gakudan (now the NHK Kōkyō Gakudan), some, like Matsubara, were among the leading tango musicians in Japan.56 By the mid-1930s, more Japanese dance hall musicians began to incorporate Argentinian tango pieces in their repertoires, copying from records as well as using sheet music brought back to Japan from abroad. Tangolike steps were danced to the live bands featuring Japanese musicians, and dance halls employed both male and female dance instructors. According to a list of dance bands and dance halls published in the Dansu to Ongaku in the spring of 1938, there were fourteen dance bands and approximately thirty large modan dance halls across Japan.57 The bands played European and Argentinian tango music, to which couples on the floors danced in the British style. The band names were written in katakana (the Japanese characters used for imported words), and were a mixture of English and Spanish names, such as Naka and his Tiger Boys, or Nishinomiya y su Orquesta Muchachos. Each band played several genres, ranging from European ballroom dance repertoires to Argentinian tango and jazz. Like those who frequented modan dance halls, Japanese dance hall musicians often came from relatively wealthy families. While none of them were upper class, they could nonetheless afford to take western classical music lessons and purchase western instruments at a time when such activities could be prohibitively expensive. The western style, modan dance halls in pre-World War II Japan remained exclusively for a relatively well-off minority of the population. While there were less expensive venues known as ‘popular’ dance halls – such as the Kokka in Tokyo – the modern, western-style places of the pre-war years offered luxury as entertainment through western dancing. Dancing tango in the modan halls at this time was thus associated with prestige, as were the dancers who were employed at these venues. At the same time, dancing at modern halls continued to provoke reports about scandals, written by those who opposed western entertainment and addressed to a like-minded audience.58 Meanwhile, kafês continued to be labelled ‘immoral’ and, until the start of the war, they were operated as places where men could dance with waitresses in any fashion, accompanied by recordings.

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Following the outbreak of World War II, a government order led to the closure of dance halls from 1 November 1940. This order prohibited popular entertainment, including social dancing and listening to music imported from ‘enemy countries’ such as jazz. However, Argentinian tango music – along with German tango – was exempted from the music of enemy countries by the military so that it could continue to ‘warm Japanese people’s hearts’ in private homes, and also later on in air-raid shelters.59 During the war, tango was also played by Japanese musicians at ‘consolation performances’ given for Japanese soldiers abroad.60 While the number of tango performances in dance halls decreased dramatically during the war, the music’s pre-war popularity and its resurgence immediately after the war suggest that it continued to be listened – and perhaps danced to – in private settings during World War II.

Conclusion After Japan’s politically motivated exposure to western ballroom dancing towards the end of the Edo era, the Meiji period’s renewed political debates led to couple dancing becoming dubbed ‘immoral’. ‘Scandalous’ incidents notwithstanding, the Japanese aristocracy, and by the early twentieth century the wealthy middle-class, continued to engage in social dancing. Tango also came to be danced after 1914 in the style that had been codified by dance teachers in Europe and the United States. This chapter has argued that tango was assimilated in Japan as a multifaceted phenomenon, contradictory and fraught with social tension from the start. As an international news story, it was decried as ‘corrupting’; as an exclusive show, it was celebrated for being ‘fashionable’; as a practice, it was regulated, but also enjoyed by dancers of different social classes; as a music genre, it was judged by its ‘authenticity’. The rejection of the Argentinian tango dance style by Japanese ballroom dance aficionados notwithstanding, listening to Argentinian tango music provided the opportunity for dedicated listeners to gain connoisseurship. In certain respects, listening as a hobby offered many who could not read western music notation or play western musical instruments the chance to gain specialist knowledge through listening and reading liner notes, granting them opportunities to obtain prestige and status. Listening to Argentinian tango music enabled such connoisseurs to take an active part in knowledge production after World War II through discussions, publications or even acting as radio DJs, when becoming modern once again became an important ethos to rebuild Japan after the war. Divided along the distinction between ‘elegant’ and ‘vulgar’, the early reception of tango in Japan illuminates the processes

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of inclusion and exclusion through, and within, dancing, listening and knowledge production.

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*This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie SkłodowskaCurie grant agreement No 846143.

Notes  1 ‘Ōbei mondai no shin butō: Fūzoku kairan no kyoku’ (The Euro-American Scandalous New Dance: Towards the Collapse of Public Order), Asahi Shimbun (14 August 1913). It is unclear what kind of dance steps the term ‘negroid’ referred to. All translations in this chapter are my own unless otherwise stated. The English translations of the titles of Japanese works referenced in this chapter have been undertaken by the author. Title translations that were already included in the original publications are shown in quotation marks.   2 Ibid.   3 ‘Yokohama no tango odori’ (Tango Dance in Yokohama), Asahi Shimbun (7 May 1914).  4 Ibid.  5 T. Buckland, Society Dancing: Fashionable Bodies in England, 1870–1920 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011); J. J. Nott, Music for the People: Popular Music and Dance in Interwar Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002); J. Nott, Going to the Palais: A Social And Cultural History of Dancing and Dance Halls in Britain, 1918–1960 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015); S. C. Cook, ‘Passionless Dancing and Passionate Reform: Respectability, Modernism, and the Social Dancing of Irene and Vernon Castle’, in W. Washabaugh (ed.), The Passion of Music and Dance (New York: Berg, 1998), pp. 133–50; S. C. Cook, ‘Talking Machines, Dancing Bodies: Marketing Recorded Dance Music before World War I’, in S. C. Cook and S. Dodds (eds), Bodies of Sound: Studies Across Popular Music and Dance (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013), pp. 149–62; A. D. Field, Shanghai’s Dancing World: Cabaret Culture and Urban Politics, 1919–1954 (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press of Hong Kong, 2010); Y. Nagai, Shakō dansu to nihonjin (Social Dance and the Japanese) (Tokyo: Shobunsha, 1991); Y. Nagai, Nippon dansu monogatari: Kōsai jutsu no yunyūsha tachi (The Dance Story of Japan: The Importers of Social Skills) (Tokyo: Libro Port, 1994); D. B. Scott, Sounds of the Metropolis: The 19th Century Popular Music Revolution in London, New York, Paris, and Vienna (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008).  6 For a valuable critique on the use of the nouns ‘modernisation’ and ‘westernisation’ in the historiography of the Meiji Restoration, see M. Ravina, To Stand with the Nations of the World: Japan’s Meiji Restoration in World History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017). While mindful that the two nouns

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are considered contentious by some, I use ‘modernisation’ and ‘westernisation’ in this chapter to demonstrate the conflicting dynamics surrounding the initial importation of social dancing and tango in Japan.  7 On geisha, see A. Stanley, Selling Women: Prostitution, Markets, and the Household in Early Modern Japan (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2012); A. Stanley, ‘Enlightenment Geisha: The Sex Trade, Education, and Feminine Ideals in Early Meiji Japan’, Journal of Asian Studies, 72:3 (2013), 539–62.  8 Nagai, Shakō dansu to nihonjin, pp. 15–19.  9 Seinan Sensō (Satsuma Rebellion or Southwestern War) was a revolt of samurai warriors against the new Meiji government, which lasted from January to September 1877. 10 Nagai, Shakō dansu to nihonjin, pp. 18–20. 11 M. Mehl, ‘Dancing at the Rokumeikan: A New Role for Women?’, in H. Tomida and G. Daniels (eds), Japanese Women: Emerging from Subservience, ­1886–1945 (Folkestone: Global Oriental, 2005), pp. 157–77; D. Keene, Emperor of Japan: Meiji and His World 1852–1912 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), pp. 391–402. 12 This agreement came to be known in Japan as the ‘unequal treaties’. Revising all these treaties became one of the priorities for the new Meiji government. See H. Cortazzi, J. Hoare, N.  Brailey and  A. Hotta-Lister,  The Revision of Japan’s Early Commercial Treaties (London: Suntory and Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines, 1999); I. Ruxton, ‘Britain: 17 August–16 December 1872; The Mission’s Aims, Objectives and Results’, in I. Nish (ed.), The Iwakura Mission in America & Europe: A New Assessment (Richmond: Japan Library, 1998), pp. 35–44. 13 For this and the following see Nagai, Shakō dansu to nihonjin, pp. 21–4 and pp. 29–43. 14 Referenced in Nagai, Shakō dansu to nihonjin, p. 26, from ‘Butō no rigai’ (The Advantages and Disadvantages of Social Dancing), Jogaku Zasshi (9 July 1887), pp. 109–12. 15 M. E. Savigliano, Tango and the Political Economy of Passion (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1995), pp. 179–83. 16 See S. Hosokawa, ‘Seiyō ongaku no Nihon ka, Taishūka 35, Tango’ (The Japanisation and Popularisation of Western Music in Japan, 35, Tango), Music Magazine, 24:3 (1992), 148–53; H. Nishimura, ‘Tango Nippon Torai Hyaku Shūnen ni yosete: Taishō jidai no tango jijyō’ (Celebrating the Centenary of the Arrival of Tango in Japan: Tango during the Taishō period), Latina (February 2014), 84–7. 17 See Cook, ‘Passionless Dancing and Passionate Reform’ and Cook, ‘Talking Machines, Dancing Bodies’. 18 See the chapter by K. Nathaus, ‘Building “Dreamland”: dancers, musicians, and the transformation of social dancing into mass culture, c. 1900–41’ in this volume. 19 See Cook, ‘Passionless Dancing and Passionate Reform’ and Cook, ‘Talking Machines, Dancing Bodies’.

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20 Quoted in Cook, ‘Passionless Dancing and Passionate Reform’, 141, from V. Castle, ‘Tango According to Castle’, Metropolitan 38:2 (1913), pp. 38–9. 21 ‘Yokohama no tango odori’ (Tango Dance in Yokohama), Asahi Shimbun (7 May 1914). 22 See S. Sato, Bankara no jidai: Taikan, Hōan ra to nihonga seiritsu no haikei (The Era of the Bankara: Taikan, Hōan and Other Painters, in the Establishment of the Japanese-style Painting) (Kyoto: Jumbun Shoin, 2018). 23 ‘Watashi wa fureru: Tango odori wo mite (Jō)’ (My View: After Observing Tango Dance. I), Asahi Shimbun (15 June 1914). 24 Ibid. 25 M. Silverberg, Erotic Grotesque Nonsense: The Mass Culture of Japanese Modern Times (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2006), pp. 177–202. 26 F. Innami, ‘Gendered High and Low Culture in Japan: The Transgressing Flesh in Kawabata’s Dance Writing’, in J. Coates, L. Fraser and M. Pendleton (eds), The Routledge Companion to Gender and Japanese Culture (London: Routledge, 2019), pp. 373–81. 27 The start of the regulations on unlicensed prostitution dates back to the Edo period. The police regulations on unlicensed prostitution were tightened further after the introduction of venereal disease examinations on prostitutes in the Meiji era, the system of which was imported from some of the western European countries during the 1870s. The modern system of licensing prostitution in Japan was modelled after Europe. See Y. Fujime, ‘The Licensed Prostitution System and the Prostitution Abolition Movement in Modern Japan’, Positions, 5:1 (1997), 135–71; Y. Fujime, Sei no rekishi gaku: Kōshō seido · datai zai taisei kara baishun bōshi hō · yūsei hogo hōtai sē e (History of Sex: From the Licensed Prostitution System, the Structure of the Abortion Law, to the Prostitution Abolition Law, the Eugenics Protection Act) (Tokyo: Fuji Shuppan, 1997). 28 Nagai, Shakō dansu to nihonjin, p. 65. 29 Ibid., pp. 14–15. 30 See Y. Nagai, Fūzokueigyō torishimari: Fūeihō to sei · dausu · kajino wo kisei suru kono kuni no arikata (Regulating the Entertainment and Amusement Trades: How Sex, Dance and Casino are Regulated in this Country) (Tokyo: Kawade Shobō Shinsha, 2015). 31 See Ibid., pp. 40–50 for further details. 32 Ibid., pp. 52–6. 33 Quoted in Nagai, Nippon dansu monogatari, pp. 71–2. 34 See Y. Asaba, ‘The Reception of Tango and the Creation of its Authenticity in Twentieth Century Japan: A Study from the Perspective of “Internalized Modernity’’’, Popular Music Studies, 24 (2020), 5–9. 35 For this and the following see M. Megata, Megata Dansu (The Megata Dance) (Tokyo: Modern Shuppan, 1999), pp. 14–29. 36 Quote appears in Megata, Megata Dansu, pp. 28–9. 37 Nagai, Nippon dansu monogatari, p. 199. 38 Ibid. 39 Ibid., pp. 152–4.

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40 Hettie Malcomson offers a critical reconsideration of the ‘hierarchy of knowledge production’ and its associated dynamics surrounding the ‘hegemonic masculine capital’, in H. Malcomson, ‘Aficionados, Academics, and Danzón Expertise: Exploring Hierarchies in Popular Music Knowledge Production’, Ethnomusicology, 58:2 (2014), 222–53. On Japanese tango aficionados and the amateur/professional binary, see Y. Asaba, ‘Tango in Japan: Digesting and Disciplining a Distant Music’ (PhD dissertation, Royal Holloway, University of London, 2016), pp. 151–98. For the twentieth-century history of popular music knowledge production in Japan, see the compilation of critical essays by scholars and critics in T. Mitsui (ed.), Popyurā Ongaku to Akademizumu (Popular Music and Academia) (Tokyo: Ongaku no Tomosha, 2005). 41 These were not direct imports from Argentina, however, but copies of the original master recordings. This was also the case for the sets of recordings produced in 1936, as mentioned in the main text. See Asaba, ‘The Reception of Tango’. 42 Nagai, Nippon dansu monogatari, p. 79. 43 S. Tamaki, ‘Nanagatsu no dansu rekōdo’ (July’s Dance Records), Modan Dansu (July 1936), quoted in Nagai, Nippon dansu monogatari, p. 80. 44 Nagai, Nippon dansu monogatari, pp. 79–80. 45 H. Katō, ‘Saikin no ōbei ni okeru butō no keikō (A)’ (Recent Dance Trends in Europe and North America), Dansu to Ongaku (November 1935), quoted in Nagai, Nippon dansu monogatari, p. 80. 46 This data appears in Hideto Nishimura’s tango chronology in Japan (unpublished), produced for a series of public lectures he gave across Japan in 2014, commemorating the ‘Hundredth Anniversary of tango’s arrival in Japan’. This tango chronology was given to the present author by Hideto Nishimura. 47 The reasons behind the police regulations on live concerts are unknown. See S.  Hosokawa, ‘A Cultural History of Jazz Coffeehouse in Prewar Japan: The Music Appreciation in the Age of Reproductive Technology’, Japan Review, 34 (2007), 209–48. 48 See Hosokawa, ‘A Cultural History of Jazz Coffeehouse’; Hosokawa, ‘Seiyō ongaku no Nihon ka’. 49 Hosokawa, ‘A Cultural History of Jazz Coffeehouse’, 211. 50 Later, it developed as part of the US-derived ‘swing boom’ (see Hosokawa, ‘A Cultural History of Jazz Coffeehouse’). For the in-depth essays on records, record concerts and early to mid-twentieth-century Japanese intelligentsia, see the account by the novelist, critic and passionate record collector Kodō Nomura (1882–1963), Ongaku wa tanoshi: reimeiki onban shūshūka no zuisō (Music Is a Happy Pursuit: Reflections by a Record Collector from the Dawn of Records) (Tokyo: Ongaku no Tomosha, [1958] 2014). The book was written under his nom de plume as a critic, Araebisu Nomura. 51 Ryūkōka is a popular song genre that was created towards the beginning of the twentieth century by the emerging Japanese record companies to promote their composers and singers. While evoking the sounds of Japanese traditional music, musical characteristics of various genres – such as jazz and tango – were also used and were sung in Japanese. On the use of tango-like melodies and rhythms

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in the ryūkōka, the radio and Japan’s record industry, see T. Azami, Tango to Nihonjin (Tango and the Japanese) (Tokyo: Shūeisha, 2018). 52 Nagai, Nippon dansu monogatari, pp. 83–6. 53 Ibid., p. 85. 54 This event is mentioned in Hideto Nishimura’s tango chronology in Japan (unpublished). 55 M. Takeishi, ‘1910~20 nendai no fune no gakushi: Kokunai no yōgaku juyō · bunka tono Kanren’ (Ship Musicians During the 1910s and 1920s: The Reception and Specialisation of Western Art Music in Japan), Tokyo College of Music Research Bulletin, 42 (2019), 1–24. 56 Ibid., p. 18. 57 Anonymous, ‘1938 (Shōwa 13) nen shunki dansu bando meibo’ (A List of Dance Bands in the Spring of 1938, Shōwa 13), Dansu to Ongaku (April 1938), 224–9. 58 See Nagai, Shakō dansu to nihonjin, pp. 119–62. 59 H. Tajima, ‘Modan Nihon no merodrama teki sōzōryoku to ‘ekkyō’: Aruzenchin/tango wo meguru gensetsu bunseki’ (Modern Japan’s Melodramatic Imagination and ‘Crossing of Borders’: Discourse Analysis of Argentine Tango), Bigaku Geijutsu Kenkyū, 27 (University of Tokyo, Faculty of Letters, Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology, 2009), 159–60. 60 Asaba, ‘The Reception of Tango’.

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The rise of Chinese taxi-dancers: glamorous careers, romantic fantasies, and sexual dreams on the dance floors of Shanghai, 1919–37 Andrew David Field My years in Shanghai were incredible ones. I saw old China fade away – indeed beat a hasty retreat – before the progressiveness of young, modern China. I saw beautiful young native [Chinese] girls come out from behind the flat-pressed hairdo, the ancient trousers and satin slippers, and adopt the now world-famous cheon-sam [a slit-skirt high-collared silk dress, known in Chinese as qipao], the permanent wave and the three-inch heels and nylons. I saw the first Chinese couple dancing on a public dance-floor and stayed to watch succeeding thousands of them virtually elbow foreigners off their own dance-floors in less than a dozen years. I heard Chinese musicians rearrange Chinese popular music into Western dance tempo and listened to young Chinese stand and croon into microphones. John Pal, Shanghai Saga1

Between the two World Wars of the twentieth century, as described so colourfully by John Pal in his memoir Shanghai Saga, social dancing became firmly integrated into the social and cultural lives of Chinese people in cosmopolitan Shanghai.2 Soon after the First World War, Americans, Russians, British, French, and other Europeans living in the treaty port city started dancing the foxtrot, rumba, and other fashionable dances in ballrooms to the rhythms of American jazz. By the late 1920s, Chinese people were participating in the dances taking place daily and nightly in the city’s ballrooms. At the same time, they began building dance palaces of their own. By the 1930s, many of the city’s leading dance establishments were designed, built, staffed, and managed by Chinese. Although most of the population of three million or so Chinese living in Shanghai in the 1930s (which grew to around five million during the wartime era of 1937–45) did not learn the Charleston or the jitterbug let alone spend time in a dance hall, hundreds of thousands did so, and a dance industry of significant proportions emerged in the city. In the process, as John Pal recalls, Chinese dancers ‘elbowed’ the foreigners off the dance floors, metaphorically if not in reality. They created an industry that was dominated by Chinese interests and which was meant primarily for Chinese customers, even if it was

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still international and cosmopolitan in many regards, as were the Chinese people who danced in the ballrooms of Shanghai. This entertainment industry succeeded by strategically adapting the imported foreign culture of social dancing to suit local needs, tastes, and conditions, thus reflecting Shanghai’s role as a clearinghouse of imported culture for China.3 Between the 1920s and the 1930s, dozens of danceoriented entertainment spaces catered to the growing population of dance enthusiasts in Shanghai.4 Represented in Chinese newspapers, magazines, literature, and film, these spaces and the people who managed, staffed, performed in, and patronised them constituted a ‘dancing world’ (wujie or wuguo).5 Key to the success of the dance industry in Shanghai was the widespread adoption of the American commercial model of ‘taxi-dancing’.6 In this model, customers purchased dance tickets at the door, which they then used to buy dances with hostesses who in turn cashed in their tickets at the end of the night. This chapter argues that Chinese dance hostesses played a crucial role in facilitating and catalysing the popularity of social dancing amongst the predominantly male urban population of Chinese sojourners.7 Known in Chinese as wunü (‘dancing girls’), these women served in most if not all of the city’s dance establishments during the 1930s. From the late 1920s to the late 1930s, the number of Chinese dance hostesses in Shanghai swelled from several dozen to several thousand. One can trace the origins of the taxi-dance industry in Shanghai to the bars and cabarets located at the margins of the foreign settlements in the 1910s, which employed bar hostesses. During the 1920s, the city’s emerging taxi-dance industry employed Russians, Japanese, Koreans, Eurasians, and other nationalities and ethnicities of women.8 Yet by the late 1930s, the vast majority of dance hostesses in Shanghai were Chinese. In other words, the dance industry that emerged in 1930s Shanghai was primarily a taxi-dance industry composed of Chinese female dance partners catering to a predominantly Chinese male clientele.9 The rise of a dance industry in 1930s Shanghai featuring Chinese hostesses poses a set of questions relevant to this volume on the social world of dancing. First, to what extent did dance halls in Shanghai serve as platforms for modern romantic encounters and courtship rituals among their customers? Second, and related to the first question: did dance establishments in Shanghai encourage and facilitate meaningful social and cultural interactions across racial, ethnic, class, and national boundaries? Third, how did the ubiquitous presence of Chinese hostesses in the city’s dance halls influence and shape patterns of courtship and romantic and/or sexual encounters between men and women in the city? This chapter is going to address these questions. The first part looks at the beginnings of couple dancing in Shanghai and shows how fashionable

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dances were taken up soon after their launch abroad by foreign settlers in the city and how ‘localised’ jazz music began to attract Chinese patrons to western-style dance halls. The second part follows this trend to the late 1920s and presents factors that helped make couple dancing attractive to Chinese patrons, who at first had to overcome strong reservations against couple dancing. The third part traces the rise of taxi-dancing in the city. Focusing on the role of the dance hostess in Shanghai’s social world of dancing, it asks how her presence affected social relations in dance venues and discusses couple dancing’s position between prostitution, stardom, and romantic love.

Dancing among foreigners: the rise of jazz and commercial dancing in the 1920s Prior to the 1920s, ballroom dancing was an occasional activity for foreigners (people not of Chinese heritage) living in Shanghai. Dancing took place annually and seasonally during grand national balls and other ceremonial events held in the city.10 Such events included the British St George’s Society Ball, the Scottish St Andrew’s or Caledonian Ball, the American George Washington’s Birthday Ball, and other balls organised by various national and ethnic groups, such as the Jewish Purim Ball and the Russian Ball. Organisations and associations such as the Shanghai Municipal Police and the Freemasons also held annual balls. Many nationalities of people, including Chinese, were invited to attend these events. Balls were held in private clubs and hotel ballrooms. Some wealthy foreigners constructed lavish mansions in Shanghai’s foreign settlements, complete with their own private ballrooms, and they invited other members of elite society to attend private dances and soirees.11 While such festive and ritual occasions continued to take place during the 1920s and beyond, they were gradually overshadowed soon after the end of the First World War by the establishment of commercial dancing. Enthusiasm for dances such as the foxtrot, tango, and rumba took root quickly in the two foreign settlements, the International Settlement and the French Concession. These newer dances replaced older communal dances such as minuets and quadrilles in the dance programmes of the grand balls. New dance styles were often exhibited in the city’s ballrooms; for example, the Astor House Hotel hosted an exhibition of the tango as early as 1914.12 Shanghai’s foreign communities were composed of businessmen, diplomats, educators, policemen, administrators, missionaries, doctors, nurses, functionaries, clerks, and many other occupations. These communities organised themselves by nationality, trade, religion, and common interest

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and generally kept up with social and cultural trends from their homelands.13 By the mid-1920s, many of them were dancing the foxtrot, the rumba, and the Charleston in increasingly lavish ballrooms. One was the ballroom at Astor House, one of the most venerated hostelries in Shanghai, whose history goes back to the mid-1800s.14 The hotel’s ballroom was expanded and renovated in 1917 and again in 1923. Designed by the Spanish architect Abelardo Lafuente,15 it featured a finely wrought wooden dance floor and a half-shell for the orchestra made of stained glass and designed to invoke a peacock’s fanned-out tail, with multicoloured lights streaming through it and out onto the dance floor.16 The inception of Astor House’s new ballroom in 1923 was followed by the opening of the Majestic Hotel in 1924. The hotel was located on Gordon Road near Bubbling Well Road (today’s Jiangning Road and Nanjing West Road) in the heart of the International Settlement. Many considered its clover-leaf-shaped ballroom, with its ornate Renaissance features and Greco-Roman style decorations, to be the most elegant ballroom in all of Asia. In 1926, there was the addition of the oval-shaped ballroom of the French Club in the heart of the French Concession, which featured a sprung dance floor and excellent acoustics.17 All of these elite ballrooms competed to host the city’s annual balls and grand fêtes. Yet just as importantly, they competed to attract a regular clientele by hiring jazz orchestras and featuring both daytime ‘tea dances’ and nightly dancing. As interest in dancing continued to grow among the city’s foreigners at the end of the war, so did enthusiasm for the new American dance music known loosely as ‘jazz’. Live jazz music began to be heard in Shanghai as early as 1917 at the Carlton Café, a dining and drinking establishment located in a tightly clustered neighbourhood of hotels, residences, and office buildings not far from the riverfront commercial area known as the Bund. That year, the Carlton Café began to advertise a jazz band and a pair of exhibition dancers, who apparently came from the Philippines.18 This must have been the first public exhibition of jazz in Shanghai. In 1919, the Carlton Café announced regular afternoon tea dances supported by a jazz orchestra that consisted of African and white American and Filipino musicians.19 Early on, the Carlton Café presented jazz as an exotic novelty fresh from the USA. A promotional piece in the Shanghai Times in May 1919 stated that two artistes had been hired to perform there, including an American woman named Irene West, who would give a performance of ‘the latest New York craze, the Jazz Dance’ to a party sponsored by the company Anderson, Meyer, and Co.20 Revellers at the café would be exposed to the new dance trend that was now popular in America’s greatest metropolis. The promoter and organiser of this event was the café’s proprietor, Louis

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Ladow. Originally from Kentucky, Ladow had migrated to Shanghai in 1898 and become a hotel manager, working for a spell at the Astor House in the early 1900s, before starting his own clubs.21 In 1922, Louis Ladow travelled to San Francisco in search of a jazz band he planned to hire to perform at the Carlton Café. He met a promising young Danish–American jazz drummer named Whitey Smith and persuaded him to come to Shanghai to start up a jazz band. Between the 1920s and 1930s, Smith was one of the most influential and well-known jazz band leaders in Shanghai, before moving to Manila in 1937, where he remained for the rest of his life.22 When Whitey Smith first arrived on the Shanghai scene in 1922, jazz was already becoming popular among the foreign residents of the city. In the early 1920s, several cafés and hotels advertised regular dancing and jazz music in the newspapers. These included the Café Parisien on 25 Avenue Edouard VII, the road that divided the International Settlement from the French Concession. The Astor House featured regular dances and a jazz orchestra.23 People who wished to practise the new dances in the privacy of their own homes could visit piano-makers S. Moutrie and Co. on 3 Nanking (Nanjing) Road. At their shop, they could purchase the latest jazz and dance records imported from the USA, including recordings of Joseph Smith’s Orchestra, the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, and Paul Whiteman and His Orchestra, and play them on their own gramophones.24 Dance academies and dance teachers were also beginning to advertise their services in the city during this period. During this time of relative stability, growth, and prosperity (despite several revolutionary movements and one actual revolution in 1927) many new ballrooms arose in Shanghai to cater to the growing public interest in jazz and its associated dances. The aforementioned Majestic Hotel and Astor House, and the Cathay Hotel, completed in 1929, all boasted elegant and luxurious ballrooms, as did the French Club located in the heart of the French Concession, which opened in 1926. For a less elite customer base, there was Mumm’s Café, one of the first dance establishments in the International Settlement to employ dance hostesses.25 There was also a string of smaller establishments in notorious areas such as ‘the Trenches’ in the Hongkew (Hongkou), a nightlife district north of the Bund, which featured Russian dance partners and Russian or European musicians. These clubs and ‘dive’ bars catered to soldiers and sailors, who hailed from many different countries. While the earliest jazz musicians playing in the ballrooms and cafés of Shanghai tended to be from either the United States or the Philippines, Russian jazz bands also performed in the city in the 1920s. Following the Revolution of 1917, thousands of ‘White Russians’ exiled from their home country eventually made their way to Shanghai. One Russian jazz

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band leader was Serge Ermoll (né Sergei Ermollaef), who came to Shanghai from the Manchurian city of Harbin, another major enclave for Russians in China. During the 1920s and 1930s, Ermoll and His Music Masters performed at elite ballrooms such as the Majestic, the Cathay, and the Paramount along with Whitey Smith and his orchestra.26 As jazz music and its associated dances took hold in the city, musicians began to cater for Chinese patrons. Whitey Smith provides the first historical example of an attempt to create a localised or ‘sinified’ version of American jazz for a Chinese audience. In his memoir, Smith relates how he and his band struggled to attract Chinese customers into the Majestic Ballroom. He recounts how the hotel manager, James Taggart, encouraged him to attract more Chinese customers into the stately ballroom, whose impressive size and huge overheads necessitated a larger crowd than the elite foreign communities of the city could manage on any given night.27 After trying various visual gimmicks to attract Chinese patrons to no avail, Smith was advised by a Chinese friend to play music more suitable for Chinese ears. In other words, he and his band had to learn what sort of music Chinese people enjoyed and somehow incorporate those sounds into their musical repertoire. As a consequence, the band leader encouraged his orchestra to simplify their music in order to bring out the main melody. He also began to incorporate elements from Chinese folk tunes into their musical repertoire. According to Smith, the results were both immediate and striking: soon, Chinese customers started crowding into the Majestic ballroom. Recordings of Smith’s orchestra playing original songs composed by its leader, including Nighttime in Old Shanghai and Chinese Wedding, reveal how Smith and his band fused American jazz music with Chinese folk music elements to create a hybrid popular dance music for Shanghai.28 While Smith’s boast that he was the man who had ‘taught China to dance’ may seem overblown, Chinese sources attest to the importance of the Majestic Ballroom as a space where Chinese society in Shanghai first learned to dance. For example, the Chinese Photography Study Society Pictorial, a magazine for elite Chinese in Shanghai, published at least twenty-two articles on the Majestic Hotel, mostly focusing on its ballroom and outdoor dance garden.29 One article written about a Christmas Eve dance party in 1928 remarked on how welcoming the westerners were to the Chinese men and women who attended the party, including the famous Peking Opera star Mei Lanfang. The author also noted that when westerners were kissing each other on the dance floor, the Chinese were astounded, having not experienced such openly public gestures of affection and sexuality. Nevertheless, they accepted this behaviour as part and parcel of the culture of the ballroom.30



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Localising western dance culture from the late 1920s: media images, dance education, and generational conflict In the wake of the Chinese Nationalist Revolution of 1927, a revolution was also taking place in the cultural and social life of Shanghai, as Chinese people began to step on to the dance floors of the city’s foreign settlements in greater numbers than ever before. Apart from the Majestic Ballroom and the Carlton Café, in 1928 several new dance halls catered to Chinese patrons. Many of these establishments were located in the city centre along Thibet Road or Nanjing Road, either in hotels or in department stores. These included the Peach Blossom Palace (taohua gong) in the Y. P. S. (Yipinxiang) Hotel, the Far Eastern Dance Hall (yuangong wuting) in the hotel of the same name, the Black Cat Cabaret (heimao wuting) in the Paris Hotel, and the Great Eastern Ballroom (dadong wuting) in the Wing On Department Store.31 Significantly, all of these dance halls featured Chinese dance hostesses. The photos of this first wave of Chinese wunü were collected in the first published Chinese volume on dance halls of Shanghai in 1928, edited by a popular fiction writer named Zhou Shoujuan.32 According to older generations of Confucian-educated Chinese, who launched an anti-dance movement in Tianjin in 1927, western-style social dancing challenged some of the basic strictures reinforced by two millennia of Confucian thinking, which specified that men and women should keep a certain distance in polite society.33 In more traditional Chinese society, it was unseemly, if not unthinkable for one Chinese man to touch and embrace another man’s spouse or family member in a public setting, practices that were inevitable and indeed required in western-style ballroom dance culture, where dancers changed partners frequently over the course of an evening’s dance. Dancing also conflicted with the age-old practice of footbinding, which signified status and sex appeal for Chinese women in Shanghai.34 While foreigners like Whitey Smith may have helped to jumpstart the Chinese ‘Jazz Age’, it took another decade for a localised dance industry catering mainly to Chinese customers to come to its full fruition. Apart from ‘sinified’ jazz, the rising popularity of Hollywood films contributed to the growing Chinese interest in the foreigners’ world of dancing in the 1920s. By the 1930s, around thirty cinemas operated in the city. Most of them featured films imported from the USA. Films produced by Shanghai’s six Chinese film studios were also screened in local cinemas. Film studios in Shanghai imitated the Hollywood model by introducing the star system, while also incorporating more traditional Chinese stories and storytelling modes. Since many Hollywood and Chinese films featured scenes of

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Figure 7  Dance hostesses working at the Paradise Ballroom in the Sun Co. Department Store on the corner of Nanjing Road and Tibet Road

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dancing in ballrooms and nightclubs, or focused on nightlife habitués, ­cinema-going exposed the Chinese audience to images of western nightlife and ballroom dancing.35 While still somewhat risqué, these films made dancing more respectable to the Chinese public. Another factor was the growing number of dance schools or dance academies (tiaowu xuexiao) in Shanghai. From a few in the early 1920s, the number of dance schools grew rapidly over subsequent years, and they could be found in most neighbourhoods and likely numbered in the hundreds by the late 1930s.36 Some dance instructors offered their services on site at ballrooms. One case in point is the dancing couple Yang Peiying and her male partner Yu Hanmin, who set up a dancing school for the Peach Blossom Palace in 1928.37 At the same time, some of the elite western schools in Shanghai, such as St John’s University, also began to offer dance programmes to their mainly Chinese student body, as both a form of international etiquette and physical education.38 Adding to these institutes, in the late 1920s illustrated dance manuals first began to appear in the Chinese press. Special volumes, guidebooks, and news articles published in Chinese drew upon traditions of covering the city’s leisure houses and courtesan culture, and offered guidance on how to comport oneself properly in a ballroom.39 Like the guidebooks of the late nineteenth century, which offered readers information about the city’s courtesan houses,40 newspapers and magazines published in the 1930s taught Chinese residents and visitors about the city’s dancing world and its denizens. Chinese residents and sojourners could read this literature to learn about the women who worked in the dance halls. They also could study dance hall etiquette, including how to court a dance hostess, or how take a hostess on a nighttime romp through the city.41 These publications thus helped to publicise and normalise the world of social dancing in Shanghai. In turn, this helped to reduce the shock of this new world to most Chinese people in other parts of the country, who were used to other sets of values and norms, or other social settings such as small towns and villages, where young women were often kept at home until they were married. Perhaps inspired by the example of Whitey Smith, Chinese musicians began in the late 1920s to experiment with their own fusions of western jazz and Chinese traditional folk music. The most influential among them was Li Jinhui, who composed the first Chinese jazz tune, Maomaoyu (Drizzle), performed by his daughter Li Minghui in Mandarin Chinese.42 Li also had close connections to the city’s film industry, and some of the young women who performed in his Bright Moon (mingyue) song-and-dance troupe, such as Zhou Xuan, eventually became stars of the silver screen as well as popular singing and recording stars. While Li Jinhui used music and dance

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as a vehicle to promote the national Chinese language (Mandarin), his music was also associated with the vulgar sexuality of the city’s cabaret or taxidance hall culture. His songs as well as those of other popular songwriters and composers became known as ‘yellow music’ (huangse yinyue) for their sensual and suggestive lyrics. While they were eventually lambasted and stigmatised by both the Chinese Nationalists and the Chinese Communists, they proved quite popular among the Chinese population living in Shanghai and elsewhere in China. All of these developments took place within the broader historical context of the New Culture Movement (xin wenhua yundong) of the 1920s, which was carried by educated, urban youth who railed against traditions and promoted the construction of a modern Chinese nation-state founded on scientific and democratic principles. At a personal level, Chinese youths also struggled against their elders for the right to choose their own love matches and marriage partners and embraced the modern, foreign culture of social dancing disregarded by the older generations. Many of the leading young writers of the time were writing stories about these urbanised youths and their struggles to free themselves from the key life decisions imposed upon them by their families. Social dancing became a literary topos to explore this struggle between the generations.43 One example is the famous opening scene of Mao Dun’s epic Chinese novel Midnight (Ziye, 1933), in which an aged Confucianist coming to visit his family in Shanghai succumbs to a heart attack while watching young ‘emancipated women’ dance in revealing clothing to jazzy rhythms in the family living room. At the same time, a young generation of highly educated modernist Chinese writers known as the Neo-Sensualists (xin ganjue pai) were exploring the rhythms and vitality of modern urban life in Shanghai, and dancing played an important role in their depictions of the modern city. In the 1930s, writers such as Mu Shiying and Liu Na’ou penned numerous short stories featuring scenes of nightlife, focusing often on the Chinese femmes fatales who frequented the city’s nightclubs and dance halls, seducing young men with their modern ways. Mu Shiying in particular wrote a number of stories featuring Chinese dance hostesses, and also wrote about the cabarets in which they earned their livings. Mu himself famously courted and married a Cantonese dance hostess named Qiu Peipei, who worked in the Moon Palace Dance Hall (Yuegong Wuting) in the district of Hongkew (Hongkou).44 Mu’s story indicates that dance halls, though not viewed as places to meet ‘respectable’ women, were in fact spaces that fostered a dating and marriage market in the large cosmopolitan city of Shanghai. This aspect is explored in further depth in the next section of this chapter.



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Between prostitution, stardom, and romantic love: the rise of the dance hostess as an icon of urban modernity in the 1930s Dance establishments in 1930s Shanghai differed in social status. At the upper end of the social hierarchy were the elite ballrooms located in luxury hotels and private clubs in the centre of the International Settlement and French Concession. These included the aforementioned Majestic Hotel, which closed down in 1931, as well as the Park Hotel opened in 1934, the Cathay Hotel on the Bund, the Canidrome Hotel and the French Club in the French Concession, and Ciro’s Nightclub. Perhaps the most famous of all was the ultra-modern Paramount Ballroom, opened in 1933, which featured a main dance floor on springs and an upper dance floor on plated glass with coloured lights running underneath it.45 In the middle range were spacious and elegantly appointed dance halls located in stand-alone buildings or inside department stores. These included the Paradise Ballroom of the Sun Company Department Store on Nanjing Road, and its neighbour, the Great Eastern Ballroom of the Wing On Department Store.46 These ballrooms featured a team of male waiters and managers as well as dance hostesses, and they usually hired Filipino orchestras, which were generally less expensive and easier to maintain than their American or Russian counterparts. There was also the Yangzi Hotel Ballroom in the same neighbourhood in the heart of the International Settlement. The Metropole Gardens Ballroom belonged in this category too. It arose in the lot vacated by the Majestic Hotel, which was demolished in the early 1930s. This was the only ballroom in the city that was built with ‘traditional’ Chinese design features, even though the architect, Yang Xiliu, was the same man who had designed the Paramount Ballroom.47 Stand-alone dance palaces could be also found along the city’s major thoroughfares which ran through this neighbourhood, such as the Ambassador Ballroom and the Casanova Ballroom on Avenue Edward VII (now Yan’an Road). At the lower end of the spectrum were the various bars, cafés, and cabarets that clustered together on infamous streets and alleyways, including the Trenches in Hongkew and Blood Alley near the Bund. In these ‘dim dives’, as journalist Edna Lee Booker described them, soldiers and sailors from around the world mingled with an international cast of hostesses and prostitutes.48 It was in the Trenches that dance hostesses first appeared at the time of the First World War. There, Russians, Japanese, and other nationalities of women plied the bars, dancing with male customers, and earning their pay by encouraging their dance partners to buy drinks.49 What began as a marginal form of nighttime entertainment in the 1910s became ­popularised

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in the city’s foreign settlements in the 1920s, with the rise of larger cabarets such as the Ritz and the Del Monte, which employed dozens of Russian and Eurasian women to serve as hostesses and dance partners for a largely western clientele. The earliest ballrooms catering to a largely Chinese clientele hired Chinese hostesses. Only the high-class hotel and club ballrooms did not hire hostesses; in these establishments, women were expected to accompany men as guests, and elite men and women could meet and mingle. Yet owing to the economic downturn of the mid-1930s and the onset of war in 1937, in order to stay afloat, even some high-class establishments, such as the Paramount Ballroom, converted into taxi-dance halls with Chinese dance hostesses.50 Dance hostesses usually ranged in age from sixteen, the legal age limit for girls in this profession in the foreign settlements, to twenty-five, the upper limit of viability for women in a profession that strongly favoured youth. The typical hostess was in the eighteen-to-twenty age range. While Russians, Eurasians, Japanese, and many other nationalities and ethnicities of women served as dance partners in Shanghai, by the 1930s the vast majority of hostesses were Chinese. The numbers of Chinese women serving as hostesses in the city’s dance halls was probably in the hundreds by the end of the 1920s. By the end of the 1930s, women in this profession numbered in the thousands, and ten thousand would be a rough estimate of their overall numbers over any given year in the late 1930s.51 The presence of dance hostesses helped to popularise this activity for a largely male Chinese sojourner population and introduced tens of thousands of men and women to the dancing world. In this way, the employment of dance hostesses by most establishments was a leading factor behind the success of the dance industry in 1930s Shanghai. Early on, the taxi-dance industry in Shanghai established the standard that hostesses would earn 50 per cent from dance ticket sales as well as from the food and beverages purchased at tables where they were invited as guests. They also picked up generous tips from their customers. Dance hostesses accompanied the male customers both on and off the dance floor. They served both as dancing partners, teaching basic steps to neophytes, and as drinking and social companions, sitting with their customers in lounges and at tables in the clubs. Inside a typical Shanghai dance hall, the hostesses could be found sitting on neatly arrayed chairs around the edge of the dance floor, to be selected by a male customer like a commodity in a department store. It was no coincidence that all four major department stores on Nanjing Road featured spacious dance halls filled with hundreds of pretty young Chinese hostesses. These women were also available for dates and casual rendezvous outside the establishments where they worked, although different dance halls had different policies, some stricter than

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others. For example, as the American visitor Ruth Day was told in 1935, ‘at both Del Monte’s and the Majestic, the girls are taken home in motor busses after closing hours, a rule they must follow or lose their jobs’.52 On the surface, this was a glamorous world, even if it was fraught with perils for the women who entered it, as many Chinese novels, short stories, and films from the era suggest.53 Dance hostesses learned how to do all the latest dances, and they learned how to dress in the latest fashions and styles, including hairstyles that were often borrowed directly from the pages of Hollywood tabloids. They also studied how to behave in the company of men, who on the whole were older, better educated, and wealthier than they were. To be sure, some hostesses were famous for their education, and some were even high school or college graduates. Yet most women in this industry possessed little more than an elementary school education, if that.54 The young women who worked as hostesses were often recruited into the city’s dance halls from other entertainment industries in Shanghai, including the courtesan trade and the film industry, and from surrounding provincial towns and villages through a system of patronage networks that shared some similarities with the recruitment of workers into the city’s factories.55 The tendency of Shanghai’s dance halls to feature hostesses also reflects the uneven ratio of men and women in the city, with men greatly outnumbering women, particularly among the Chinese population.56 This uneven ratio was a product of the tendency of male sojourners to live and work in the city, leaving their families in their places of origin. In fact, many Chinese women who lived and laboured in Shanghai did so either as workers in the textile industry, or as prostitutes. Many young women chose to become hostesses for the prospect of earning more money than they could in other lines of work that might be available to them. For the ‘number one girls’, as they were sometimes known in English-language accounts, taxi-dancing was a very lucrative profession indeed, as the American journalist Emily Hahn notes in her book China to Me.57 During the 1930s, the dance industry arranged itself into a pyramidal hierarchy, with a small number of hostesses at the top and thousands of others working in relative anonymity. While a select minority of hostesses enjoyed celebrity status and commanded high payments for their company on and off the dance floor, most hostesses toiled in a marginal and precarious position between the service industry of the taxi-dance hall and actual sex work. As in other cities that had a high concentration of taxi-dance halls, such as Chicago, there are plenty of indications that many dance hostesses in Shanghai earned money through sexual services they provided for their clients.58 Often the boundary between sex work and romantic partnerships was a blurry one, and many stories published in newspapers and novels during the period reflect how ambiguous and even confusing

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the world of dance halls could be for both male customers and female hostesses.59 One well-known example is the story ‘Craven A’ by writer Mu Shiying. The story revolves around a dance hall hostess and her complicated relations with men, namely the protagonist of the story, a fairly well-to-do lawyer who rents his own apartment in town. The story famously begins with a description by the male protagonist of the hostess’s body as he compares various body parts and regions to an imaginary geographical landscape that explorers ‘discover’.60 As the story unfolds, the narrator takes a rather sympathetic view towards the hostess as she is abused by her peers in the dance hall. At the same time, he pursues her and brings her back to his apartment. Her own admission of her various encounters with other male customers seems to distance her from him, while making her more endearing and pitiful nonetheless. If this story reflects the actual world of dance hall romances, it was perhaps even more complicated, ambiguous, and fraught with tensions than the courtesan–customer romances of earlier times had been and which are reflected in novels such as the famous SingSong Girls of Shanghai (Hai shang hua lie zhuan) of the late Qing period.61 Beginning in 1928, mirroring the ‘flowery world’ (huaguo) contests to choose the top courtesans in the city, an annual contest was held to select the city’s ‘dance empress’ (wuguo huanghou) from among the dance hostesses.62 This contest reinforced the hierarchy of dance halls and hostesses, while also parading these women in the urban media. The desirable women who wore the empress’s crown were pursued by many powerful men, from politicians to industrialists to crime gang bosses, who vied for the pleasure of accompanying them on and off the dance floor. These ‘dancing stars’ (wuxing) also gained economic independence from their employers, as they could easily break their contract with the dance hall management and move over to other dance halls if they so desired.63 Newspapers published stories about these women, who were often featured on the covers of society magazines. While foreigners were dimly aware of these contests and the winners, this was largely a Chinese social and media world that operated to the exclusion of foreigners. Arguably, some of the practices of courting and fraternising with dance hostesses were not too dissimilar to the art of courting public Chinese women known as courtesans or sing-song girls, or later ‘social flowers’ (jiaoji hua), who had been part and parcel of Chinese urban culture in Shanghai since the late Qing Dynasty (1860s–1910s).64 Courtesans had appeared in public amusement halls, restaurants, and in opera houses and teahouses, accompanying male customers with their songs and their attention. Yet whereas courtesan houses kept the women in what amounted to a kind of indentured servitude, the dance industry encouraged far greater mobility for young Chinese women, and it is thus not surprising that many

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women from the city’s courtesan trade switched over to taxi-dancing to earn their living.65 Unlike courtesans, it was normally up to the hostess to decide for herself what sort of relationships she wished to pursue with men outside of the dance hall. In this regard, hostesses became bellwethers for ‘modern girls’ (modeng nülang) and for sexually emancipated women in Chinese society. Hostesses demarcated a new area between prostitution, stardom, and romantic love. Like the taxi-dancers of Chicago or other western metropoles, or even Tokyo, where taxi-dance halls and cafés also abounded, hostesses in Shanghai were indeed part of the sex trade.66 They used their bodies and their sexual allure to earn their pay. Whether or not they went as far as having sexual intercourse with their customers is another question. To be sure, this option was often on the table, and many women in this industry likely did become involved sexually with male customers outside the dance hall. Dance hostesses earned a negative reputation as practising a form of underground prostitution, and indeed many newspaper pundits wondered how these women could keep themselves in their furs and dresses without the generous support of men and without having to ‘submit to the whims of lusty patrons’, as the Entertainment Weekly (yule zhoubao) quipped in 1935.67 However, hostesses who worked in the city’s middle-class dance halls took pains to distinguish themselves from the streetwalking prostitutes or ‘pheasants’ (yeji), as well as from sex workers who staffed the more elegant brothels of the foreign settlements. While they did not shed their dubious reputation completely, they became icons of the modern city, filling its newspapers, magazines, and silver screens with images of their physical beauty and with stories of their often complicated relations with men, thereby creating endless fodder for dramatic tales about modern urban life.68 Similarities and even overlaps with the movie industry were prominent. In fact, the worlds of dance and film were so closely intertwined that many Chinese magazines and newspapers covered both worlds together, as titles like Dance and Film (wuying), Film and Dance Pictorial (yingwu huabao), and Film and Dance News (yingwu xinwen) exemplify. As the city’s ballrooms provided a thrilling stage for playing out the narratives of Chinese urban modernity, dance hostesses could rise to stardom. The primary examples of successful dance hostesses and another illustration of how entangled dancing was with film are the Liang sisters.69 The eldest sister, Liang Saizhen, was arguably the most famous ‘dancing star’ of 1930s Shanghai. She doubled as a film star, appearing in many Chinese movies in the 1920s and 1930s. Her second sister, Liang Saizhu, also a dancer and film star, appeared frequently in the Chinese media of 1930s Shanghai. Their two younger siblings, Saishan and Saihu, were also actors

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on the silver screen, and Saishan became a dance hostess too (twelve-yearold Saihu was too young at the time). The older sisters usually danced at the Majestic Café, but also frequented more exclusive venues such as the Paramount ballroom and the fourteenth-floor ballroom of the Park Hotel, called the Sky Terrace. As hostesses distanced themselves from prostitution and aspired to stardom, they as well as male and female patrons of dance halls could also be embroiled in romantic relationships. Romantic stories of educated young Chinese men and women meeting each other or developing feelings for each other in the city’s ballrooms flourished in the urban media, and certainly these romantic encounters must have occurred in reality as well. Mu Shiying’s early short story ‘The Man Who Was Treated as a Plaything’ (1933) is one example. In this story, the main character, Alexy, a college student who is obviously Chinese and most likely a stand-in for the author himself, falls for a young Chinese female college student named Rongzi, whom he pursues romantically. However, he observes Rongzi’s penchant for dating other men and going dancing with them in the city’s ballrooms with jealousy and eventually turns violent, suggesting that the space of the dance hall was a troubling one for men, who wished to monopolise the company of their lovers.70 The writings of Mu Shiying suggest that some elite college girls in Shanghai did go out dancing and met and mingled with their boyfriends and lovers in that world. Dancing was thus a conduit for romance among urban youths in China, much as it was in cities and towns in Europe and the United States, yet this was a relatively small population of Chinese urbanites. However, it was far more likely for a Chinese man to become involved romantically with a Chinese dance hostess, and even to marry one, as Mu himself did, than to find love in a dance hall with a female customer. Dance halls thus constituted a de facto dating and marriage market, offering male Chinese customers a wide selection of potential female Chinese partners and vice versa. While marriages between customers and hostesses did occur, more commonly the hostess entered into an arrangement with the man that conferred on her the status of a concubine or ‘second wife’ (ernai), thereby situating her between prostitution and marriage. Many stories published in Shanghai’s Chinese tabloid press suggest that hostesses sometimes ended up in such arrangements, and that they were given private apartments and bank accounts by their lovers, but not treated as the principal wife. Other stories indicate that hostesses were responsible – or perceived to be so – for breaking up marriages, or else diverting young impressionable men from marrying women deemed more appropriate to their social status.71 This was also true to an extent for western men who frequented the city’s nightspots. Men and women of social standing in the city may have met,

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mixed, mingled, and courted each other in the ballrooms and nightclubs of the city, but this was most likely within their own class, racial, and even national boundaries. Most if not all accounts of more ‘illicit’ romantic and sexual affairs in Shanghai’s nightlife arenas by or about western males tend to involve Russian or Eurasian hostesses, and not Chinese hostesses.72 Some westerners ended up marrying Russian hostesses, although it was more frequently reported that the Russian women served as de facto concubines or mistresses to men who were married to women of their own nationality or social status.73 Western men certainly danced with Chinese hostesses in the taxi-dance halls, and with women of other nationalities as well, including Koreans, Japanese, and other Asian nationalities. However, in my extensive research on this subject, I have not encountered any case where a western man ended up courting or marrying a Chinese dance hostess. Some Chinese women did speak English, and there are some scattered accounts in the newspapers of Chinese hostesses fraternising with western male customers. One notable exception is the film and dance star Beiping Li Li, or Lily Lee (1910–2002), who came close to marrying an American businessman named Gould Hunter Thomas, as both her own memoir and that of her lover indicate.74 Yet such a story was certainly unusual. If western men did engage with Chinese hostesses outside the dance halls, this was far more likely to be a fleeting sexual relationship, or a monetary transaction, rather than a romantic affair that lasted. Even if inter-racial relationships had not been frowned upon as heavily as they were during that period, there were still enormous linguistic and cultural barriers separating most Chinese women from western men, at least in the dancing world. Similarly, while Chinese men certainly danced, flirted with, and engaged in sexual relations with Russian and Eurasian hostesses – much to the shock and outrage of certain Shanghailanders who decried these women for ‘ruining the reputation of the white race in Asia’75 – I have not found any indications in my research that they courted and married these women or even treated them as concubines. The stigma of inter-racial sexual or marital relations between Europeans and Asians was quite strong, and even ‘respectable’ marriages across racial lines were rare, usually with western men marrying Asian women, and not the other way around. If romance and courtship in the city’s ballrooms and dance halls were to be found across racial boundaries, they were much more likely to be fleeting, cursory, and hidden from the public eye. Even so, in his memoir, John Pal intriguingly claims: ‘I saw, too, open marriages between foreign men and Chinese girls, not merely the clandestine affairs which a generation earlier had produced a crop of Eurasians unwanted by either side, and I stayed long enough to see Chinese cabaret girls dye their hair red, with hideous results.’76 Perhaps,

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romance between the races in the age of the Shanghai dance hall needs further investigation.

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Conclusion In a city so large, anonymous, and modern as Shanghai, where meeting people outside of one’s limited social circles was difficult, the social world of dancing that emerged in the 1930s served the people’s needs in many ways. For the hundreds of thousands of Chinese and foreign men and the smaller number of Chinese and foreign women who visited ballrooms, cabarets, or dance halls as customers, the ‘dancing world’ of Shanghai offered them the opportunity to meet, dance with, and socialise with countless other people in the big, modern metropolis. Most women who frequented this world served as hostesses in the city’s taxi-dance establishments. While some men may have taken their own lovers, mistresses, or even wives to the ballrooms, most were there to mingle with the wunü or dance hostesses, who were paid for their company. The taxi-dancers of Shanghai thus served as the backbone of the city’s dance industry, propping it up during an era when Chinese women were generally discouraged from frequenting dance halls as customers. For thousands of young Chinese women from the city and the nearby countryside, or even from the surrounding provinces, Shanghai’s taxi-dance halls offered an unparalleled opportunity for social advancement, enabling them to lead lifestyles and to earn incomes far better than what otherwise waited for them in the city’s factories or textile mills. The ballrooms of Shanghai thus set the stage for countless modern Cinderella stories, whereby young country women learned urban ways and eventually could meet a Prince Charming, who would take care of them one way or another. The reality for most of these hostesses of course was far different. While some rose to stardom in the city’s media, most women in the dance industry eked out modest livings – much of their income would likely have been sent home to their families in the countryside – or else they had to compromise their dignity and their morals in order to satisfy the carnal desires of their male customers. Even so, dance hostesses became emblematic pioneers of a new style of urban modernity for China, engaging in lifestyles and enjoying social and sexual freedoms that would have been unimaginable in their home villages, towns, and provinces. In the space of the ballroom, Chinese customers and hostesses could also mix, mingle, and fraternise with foreigners. While dancing to jazz music had started off as a foreign fad in Shanghai, by the late 1920s, Chinese and foreigners began to share the city’s dance floors, and by the 1930s, as John

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Pal notes in his memoir, they were ‘elbowing’ the foreigners off the city’s dance floors and taking them over, at least in the public perception if not in reality. In fact, the 1930s was indeed a cosmopolitan era for the city as foreigners and Chinese rubbed elbows and even embraced each other on the city’s dance floors. With the possible exception of horse and dog racetracks,77 no other social spaces in the city offered such an opportunity for Chinese and foreigners to spend time together in such close proximity and with as much excitement and fun as did the city’s ballrooms and cabarets. Nevertheless, in the context of the colonial treaty port system, which lasted until 1943, the dancing world of Shanghai did not precipitate a revolution in social relations between Chinese and foreigners. Socialisation between and among Chinese and foreigners certainly did occur in the city’s ballrooms, but a fairly wide gulf remained between the Chinese and foreign communities nonetheless. While sexual escapades – especially those between foreign men and Chinese women – were met with a wink and a nod, serious romantic relations between the races were very unusual, although there is plenty of evidence to suggest that a loosening in attitudes was occurring by the 1930s. Nevertheless, the onset of World War II in Asia in 1937, followed by the Chinese Communist Revolution of 1949, put an end to this period of experimentation. It would take another fifty years or so before Shanghai revived itself as an international city, where Chinese and foreigners could once again mix, mingle, and court on the city’s dance floors.

Notes  1 J. Pal, Shanghai Saga (London: Jarrolds, 1963), p. 231.   2 The early Republican period is also known as the ‘warlord era’ (1916–26), when military commanders and their armies were battling each other for dominance over many different regions of the country. During the 1920s, under the leadership of Sun Yat-sen (Sun Zhongshan, 1866–1925) and his self-appointed successor Chiang Kai-shek (Jiang Jieshi, 1887–1975), this period of fragmentation gave way to the Nanjing Decade (1927–37), an unstable era of Nationalist (guomindang) government control over much of the country, followed by an eightyear War of Resistance with Japan (1937–45), whose military forces occupied much of the country and set up puppet governments run by Chinese collaborators with Japan. This period also saw the birth and the astonishing wartime rise of the Chinese Communist Party or CCP, which, after a brief period of a ‘united front’ in the 1920s, became embattled in a long civil war with the Chinese Nationalists before finally overcoming them in 1949. Overall, this was a period of terrible calamities, both inside China and abroad. For general studies of China during this time period see P. Zarrow, China in War and Revolution,

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1895–1949 (London and New York: Routledge, 2005) and J. D. Spence, The Search for Modern China, 3rd edn (New York: W. W. Norton, 2013).   3 Wen-hsin Yeh, ‘Shanghai Modernity: Commerce and Culture in a Republican City’, The China Quarterly, 150 (June 1997), 375–94; A. Field, Shanghai’s Dancing World: Cabaret Culture and Urban Politics, 1919–1954 (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2010); J. Farrer and A. Field, Shanghai Nightscapes: A Nocturnal Biography of a Global City (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2015).   4 A. D. Field, ‘Building Shanghai’s Dreamworld: Architects and Elite Ballroom Designs of the 1920s and 1930s’, Built Heritage, 11:3 (2019), n.p.   5 A. Field, ‘Selling Souls in Sin City: Shanghai Singing and Dancing Hostesses in Print, Film, and Politics, 1920–1949’, in Zhang Yingjin (ed.), Cinema and Urban Culture in Shanghai, 1922–1943 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999), pp. 99–127.   6 P. G. Cressey, The Taxi-Dance Hall: A Sociological Study in Commercialized Recreation and City Life (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1932; reprinted 2008) is the classic and unsurpassed study of this institution in the United States.   7 F. Wakeman Jr and Wen-hsin Yeh, Shanghai Sojourners (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1992).   8 C. L. Garb, ‘Down in the Honkey-Tong of Jukong Road the Hoi Polloi of Shanghai got their First Taste of Cabarets’, China Press (24 December 1931).   9 See Cressey, Taxi-Dance Hall. 10 For more details on the grand national balls of Shanghai, see Field, Shanghai’s Dancing World, pp. 21–5. 11 One example is the mansion built by the Iraqi Jewish businessman Silas Aaron Hardoon. See J. Carter, Champions Day: The End of Old Shanghai (New York: W. W. Norton, 2020) for a detailed account of the Hardoons and their mansion. 12 Field, Shanghai’s Dancing World, pp. 26–9. See also ‘The Tango in Shanghai: Efforts Towards its Introduction’, North China Herald (22 November 1913), p. 591; and ‘Tango Teas for Shanghai: Innovation at the Astor House’, North China Herald (7 March 1914), p. 689. 13 See N. Clifford, Spoilt Children of Empire: Westerners in Shanghai and the Chinese Revolution of the 1920s (Hanover, NH: Middlebury Press, 1992); R. Bickers, ‘Shanghailanders: The Formation and Identity of the British Settler Community in Shanghai 1843–1937’, Past and Present, 159 (1998), 161–211. 14 P. Hibbard, The Bund Shanghai: China Faces West (Hong Kong: Airphoto International, 2007). 15 For a study of the importance of this architect in the history of Shanghai, see A. Perez, ‘Overnight at the Crossroads: Abelardo Lafuente’s Architectural Legacy for “The Hong Kong and Shanghai Hotels Ltd.” in Shanghai’, Built Heritage, 11:3 (2019), 21–33. 16 Field, ‘Building Shanghai’s Dreamworld’; ‘New Ballroom at Astor House’, North China Herald (1 December 1917); ‘New Astor House Ballroom’, North China Herald (29 December 1923).

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17 See Field, ‘Building Shanghai’s Dreamworld’, and Field, Shanghai’s Dancing World, pp. 30–3. Also see ‘Opening of the New French Club’, North China Herald (6 February 1926). 18 An ad for the Carlton with images of the dancers appears in the Shanghai Times (17 April 1917). 19 Photos of the Carlton Café orchestra in 1921 may be found on the website of Xavier University of Louisiana Library Digital Archives & Collections (https:// xula.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p16948coll9/id/170/). 20 Shanghai Times (9 May 1919), p. 7. 21 Hibbard, The Bund Shanghai, p. 213; ‘Mr. “Louie” Ladow’, North China Herald (24 November 1928), p. 311. 22 When the Japanese military invaded the Philippines, Whitey was placed in a Japanese-run prison camp, as were many other jazz musicians from the USA who remained in Asia during the war years. See W. Smith, I Didn’t Make a Million (Manila: Philippine Education, 1956; republished by Earnshaw Books, 2017). 23 For example, see ads for Café Parisien in the Shanghai Gazette (17 November 1919) and in the Shanghai Times (15 September 1919); for Astor House, see Shanghai Times (26 September 1919), advertising a ‘special engagement of San Francisco’s famous “Jazz” orchestra’. 24 See ad for Victor Records in Shanghai Times (22 March 1921). 25 Ads for Mumm’s Café began to appear in 1926. See, for example, China Press (3 July 1926), p. 13. 26 For biographical information about Ermoll, see the website strangeblackbox. net, curated by Ermoll’s granddaughter, Tatiana Pentes. On the impact of Russian exiles on Shanghai’s musical life, see M. Ristaino, Port of Last Resort: The Diaspora Communities of Shanghai (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002); Hon-lun Yang, ‘The Shanghai Conservatory, Chinese Musical Life, and the Russian Diaspora, 1927–1949’, Twentieth-Century China, 37:1 (2012), 73–95. 27 Smith, I Didn’t Make a Million, pp. 22–5. 28 Smith mentions the recording of these songs in his memoir. See Smith, I Didn’t Make a Million, pp. 96–7. I uploaded these recordings onto YouTube. 29 This is the number of articles that I found using the online Chinese newspaper and magazine collection of the Shanghai Municipal Library (quanguo baokan suoyin). 30 Lin Liang, ‘Dahua fandian fuwu kuanghuan dadan weiyi’ (Wild Christmas Dance Party until Dawn at the Majestic Hotel), Zhongguo sheying xuehui huabao, 4:171 (1928), 2. 31 Field, Shanghai’s Dancing World, pp. 63–82. 32 Zhou Shoujuan (ed.), Wuxing Yanying (Dance Hall Beauties) (Shanghai: n. pub., 1928). 33 See ‘Jinwu yundong zhi xianzai yu jianglai’ (The Present and Future of the Movement to Ban Dancing), Beiyang Huabao (Peiyang Pictorial), 94 (1927), 1. 34 D. Ko, Cinderella’s Sisters: A Revisionist History of Footbinding (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005).

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35 For studies of cinema and cinematic depictions of nightlife in 1930s Shanghai, see particularly Field, ‘Selling Souls in Sin City’. See also Yingjin (ed.), Cinema and Urban Culture in Shanghai; and Zhang Zhen, An Amorous History of the Silver Screen: Shanghai Cinema, 1896–1937 (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2006). 36 For more information on dance academies, see Field, Shanghai’s Dancing World, pp. 160–2, 263–4. 37 See Field, Shanghai’s Dancing World, pp. 73–4. Their story was published in the tabloid journal Robin Hood (luobinhan), on 8 May and 7 July 1928. 38 Shanghai historian Tess Johnston has shown me a St John’s University yearbook from 1927, which contains some information on the ballroom dance parties that students at this prestigious university held then. 39 Field, Shanghai’s Dancing World, p. 161. 40 See C. Yeh, ‘Creating a Shanghainese Identity: Late Qing Courtesan Handbooks and the Formation of a New Citizen’, in Tao Tao Liu and D. Faure (eds), Unity and Diversity: Local Cultures and Identities in China (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1996), pp. 107–23. For a more comprehensive study of Late Qing courtesan culture in Shanghai, see C. Vance Yeh, Shanghai Love: Courtesans, Intellectuals, and Entertainment Culture, 1850–1910 (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 2006). 41 Field, Shanghai’s Dancing World, pp. 160–2. One example is the guidebook by Wang Dingjiu, Key to Shanghai (Shanghai menjing), published in 1932, which included a long section on dance halls and how to court dance hostesses, such as by giving them small gifts. 42 For a study of Li Jinhui, see A. Jones, Yellow Music: Media Culture and Colonial Modernity in the Chinese Jazz Age (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001). 43 On May Fourth era literature, see M. Goldman, Modern Chinese Literature in the May Fourth Era (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977); E.  Widmer and D. Der-wei Wang (eds), From May Fourth to June Fourth: Fiction and Film in Twentieth Century China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993). For studies of modernist literature in Shanghai, see L.  Lee, Shanghai Modern: The Flowering of a New Urban Culture in China, 1930–1945 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999); Shu-mei Shih, The Lure of the Modern: Writing Modernism in Semicolonial China, 1 ­ 917–1937 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2001). 44 See A. D. Field, Mu Shiying: China’s Lost Modernist (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2014). 45 Field, ‘Building Shanghai’s Dreamworld’. 46 For a study of Shanghai’s modern department stores, see W. K. K. Chan, ‘Selling Goods and Promoting a New Commercial Culture: The Four Department Stores on Nanjing Road, 1917–1937’, in S. Cochran (ed.), Inventing Nanjing Road: Commercial Culture in Shanghai, 1900–1945 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999), pp. 19–36. The Paradise Ballroom produced its own magazine showcasing its opening in 1936: Daxin Wuting Kaimu Jinian Tekan (Shanghai, 1936).

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47 Field, ‘Building Shanghai’s Dreamworld’; Field, Shanghai’s Dancing World, pp. 97–104, 110–17. A period Chinese architecture journal documents the Metropole Gardens Ballroom and the Paramount Ballroom: ‘Bailemen zhi juexing’, Zhongguo Jianzhu (The Chinese Architect), 2:1 (1934), 1–34; and Jianzhu Yuekan (Architecture Monthly) (1937), 1–23. 48 E. L. Booker, News Is My Job: A Correspondent in War-torn China (New York: MacMillan, 1940), pp. 25–6. 49 For another account of the formation of the nightlife zone known as the Trenches, see O. Ottimer, ‘Shanghai’s Cabarets, From Humble Beginnings’, China Press (7 August 1927). 50 See Field, Shanghai’s Dancing World, pp. 179–81. 51 For statistics on numbers, ages, and native place origins of dance hostesses in Shanghai during the 1930s and 1940s, see the Appendices in Field, Shanghai’s Dancing World. Archival sources from the Japanese occupation era indicate that in the International Settlement alone, between 1,000 and 1,500 women served as dance hostesses at any given month in the years 1941–42. 52 R. Day, Shanghai 1935 (Claremont, CA: Saunders Studio Press, 1936; reprinted in 2020 by Earnshaw Books), pp. 50–1. 53 In addition to the above sources, see Field, ‘Selling Souls in Sin City’ and Field, Mu Shiying. Mu Shiying probably penned more short stories featuring dance hostesses than any other Chinese writer of short fiction during that era. Other novelists, such as the popular writer Bao Tianxiao, also wrote novels about these women and their relationships with men. 54 Archival sources suggest that most dance hostesses possessed at least an elementary education. See Field, Shanghai’s Dancing World, p. 301. 55 For an account of the system whereby dance hostesses were recruited from Shanghai’s hinterlands, see Booker, News Is My Job, pp. 236–8; for recruitment of women into factories in Shanghai, see E. Honig, Sisters and Strangers: Women in the Shanghai Cotton Mills, 1919–1949 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992). 56 According to Wakeman and Yeh, in the early 1930s, the male-to-female ratio was 142 to 100. See Wakeman and Yeh, Shanghai Sojourners, p. 4. 57 E. Hahn, China to Me (London: Virago, [1944] 1987), pp. 74–7. 58 See Cressey, Taxi-Dance Hall; also see K. Mumford, Interzones: Black/White Sex Districts in Chicago and New York in the Early Twentieth Century (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997). 59 See A. D. Field, ‘Dancing in the Maelstrom of Chinese Modernity: Jazz-Age Shanghai Cabarets as Sexual Contact Zones in Fact and Fiction’, Intersections, 31 (December 2012); A. D. Field and J. Farrer, ‘From Interzone to Transzone: Race and Sex in the Contact Zones of Shanghai’s Global Nightlife’, Intersections, 31 (December 2012). 60 For analyses by literary scholars of this famous passage in ‘Craven A’, see Lee, Shanghai Modern, pp. 215–16 and Shu-mei Shih, The Lure of the Modern, pp.  318–20. See Field, Mu Shiying for a translation of the entire story into English.

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61 See A. Field, ‘The Shanghai Lady, 1880s–1990s: A Fictional Figure Adrift in the Maelstrom of Chinese Modernity’, in L. Bernstein and C. Cheng (eds), Revealing/Reveiling Shanghai: Cultural Representations from the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2020); The Sing-Song Girls of Shanghai (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007) is a full translation of the original novel by Han Bangqing into English. 62 Field, Shanghai’s Dancing World, pp. 57–8, 140–6. 63 Ibid., pp. 133–5. 64 For studies of courtesan culture in late Qing and Republican Shanghai, see C. Henriot, Prostitution and Sexuality in Shanghai: A Social History, 1849–1949 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); G. Hershatter, Dangerous Pleasures: Prostitution and Modernity in Twentieth-Century Shanghai (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1997); and Yeh, Shanghai Love. 65 Field, Shanghai’s Dancing World, pp. 130–2. 66 See Cressey, Taxi-Dance Hall, for Chicago, and for Tokyo E. Taylor Atkins, Blue Nippon: Authenticating Jazz in Japan (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001). 67 Quoted in Field, Shanghai’s Dancing World, p. 137. 68 See Field, Shanghai’s Dancing World, pp. 119–151. Also see Field, ‘Dancing in the Maelstrom’. 69 Field, Shanghai’s Dancing World, pp. 124–8. 70 Ibid.; Field, ‘The Shanghai Lady’. 71 Examples from newspapers and novels abound. See Field, Shanghai’s Dancing World, pp. 146–50; Field, ‘Selling Souls in Sin City’; Field, Mu Shiying; and Field, ‘Dancing in the Maelstrom’ for examples. 72 One notable exception is Ralph Shaw, author of the memoir Sin City, who writes of his romantic involvement with a Korean hostess in Shanghai. See Field, ‘Dancing in the Maelstrom’. 73 One example is an article written by the famous journalist Edgar Snow, ‘The Americans in Shanghai’, American Mercury, 20 (August 1930), 437–45. Snow writes about the prevalence of Russian women in the city’s cabaret or dance hall industry, and he notes that while some American or British men married Russian women, most preferred to keep them as mistresses and lovers, since ‘odium’ attached itself to marrying out of one’s class and social standing. 74 Li Li, wu wo fengyue sanshi nian (Misunderstood in the 1930s) (Taipei: Shiying, 2010); G. H. Thomas, An American in China, 1936–1939: A Memoir (New York: Greatrix Press, 2004). 75 See North China Herald (1 February 1921). 76 J. Pal, Shanghai Saga, p. 231. 77 For a comprehensive account of horse racing in Shanghai during this era, see Carter, Champions Day.

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Dancing through dictatorship: everyday practices and affective experiences of social dancing in Fascist Italy Kate Ferris After the Second World War, personal recollections of the interwar years were often quick to depict social dancing as either, and sometimes both, absent from and antithetical to the Italian Fascist regime. For example, in oral testimony collated as part of an investigation into Italian popular cultural practices between the interwar and post-war periods, two interviewees from Turin, Mario and Roberto, tied their experiences of social dancing as a practice and phenomenon to the end of the dictatorship, chronologically and politically: And then everybody danced … The bombing had smashed a lot of things and there was rubble everywhere in front of us, all broken, open space. You could even see across to the opposite block, do you remember? In Via Principe Amadeo. In a number of places that had been flattened, or that they had made flat afterwards, for example in Via Po, in Via Montebello behind the RAI, they organized dancing evenings. Everyone was so happy to get back to having this that no-one made a fuss, no-one said: ‘Be home by such and such a time tonight.’ And from there these dancing places started to spring up. But I think that the first ‘working-class’ dance halls, so to speak, if I remember right, started in the political party clubs, above all in Communist ones where we learned to dance.1

In this narrative, dance halls and social dancing were depicted as emerging literally from the rubble of bombed-out Italian cities, and thus associated with two key political-cultural influences (themselves often seen as antithetical) of the immediate post-war period: Americanisation and notions of ‘American liberty’; and communism. However, whilst Roberto and Mario remembered dancing and dance halls as a post-war phenomenon in Italy, perhaps because, born in the 1930s, this was when they came of age and starting dancing themselves, of course it was not exclusively so.2 Italians, including fascists, danced during the interwar dictatorship. Indeed, by 1933, dancing had become an industry. Balere or sale da ballo, categorised by the Società Italiana Autori e Editori (SIAE: Italian

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Society of Authors and Editors) alongside fairs, circuses, amusement-parks and open-air events, accounted for 10.22 per cent of all public expenditure on commercial entertainments in 1936, exceeded only by spending on cinema- and theatre-going, rising to 11.5 per cent in 1937/38.3 Whilst expenditure on dance halls clearly increased in the post war years  – ­spending in 1950 was double what it had been in 1936 – in percentage terms it remained roughly commensurate with the pre-war figures, and indeed was slightly lower, at just below the 10 per cent mark rather than just above.4 In September 1939, annual ticket sales in sale da ballo totalled almost 56 million lire, while the income from music licensing to dance halls amounted to 45 million lire, according to contemporary SIAE statistics.5 Early dance venues and nightclubs in Italy were established as individual commercial-cultural enterprises in the major industrial cities of the centrenorth and in its coastal resorts, including the Sala Gay in Turin (from 1931 host to radio broadcast dances), the Pincio-Dancing Bar in Rome, and the Dancing Rubicone near Rimini.6 Indeed, in this period, dubbed Italy’s era dei ritmi (rhythm era), many smaller, provincial cities also had dedicated dance halls, that is venues specifically intended for staging social dancing, run by local entrepreneurs. The provincial Piedmontese city of Vercelli, for example, was home to three dance halls, the Dancing Club Italia, active from 1921, joined during the 1930s by the Sala Moderna and the Estivo.7 In addition, and in places where no dedicated dance hall yet existed, hotel ballrooms, rooms in political and social clubs and other recreational venues, as well as open-air gardens and squares, frequently transformed into temporary stages for social dancing. Maria Damerini, who moved in the social circles of Venice’s fashionable elite and was married to the editor of one of city’s two newspapers, declared in her diary-cum-memoir of Venice’s ‘roaring years’ (by which she intended the late 1920s to the end of the 1930s) that ‘during the 1930s we danced and would have danced always and everywhere’.8 Whilst Maria and her friends danced, or would have, ‘always and everywhere’, they did so in an environment shaped by ambivalent regimeled policies and discourses towards dance. As with many popular social and cultural practices of the interwar years, the fascist regime exhibited ­vacillating attitudes towards social dancing. Certainly, many fascist party officials queued up to follow church leaders’ evocations of moral panic at the ‘ballomania’ – together with ‘danzomania’, the Italian for ‘dance craze’  – they saw sweeping Italy’s northern cities in the 1930s, coming together to decry social dancing as un-Catholic, un-Italian and therefore ‘un-fascist’. As elsewhere, such discourses were heavily gendered and tied to assumptions about ‘moral hygiene’, exoticism, race and empire.

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However, at the same time, fascists danced and facilitated other Italians to dance. The network of Opera Nazionale Dopolavoro centres (fascist afterwork organisation, OND), located in every Italian town and neighbourhood, were habitual venues for weekend dances; veglie and feste whose principal entertainment was couple dancing were seen as key moneyraising and propaganda-disseminating occasions for local PNF (National Fascist Party) sections. This ‘continual oscillation between authorisation and prohibition’ is emphasised by Anna Tonelli in E ballando ballando, the most comprehensive of the very few histories of social dancing in Italy, alongside the ­importance of locating this history within the wider ‘politics of free time’ under the fascist regime.9 As Victoria de Grazia found with respect to the aims, policies and practices of the OND more broadly, social dancing provided the dictatorship with dual – and interlinked – opportunities to, on the one hand, meet Italians’ growing expectations and ‘legitimate leisure needs’, and thus demonstrate the regime’s benevolence and elicit support, and, on the other, to monitor and direct Italians’ comportment. For Tonelli, fascist attitudes, discourses and policies with respect to dancing were shaped by three key elements: the influence of the Catholic Church and its moralising opposition to ballomania, born of perceptions of dancing as sexually and bodily immodest and of fears that Saturday night dancing would hamper church attendance on Sundays; the regime’s rejection, especially in the 1930s, of bourgeois habits and customs as ‘easy and superficial hedonisms’, among which it included social dancing; and its nationalistic, racist and xenophobic railing, again increased in the 1930s, against ‘foreign influences’, including ‘exotic dances’, as part of the regime’s autarky drive, in cultural as well as in economic and political spheres.10 This chapter seeks to build on the work of Tonelli and other historiographical references to social dancing in Fascist Italy, by focusing primarily on the social practices, lived realities and affective experiences of dancing during fascist dictatorial rule in interwar Italy (1922–40). In the first section, the chapter explores regime policy and regime-led practices with respect to social dancing, detailing the inconsistent, patchwork nature of the implementation of official policy as this was transmitted from the centre of power in Rome to the localities in which fascism was effectively enacted, as well as the varied conduct of fascists in their own dancing practices. The second section shifts focus to concentrate on how Italians understood and depicted their own attitudes and practices with respect to dancing, using contemporary diaries, letters and memoirs to ask how, to what, where and why did Italians actually dance?11

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‘Che lascino ballare, per carita!’12: fascist policies on social dancing Outpourings of so-called moral panic, often spearheaded by religious authorities, and inflected with anxieties around supposed transgressions of behavioural norms connected to gender, race and sexuality, are all too familiar to historians of social dancing. It is therefore unsurprising that in Fascist Italy too, the interwar ballomania was greeted with outraged public pronouncements by leading figures in the Catholic Church. The Archbishop of Cremona, for example, in a 1934 pastoral letter expressed concern for ‘this habitual immodest display of the female figure [that] increasingly stimulates and goads in men, particularly young men, the base instinct of sexuality, and causes them to lose the idea of the woman’s dignity, respect for her virtue and the chaste cult of her beauty’.13 The Patriarch of Venice expressed his disdain for the ‘immorality’ of organised dances alongside similar derision for theatrical spectacles and sporting events, outlining a specific fear for young Italians whose dancing caused them to dress, as well as to behave, in ‘antichristian’ ways.14 Writing in La Settimana Religiosa in January 1935, he clarified that the church was not opposed to dancing per se, but rather to what he called ‘that promiscuous dancing, which is often practised today, with such evident risk to the soul’, specifying further, ‘that dance, which takes its names and gestures from savage peoples.’15 Religious denouncements of dancing as immoral found echo in fascist discourse, centring particularly on allied notions of ‘moral hygiene’ and an imagined female archetype, the ‘crisis woman’.16 With respect to ‘moral hygiene’ and discourse which tied individual bodies and physical health to the collective and metaphorical health of the nation, activities and behaviours considered morally and socially degenerate were understood as an affront to the ‘hygiene of the nation’ and an impediment to Italy’s attainment of great power status and its justification for empire. As the journal Civiltà Fascista put it, ‘one doesn’t create a great people with “danzomania”’.17 Fascist discourse on the ‘crisis woman’, which emerged in 1931 and reached a peak in 1933, pitched an imagined ‘dangerous type of well-to-do modern woman with an extremely thin and consequently sterile body that purportedly confirmed her cosmopolitan, non-domestic, non-maternal and non-fascist interests’18 against her opposite, the equally-imagined ‘authentic’ or maternal woman, who was ‘national, rural, floridly robust, tranquil and prolific’.19 In images that circulated widely in the press and in popular song, thin, fashionably-clothed, childfree, cosmopolitan inhabitants of Italy’s industrialised northern cities were depicted working outside the home and spending their leisure time engaging in ultra-fashionable and apparently foreign-derived activities like golf, tennis and dancing – to foreign music – in city hotels, nightclubs and cabarets. The ‘crisis woman’ effectively

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f­ unctioned as a scapegoat onto whom the regime heaped responsibility for a declining national birth-rate, deemed essential to reverse in order to provide the numerous and rising population that would both justify and furnish the means for Fascist Italy to be an imperial power on the European and world stage. Moreover, she was emblematic of the threat posed by modernity in general, and apparently ‘liberated’ women in particular, to the nationalfascist project.20 As Augusto Turati, general secretary of the Fascist Party (1926–30), told female pupils at a domestic economy school in Rome, ‘women must be removed from the dance hall, by any means.’21 Whilst fascist rhetoric focused on the incompatibility of social dancing with being a ‘new fascist woman’, it also envisaged dancing as discordant with idealised fascist masculinity. As part of its efforts to curate the image of the Duce transmitted to the Italian population, the Ufficio Stampa instructed the national press that Mussolini should never be depicted engaging in such a ‘non virile’ activity as dancing.22 Nevertheless, Mussolini was known to dance and, in direct contrast to the press instructions, regime supporters’ depictions of him dancing presented this as evidence of his virility and masculinity: according to one hagiographical contemporary biographer, as a young (and still socialist) man, Mussolini ‘danced in farm courtyards, in taverns, in parvises, with a young buck’s frenzy’.23 Similarly, in Sicily in the summer of 1937, Giuseppe Bottai, then Minister for National Education, observed the Duce ‘in Gela during a meal in the rotunda of a beach resort, danc[ing] to an orchestra’, describing him as ‘quick and lively; broadchested, everything directed at demonstrating his youthfulness’.24 Beyond discourses which intersected ideas about race, gender, sexuality, religion and morality, the actual policies and practices implemented by the fascist regime, and by individual fascists, facilitated dancing whilst also seeking to monitor and regulate dancers’ conduct and dancing spaces. ‘Public dances’, that is, ‘those dancing entertainments that take place in the open air, in cafés, taverns, theatres, recreation halls, and in general are open to the public, whether admitted freely or via the payment of a fixed fee’, came under the purview of the Public Security division of the Interior Ministry; licensing of dance halls and individual dance events was devolved to local Public Security agents in prefectures and police headquarters.25 During the fascist ventennio, dances were legislated by Public Security laws, which in 1926 introduced respect for ‘public decency’ alongside the policing of ‘morality’ and ‘public order’. From 1931, the laws specified that public dances should be banned in cases which ‘praise vice’; where ‘the masses are incited to disregard the law’; display conduct ‘contrary to national or religious sentiments’; ‘offend the constitutive principles of the family’; or in which ‘for particular circumstances of time, place or personnel’ the dance was rendered ‘damaging or dangerous to the public’. In addition, children

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under sixteen years of age were forbidden from being ‘employed in dance halls’.26 Both at the centre of power in Rome and in the provinces where diktats on dancing were put into effect, the ‘actually-existing’ attitudes and practices displayed and enacted by fascists show an understanding of social dancing as a practice that was well established in Italian leisured life, especially in the north, but also as one that warranted close observation. For example, a memo prepared in June 1925 by the Chief of Police for the Interior Ministry articulates the interplay of morality and public order concerns, recognition of the popularity of dancing among sectors of the population, its importance as a cultural-commercial enterprise, and its connection to tourism and Italy’s reputation abroad, all of which fed into the construction of regime policy. In response to pressure being directed at the Under-secretary to suspend public dance licences over the summer, ‘for hygienic, moral and public order reasons’, the Chief of Police observed that his own Public Security agents, required to be present at all licensed dance events, carried out ‘strict and assiduous vigilance in dance halls, as in any other public meeting place’ in order ‘to safeguard order, but also to prevent and repress behaviour or actions which might offend moral and public decency on the part of the clientele’.27 At the same time, the Police Chief pointed out that suspending dance licences (which in any case was not in the remit of the Interior Ministry) would be an exceptional and unwarranted measure, acknowledging the fiscal value of dancing licences to the Italian treasury. He pointed to the importance of not giving rise to the impression internally and, especially, abroad that the country ‘might be in the grip of turbulence or that serious illnesses may be spreading here’, nor of giving rise to discontent among dance-loving populations in northern Italy who were judged ‘fervent adherents to the National Government’. Dancing was thus presented as normative and stabilising; continuing to hold public dances over the summer was deemed important for maintaining public support at a crucial juncture in the establishment of the regime’s dictatorial apparatus and for maintaining appearances abroad. Notably, this view found echo at the Interior Ministry: in a hand-written note at the end of the memorandum, the Private Secretary to the Interior Minister observed, ‘let them dance, for pity’s sake!’28 The issuing of licences for dance events, including tea dances and dance schools, was a useful revenue source for the Italian treasury. Tariffs on different venues varied according to their size, location and turnover: licensed premises (including cafés and osterie) with net revenues below 3,000 lire paid L.2 for a one-off licence and L.35 for a monthly licence, whilst hotels categorised in the luxury bracket paid L.3,600 per month, or L.360 for one day.29 However, when vigilance policies, the licensing system and tariffs

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were actually implemented these could deviate from official, centrally prescribed policy. It was local representatives of the fascist state who were tasked with actually putting into effect the policies and intended modes of comportment that emanated from Mussolini and the fascists at the centre of government in Rome. These ‘local practitioners of fascism’ – fascio leaders and militiamen, civil servants and police officers, among others  – might interpret and effectuate state policy differently to that intended, inconsistently, and sometimes incoherently.30 With respect to implementing fascist policies on dancing, for example, despite the Police Chief’s repeated instructions down the chain of command to effect ‘severe and assiduous vigilance’ of dance halls, the SIAE, the body which collected ‘performance’ fees on behalf of writers, composers and music publishers, maintained that ‘the Carabinieri do nothing more than pass by, take a quick look and move on’.31 Similarly, the Public Security archives contain multiple references to the staging of ‘impromptu’ dances, mostly in small provincial and rural venues like taverns, farmhouses and clubhouses, which effectively operated outside the state’s reach in terms of both licensing and surveillance. Indeed, in 1927, the Interior Ministry determined that impromptu dances of hotel clients no longer required local authority permission, and in 1929 followed suit with ‘impromptu dances in the countryside, in agrarian taverns and farmhouses etc.’32 Attitudes and conduct at the dances held in OND centres and case del fascio, the local fascist party headquarters that were located, and often purpose built, in village, town and city neighbourhoods, could vary considerably. At opposing ends of the spectrum were the fascists of Pavia and of Fontanelice, near Bologna. The ‘old fascists’ of Pavia, in a letter written to Mussolini in March 1929, depicted social dancing as ‘peaceful’, ‘moral’ and ‘pure’: The DANCE has always, and continues to be, the only and exclusive pastime that hard-working peasants in small villages have, on feast days; this peaceful entertainment […] is the most pure, the most moral.33

By contrast, in Fontanelice, a dance held in the local fascist headquarters on the night of 23 January 1934 and organised by ‘personal friends’ of the man who served as both mayor and secretary of the local fascio, got so out of hand it resulted in him being forced to resign. The first part of the dance drew complaints of vulgarity (swearing and the use of graphic sexual language and gestures) and immodesty, the latter directed principally at the female dancers, who were indicted for wearing revealing ‘backless’ dresses and engaging in dance moves ‘so that the delicate garments lifted up, revealing the female dancers’ legs up to their thighs’. The second half of the dance which, following dinner, commenced after one o’clock in the

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morning, drew accusations of the commission of ‘obscene acts’ – the Police Commissioner charged with investigating the event could not bring himself to describe them in detail – such that ‘the casa del Fascio was transformed into a lively Bacchic locale’. To add further insult, the casa del fascio had not applied for a dance licence for the event.34 By the end of the 1930s, the spread of dance halls and social dancing venues, along with the heightened prospect of European war, pushed the regime towards increased regulation and control of dancing and dancing spaces, even before Italy’s entry to the hostilities in June 1940. Following the – in the end temporary – announcement of the closure of dance halls in September 1939, from November all theatres, cinemas and other public performance venues, including dance halls, were instead ordered by the Interior Ministry to close at midnight.35 The limits placed on dancing spaces’ opening hours left those who worked in them, especially musicians, dance hall managers and publicans, ‘impoverished’ and their industry in ‘grave crisis’, according to the fascist syndicates representing business owners and industrial workers.36 The tightening of opening hours was matched by a similar ‘purge’ of comportment in cabarets and dance halls, inspired by the desire to eliminate ‘illicit activities’ and make these places of ‘honest, healthy and good amusement’.37

‘I didn’t know any [card] games, but I knew all the dances’: social practices of dancing during the dictatorship Shifting focus to examine Italians’ dancing practices from the ‘bottom up’, we find considerable variation and flexibility. The following section utilises Italians’ own accounts of their dancing practices, documented in contemporary diaries and memoirs, in order to ask when, who, where and why Italians danced during the fascist dictatorship.

When Overwhelmingly, social dancing was a practice associated with the weekend. F. B., whose family transferred with his father’s police job from Florence to Palermo, recalled being invited by their new neighbours, ‘the C. family’, to dance at their house one Saturday evening: ‘after the first time … the Saturday evening dance, especially in the winter season, became a wonderful and dear custom’.38 As already mentioned, in the absence of dedicated dance halls and nightclubs outside the principal cities, case del fascio and local Dopolavoro centres often transformed into temporary dance venues at the weekend. The noted fascist journalist Ugo Ojetti was told by residents

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on his 1933 visit to the fascist new town Littoria that ‘on Sundays, there is dancing. Dancing is free from three till six at the Dopolavoro, and it costs L.4 at the Cinematografo. Of course, only men pay.’39 For some, dancing was connected to the social ‘season’ and holidays, and therefore to the summer months. Hotels in seaside resorts staged daily and nightly dances during the summer, whilst dancers in the peninsula’s interior cities, towns and villages danced in venues with gardens and other open-air locations. Documentation on licensing arrangements for dance teachers suggest that the developing coastal resorts were frequently spaces in which people learned how to dance. They were evidently also spaces in which – at least in the view of Public Security authorities – people would have to learn how to conduct themselves while dancing: in Rimini in 1933 the Police Commissioner responsible for public security outlawed entry into ‘licensed premises and locales for public entertainment and reception [as well as on the city’s streets] in bathing suits, robes and pyjamas’.40 Maria Damerini, the newspaper editor’s wife who moved in Venice’s elite social circles, recognised the seasonal rhythms – set by both tourist cycles and the Venetian social season – which shaped how, where and when she danced. During the ‘season’, Damerini pointed out, the summer residences of international celebrity visitors to the city – Cole Porter’s rented palace in the mid-1920s, Barbara Hutton’s in the early 1930s – became venues for dancing as did the city’s most exclusive hotels: ‘in the summer, we danced at the Excelsior on the Lido’; ‘in Venice, in the summer, we danced on the roof at the [Hotel] Danieli or at [Hotel] Martini’.41 The arrival of winter did not necessarily signal a pause in dancing, though it often implied a change of venue. Damerini’s dancing moved downstairs from the Hotel Danieli’s roof to its sumptuous ballroom whilst in Vercelli, local dancers switched from the open-air Estivo to one of the city’s two indoor dance halls, the Dancing Italia or the Sala Moderna.42 Indeed, in some areas, particularly in agricultural communities, it was more common to dance during the colder, darker months. F. B., the policeman’s son in Palermo, specified it was ‘especially in the winter season’ that the weekly dances at the neighbours’ home became ‘a wonderful and dear custom’.43 Similarly, G. D., then a young boy living in a small and very poor agricultural community inland from Palermo, recalled how ‘in winter, one of the farmers who had a gramophone and a few discs’ would invite in his neighbours, and ‘the old people danced the waltz and us youngsters tried to dance the tango’.44 In addition, the activities and rites associated with the festival of Carnival included social dances. As Maria Damerini recalled, the Cavalchina ball at the Fenice opera house was the festival’s highlight for ‘everyone’, whilst AdP’s diary entry for 2 March 1927 records the ‘joyfulness’ of ‘the dance halls’ during Florence’s Carnival celebrations, just

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passed: ‘The cries and sounds continued until late, the continual passing-by of elegant masks, and the festive spree of the dance.’45 In the late 1850s, on the eve of Italian unification, legislation in Rimini, Milan and other Italian regions outlawed the granting of dance licences during key religious festivals, most notably Lent. Although no longer prohibited by law during fascist rule, church hostility to dancing during Lent persisted. In 1933, the Cardinal Archbishop of Florence refused to carry out the usual round of Easter blessings to ‘those locales where dancing was regularly held also during the period of Lent’. Despite pressure placed by the Florentine fascist party secretary on the Archbishop to withdraw this interdiction given that it threatened many local fascist headquarters in the region, which had staged dances during Lent, the Archbishop relented only partially, upholding the withdrawal of the Easter blessing ‘for the Fascio headquarters where dances had been held regularly’ and according blessings on those ‘where dancing had taken place only exceptionally’.46 In addition, though not backed by legislation, church leaders voiced opposition to Saturday night dances that lasted ‘until dawn’, owing to fears that this reduced attendance at Sunday mass.47 The diaries and memoirs examined for this chapter reveal differing attitudes towards the mingling of dancing with religious feast days and observance, even within the same family. For example, E. B., whose pious bourgeois Palermo family kept a small shrine at home and celebrated the Feast of the Cross on 3 May there with ‘friends and relatives, old and young’, recalled that, After the prayers, us youngsters went to dance in another room, to a gramophone. The tango, slow, fox-trot, waltz and even the ‘carioca’, which had been recently imported from Latin America, were in fashion. My father really didn’t like that a day of prayer should give way to dancing and balls, but he resigned himself for our happiness.48

Who Undoubtedly, young Italians were the most prolific dancers. Certainly, as the ballomania crisis was framed both by fascist officials and religious authorities, young people and (especially bourgeois) women were identified as the groups most culpable and at risk of the ‘moral degeneration’ and ‘danger to fascism’ wrought by dancing. However, as Maria Damerini, F. B., G. D. and E. B.’s memoirs all indicate, social dancing was not only an activity practised by people of differing ages but indeed brought together different generations in the same spaces, whether the hotel and grand palace ballrooms of Damerini’s Venice or the more modest family settings of G. D.’s and F.  B.’s memories. Indeed, for F. B., G. D. and E. B., because it took



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place in domestic settings, dancing was an activity practised en famille.49 In  F. B.’s neighbours’ home, ‘there were many guests, and with small children following them’. The dancing continued ‘until dawn’; when the ­children ‘who participated in the party actively and loudly, with resounding joy insisting on joining in the grown-ups’ dancing and on dancing … amongst themselves, clinging to their mothers’ petticoats or their fathers’ trousers, at a certain point collapsed one by one, almost simultaneously’ from tiredness, the hostess, Signora C., ‘authoritatively intervened’: She opened the glass doors to the bedroom in which the half-dismantled furniture from the entrance hall had already been placed, and with the help of the firm arms of the adults, one, two, three, up to more than ten, little sleeping bundles were gently lined up on the double bed.50

That said, in their memoirs, all indicate ways in which, even within multigenerational settings, dancers marked out distinctions in comportment corresponding to age and/or family relational role. For Damerini, ‘we danced more frequently at young people’s homes’ and, in particular, often in distinct spaces (private apartments), to discs rather than orchestras, and with fewer rigid social constraints: ‘No longer orchestras, but discs; no more manservants dressed in black or black ascari [Eritrean soldiers] (at Volpi’s) dressed in white, nor top and tails and fabulous get-ups, but still always elegance, great cuisine and sparkling wine.’51 E. B. pointed to a generational or relational distinction in her father’s unease at the prospect of dancing on a religious feast day, and G. D. indicated discrepancies in dance styles dictated by age: the older dancers danced the waltz whilst the younger dancers attempted to tango.52 Meanwhile, F. B. detailed the specific opportunities for physical intimacy that the adolescents (particularly the male adolescents) present at the Saturday evening dances took up and, indeed, imposed: The youngsters clutched one another, rubbed against one another, crumpled, fornicated as much as it was allowed to fornicate in those days. The males went into ecstasy during the tango, forcing their knee to insert their right leg between the thighs of the female dancer in the various ways that this particular dance, especially suited to this aim, allowed one to indulge in.53

Where Dancing was subjected to the same apparatus of state regulation and control as other forms of leisure practice and, as such, came under the purview of the OND from its establishment in 1926/27. To this end, the question as to where people danced during the dictatorship finds its answer very often in spaces established and managed by the regime itself. As the Public Security

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police investigation in Fontanelice laid bare, case del fascio were often used as venues for weekend and evening dances, as were local OND centres, similarly established across neighbourhoods and districts. Many of these dances were staged by or on behalf of the local fascio or OND for political and financial gain. They were recognised as valuable money-making and propaganda-disseminating occasions for local fascist party sections. They tended to follow a formulaic format; billed as ‘tricolour ball[s]’, ‘Blackshirt gala[s]’ and ‘feste del fascio’, the dances were bookended or interspersed with political speeches and songs, and the playing of fascistapproved hymns, with entrance fees often going to the local fascio or an associated cause.54 Historians of leisure in Fascist Italy have emphasised the extent to which it was predominantly working-class and rural labouring Italians whose freetime activities and associational life were pushed into the organising framework and spaces of the OND, which expanded from 1.5 million members in 1929 to 2.75 million by 1936, accounting for 20 per cent of the industrial labour force and 7 per cent of the rural population.55 According to this reading, meanwhile, the spaces and institutions in which wealthier Italians socialised, like the Rotary Club, private gentlemen’s clubs, hotels, golf and tennis clubs, theatres and opera houses, continued to operate largely outside state structures, although, of course, not entirely outside the state’s gaze. Even before the ‘anti-bourgeois’ custom reform campaign of the mid-1930s, spearheaded by PNF secretary Achille Starace (1931–39), set its sights on the salons, central city-square cafés and ballrooms that, according to one student member of the Fascist University Group (GUF), constituted ‘drowsy [and] stupid subterfuges’ for ‘embalmed mummies’, the spaces of middleand upper-class sociability were subjected to government licensing, public order legislation and surveillance.56 The varied venues in which the uppermiddle-class Maria Damerini, whose social circle included many Venetian aristocrats as well as prosperous bourgeois families, danced exemplifies the kind of access that the possession of wealth afforded to exclusive leisure spaces that were only relatively lightly controlled by the regime: Grand fairy-tale balls in family palaces: Morosini’s at S. Vio, Volpi’s at S. Beneto, Brandolini’s at S. Barnaba, Robilant’s at S. Samuele, Alverà’s also at S. Samuele, Mocenigo’s at S. Stae, […] Foscari’s at S. Canciano, Albrizzi’s at S. Polo, Marcello’s at S. Fantin. Then, we danced more frequently at young people’s homes. Young couples, and there were many, met incessantly in one or another’s apartment for small lunches or dinners after the theatre or a treasure hunt [in English in original], which inevitably ended with dancing. […] In the summer, we danced at the [Hotel] Excelsior on the Lido. Whenever a star choreographer set up a suitable backdrop, we danced in the bar after dinner with friends and at the end of a game of golf (the grainy notes of a

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Practices of social dancing in Fascist Italy 213 Charlie Kunz imitator on the piano), or on the terrace before the sea, invited by those who were passing through Venice and so had no house here but wanted to repay the hospitality they’d enjoyed […]; or in the garden with its luminous fountains, after a show, where one could easily believe oneself transported into a Thousand and One Nights party, to await the dawn without noticing the time. In Venice we danced on the roof [in English in original] of the [Hotel] Danieli or at [Hotel] Martini and in winter, always in the Danieli’s ball room at charity tea dances put on by Annina Morosini. We even danced for charity.57

At the same time, although not alluded to in Damerini’s memoir, the fact that many fascists, especially local leaders, were also socio-economic elites in their localities, meant that wealthy Italians danced in regime venues at the veglione tricolori and feste del fascio staged in OND and case del fascio headquarters. Indeed, given that the only dance licensing exceptions made were for rural osterie, it may be that living in an urban or rural area formed a clearer rupture between venues that were more or less subject to the regime’s scrutiny. In addition, evidence suggests that, at least in the case of social dancing, Italians of lower social class also engaged in leisure practices in more private, domestic settings that were consequently more likely to be removed from the purview of the state. F. B., who danced regularly at the home of his neighbours, the C. family, recalled his surprise on finding, on the first occasion that his family attended a party hosted by their neighbours, ‘when we arrived at Mr. & Mrs. C.’s, in the entrance

Figure 8  ‘Lido di Venezia, Hotel Excelsior, dance party in the ball room’, 1925

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hall there was no longer any sign of furniture, aside from a minute table on which the hand-cranked gramophone cackled with its husky yet sonorous voice, which Tonino was occupied with, continually changing the discs’.58 Similarly, G. D. ­remembered dancing as taking place at ‘one of the farmers’’ homes, aided by ‘a gramophone and a handful of discs’, making the room, ‘for us, […] just like a grand ball room’.59 Both described these settings as ‘ideal’ dance schools: though dance teachers and schools were active in the i­ndustrial northern and central cites as well as in the growing coastal resorts like Rimini and (upmarket) Fonte dei Marmi in the interwar period, in order to attain competence in dance steps most Italians relied on domestic settings like those signalled by F. B. and G. D. and, especially for the new dances, on copying didactic films and aspirational cinematic dance scenes.60 The diary of A. A., an elementary school teacher born in 1910 who lived in La Motta, a village in Tuscany, serves as a useful counterpart to Maria Damerini. Whilst A. A.’s dancing world was doubtless smaller than that of Damerini, her diary similarly captures the range of venues, public (in the shape of the ‘Mulino’, likely the local albergo or tavern) but mostly private, in which its writer danced – as well as her evident joy of dancing: 20 November 1932 Such happiness today! P. and E. came to see me. This evening we danced to the gramophone […] 27 November 1932 Yesterday evening we went to dance at the Mulino, with E., and we so enjoyed ourselves. 11 December 1932 This evening we went to dance at the villa, at A. B.’s home. 15 December 1932 Yesterday in the afternoon, D. C. came to see me and brought me a letter from the priest of Montalone which scolded me for the dancing. 17 December1932 This evening A. came to collect me, we went to his house and we danced. 18 December 1932 In the evening we played the gramophone and there were lots of people. 15 January 1933 This evening, 15th January, we danced at the Mulino and when we returned it was snowing. It is so pretty this morning, the world all white, the sky all blue, what poetry.61

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The versatility of dancing practices with respect to space is clear in both Damerini’s and A. A.’s cases, despite the evident gap in financial means between them. It is striking how frequently diaries and memoirs mention the use of gramophones and discs to dance in private homes, given the relative expense and somewhat limited circulation of discs and the context of a national recording industry in its infancy: the regime-sponsored creation of Cetra in 1933 was intended to break the hegemony of foreign, principally American, recording and distribution companies.62 Even more than ­gramophone discs, radio programming was a key medium for accessing music for dancing: the national broadcaster, EIAR (Ente Italiana per le Audizioni Radiofoniche), established in 1924, increasingly dedicated its programming to music for dancing: by the end of the 1920s ‘musica da ballo’ and ‘musica varia’ supplanted opera and operettas to take up at least one-third of its transmission; by the 1930s’ end, the all-encompassing ­category of ‘musica leggera’ dominated the broadcasting programme.63 The station’s dedicated jazz programme, EIAR-Jazz, at its launch in 1929 made plain that its schedule of ‘rhythmic music […] has arisen to meet the needs of dance; on the radio it is intended for dancing and not simply listening.’64 As with gramophones and discs, radio ownership remained prohibitively costly for most Italians through the 1930s; EIAR reached 400,000 subscribers in 1934, rising to just over one million in 1939 (in a population of just over forty million inhabitants).65 To this end, listening to the radio was effectively a communal experience throughout the ventennio. Group purchasing of radios was encouraged through tax and licence fee exemptions.66 By 1939, 9,000 ‘collective radios’ installed in public and semi-public spaces like schools, OND centres, bars and squares reached 850,000 listeners according to the OND’s own estimates.67 Contemporary diaries and memoirs suggest that listening – and dancing – to gramophone records functioned similarly within local communities, kin- and friendship groups: though these pertain to Italians of very different socio-economic status, from E. B.’s bourgeois family and the police officer F. B. and C. families, through A. A.’s schoolteacher salary, to G. D.’s far more precariously financed share-cropper family, the acquisition of a gramophone, either by one’s own household or within the local community, allowed for dancing to be practised communally within domestic spaces. (At the same time, while gramophones, discs and radios were evidently important accoutrements in terms of allowing Italians to dance in private homes, especially to introduce Italians to new music and dance forms, it is worth remembering that they were not essential to dancing in domestic spaces; as G. D. put it, ‘it just needed one of the girls to start singing a song that [the room] straight away became a dance hall’.)68

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Whilst dancing to gramophone and radio music in domestic spaces did not necessarily mean that these individuals danced outside the gaze of the state – the admonishing letter received by A. A. certainly indicates that her dancing practices caught the attention of religious leaders – these venues certainly fell outside the strictures of the Interior Ministry’s licensing system. As such, this suggests a useful addendum to existing historiographical arguments which emphasise the possession of wealth and associated status as all-important in facilitating engagement in leisure practices that evaded, or at least were less regulated, shaped and instrumentalised by regime intrusions. In the case of dancing, the evidence suggests that Italians of all social classes danced in, as well as outside, fascist spaces and the gaze of the state.

Why F. B.’s observation about the possibilities afforded by dancing the tango for soliciting and enforcing intimate touch on one’s dance partner raises the question as to why Italians danced, or rather how they explained the physical and affective experiences that dancing offered them. Here, contemporary diaries and memoirs present a range of diverse motivations and accounts of their emotional responses to and experiences of dancing. For F.  B., both when dancing himself and watching others dance, this was a practice connected to sex and power, chiming with the findings of James Nott in this volume that ‘meeting members of the opposite sex’ was a principal motivation for male British dancers to frequent dance halls.69 This differs quite notably from A. A.’s affective enjoyment of dancing for the opportunities it brought for socialising with friends – ‘such happiness!’  – which leaps from the pages of her diary, and also is explicitly at odds with Damerini’s portrayal of the physical and affective intimacy of dancing as not disturbing contemporary moral (or indeed political) boundaries. Elsewhere in her diary, Damerini reveals herself to be religiously observant and pious, and a supporter of fascism; though neither she nor her husband were card-carrying party members, they participated in local fascist initiatives and celebrations, were friends and collaborators with key local fascist leaders, and Gino Damerini, in addition to editing the local newspaper, sat on the advisory municipal council to the Venetian mayor. Given her evident religious and fascist-supporting credentials, it is interesting to note that the kinds of tropes presented in the rhetoric produced by Catholic and fascist commentators on dancing – the ‘evident risk to the soul’ presented by danzomania’s supposed promiscuity and the supposed threat to national-fascist cohesion by ‘foreignophile’ dancing venues and styles – were simply not present in Damerini’s world of dancing. On the contrary, Damerini depicted both the physical intimacy and eroticism and

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the transnational dimension of her dancing practice in unequivocally positive terms. With respect to intimacy, Damerini was adamant that ‘dances were no longer considered improper’.70 She declared: ‘in truth, when dancing […], the couple were tight, extremely close together. But soon nobody paid any attention, the couple swayed and swung to the sound of slow music, [and] rag-time, which slid from the capable fingers of Charlie Kunz onto the keys […] almost on the sly, like a whisper.’ In fact, ‘the song that seemed to suggest a whisper in the ear had just come out and, as its title and chorus insistently proposed, we danced cheek to cheek’.71 The apparent ease with which she discussed the physical intimacy of dancing was replicated in her consideration of its erotic aspect. For her the slow waltz had ‘a particular aura, less whirling [than the Viennese waltz]; the mellow tempo insulated the couple in an atmosphere that mixed dreaminess and eroticism’. This – the eroticism of dancing in the 1930s – was for her ‘an eroticism that differed from that of before and from that that would come after’: it was ‘vaguely nostalgic, no longer neurotic and weary with death, but nor was it that barbaric and almost ritualistic [eroticism] of the second post-war era’. Whilst the Charleston had, in the 1920s, been experienced as ‘an out-of-turn surge of energy’, and then ‘hot and cold jazz forced itself with a certain hot-tempered violence’, it was especially ‘the various Afro-Hispanic-American dirges’ that ‘signalled the decadence of one conception of Eros’ even though, she recognised, these dances ‘in the beginning […] were slandered’. Talent was brought to manners with great promise. In this marasmus of musical fashions, song and instruments, which promised a new way of contemplating Eros, of understanding and explaining it, the melancholy and tenderness of blues and of slow [in English in original] was woven. It was vital.72

The transnational movement of different dance styles was an explicit source of concern for the fascist authorities, whose objection to ‘foreign dances’ was, as Tonelli put it, ‘more political than ethical’.73 Regime discourse around leisure and consumption practices connected with multiple ideas and tropes including anxieties around ‘Americanisation’, the regime’s autarky project and the invention of the so-called ‘crisis woman’. Dancing was one of the practices through which ambivalence around the apparent ‘irresistibility’ and growing dominance of ‘American’ commercial culture, marked by both fascination and fear, was refracted in Italy as elsewhere in Europe.74 The satirical journal Il Selvaggio, for example, observed in 1929 that ‘with the fox-trot […] the Americans had entered the European chicken coop’.75 Whilst – as we have seen – there was considerable divergence and variation in fascist attitudes towards dancing at national and local levels, the

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opposition to ‘foreign dances’, especially ‘the so-called “Black dances”’, was ‘a common thread’ of nationalist and racially charged rhetoric espoused by many contemporary politicians, journalists and cultural figures. This included the futurist Marinetti, fascist politicians Carlo Ravisio and Guido Carlo Visconti, and – illustrating that racist denigration of ‘Negro music and dancing’ was not the sole preserve of right-wing political actors – the imprisoned Antonio Gramsci.76 Assertions that the fast rhythms associated with these dances necessitated ‘haphazard movements’ and engendered a ‘clumsy delirium’ that was insufficiently composed for the political climate and hampered efforts to harness music and dance as tools of ‘national education’, were grounded in racist, nationalist-protectionist and xenophobic ideas, and counterposed to a somewhat mythical (at this stage) ‘Italian [musical] tradition’.77 At the same time, jazz music was the mainstay of state radio broadcasts in the 1930s. EIAR’s Annual Report for 1935 avowed, ‘we confess that we like jazz’,78 and African American performers including Josephine Baker, Louis Armstrong, Harry Fleming and Sam Wooding reported positive experiences of playing and dancing in Italy through to the mid-1930s.79 However, in the second half of the 1930s, described by some historians as fascism’s (more) ‘racist phase’,80 exemplified by the war against Ethiopia in 1935/36 and introduction of the racial laws in 1938, the fascist regime extended its national autarky project.81 Dancing in styles and to music perceived as foreign – usually ‘American’ – was targeted alongside the consumption of foreign foods and drinks (tea and cocktails were particularly singled out), the wearing of foreign fashions and the reading of foreign literature (especially in translation), re-coded as un-patriotic, and therefore, unfascist. From 1935 EIAR radio programmes stopped transmitting ‘music in a Negro character’ and ‘dance music with choruses sung in English’ (though in reality some such recordings continued to be played) and non-Italian and Jewish Italian musicians were dismissed from jobs with both EIAR and Cetra.82 These policies, as historian Anna Harwell Celenza puts it, ‘facilitated the development of a distinctly Italian jazz style’, which incorporated bands’ ‘italianised’ renderings of African American and Jewish American composers’ music, but was mostly dominated by ‘the lyrical, vocal form’ and ‘absorbed into the general category of musica leggera’.83 That said, the transnationalism of dance, its association with the Americas (North, South and Caribbean) and with African Americans, was also a key component of its fashionable cachet, an aspect that was widely acknowledged in contemporary diaries and memoirs, albeit in diverse ways. E. B. noted the fashion for dancing the carioca because ‘it had been recently imported from Latin America’.84 In the dances attended by F. B., the ‘highpoint of the dance party’ was reached when a gentleman, ‘who, at the time,

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appeared recently arrived from the dazzling salons of lively and carefree France’, would begin to shout instructions for the quadrille in French.85 Above all, it is in Damerini’s account that we see the source of dancing’s cachet located in its transnationalism. In the same vein as her apparent unconcern that her affective enjoyment of dance might call into question her moral propriety, there is no hint of concern in her writings of any potential threat to her sense of italianità (Italian-ness) posed by the cosmopolitan, transnational dimensions of dance culture. She is as au fait with the transnational exchanges and transfers invoked in her dancing practices as she is with its physical and emotional intimacy. Slightly tired and correct Tango revivals, nostalgia for paso-doble, the final one-step and fox-trot [in English in original] and Charleston, those Charlestons that had deliciously stunned us and lifted our feet in the air as girls in the 20s; newly-appeared rumba and, later, beguine, which everyone hummed because of Cole Porter’s Beguin [sic] the Beguine. And waltz, waltz, waltz. Still the timeless Viennese waltz, but above all, il lento, lo slow [sic]. The waltz, expatriated in America for the first time and returned with the name Boston at the end of the 19th century, it returned for the second time mingled with interpolations of jazz-like blues. A dance – the Viennese – dizziness-inducing, in the original version; a dance that left heart in mouth, which brought a thread of despair in its electrifying vitality, the dance of an eternally blue Danube, but also of the memory of Mayerling.86

Like other leisure-related descriptors, from ‘bar’ to ‘cocktail’ to ‘sporting’ and ‘club’, dancing did not escape the mid-1930s drive for linguistic autarky that formed part of Starace’s ‘anti-bourgeois’ custom reform. The prescription was that ‘Dancing’, as a noun indicating a space in which the activity took place, and dance halls with fashionably ‘foreignophile’ names – Golden Gate, Blu-room, Pincio-Dancing Bar – should be italianised as ‘sala da ballo’.87 Damerini’s writing on dancing, however, like that of the other contemporary diarists and memoir-writers, is peppered with terms left in the original English – ‘the tenderness of blues and of slow’, ‘il rag-time’, ‘we danced cheek to cheek’ – a practice which simultaneously denotes comfortable familiarity with the foreign-language vocabulary, suggests the (at the time) seeming untranslatability of the terms into Italian and the extent to which their modishness derived from their foreignness.88 In addition, Damerini uses her familiarity with key international composers and musicians associated with contemporary dancing and dance bands, like Cole Porter and Charlie Kunz, to signal the depth of her dance education. Of course, Damerini’s ease and familiarity with transnational cultural products and practices may well be related, at least in part, to the cosmopolitan social circle in which she operated, in a deeply cosmopolitan city.

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However, Damerini and the other diarists and memoirists recognise the importance of the key conduits of transnational dance practices, which were not grounded in the particularities of cosmopolitan Venice: the circulation and influence of dance band musicians and sheet music, and of the new cultural technologies, radio programming, gramophone discs, and (Hollywood) films.89 In particular, Damerini points to the symbiotic relationship between dancing and the content of films: as she put it ‘the number of discs multiplied with songs spread through film; songs that were already danced to in the films’.90 Despite the attempts of the regime to bolster the Italian film industry and harness it as, in Mussolini’s words, ‘the regime’s most powerful weapon’, the films shown in Italian cinemas throughout the dictatorship were overwhelmingly (always over 80 per cent) foreign, mostly American, productions. Incisive journalist and society figure Irene Brin set out the impact of Hollywood dance films, in this case the ‘acrobatic and sovery-ballroom films’ of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers: There wasn’t a single theatre in which a girl, dressed like a vagabond, or man in a boater, or a child with curls did not dance, head high and laughing, il tap [sic], there wasn’t a single middle-class home, nor guesthouse, nor domestic economy school, that did not have the shoes, from a knowing and modest cobbler, suited to the new acrobatics.91

What’s more, many of the Italian films created in largely vain attempts to entice Italian audiences away from foreign-produced films, belonged to the genre known as ‘white telephone’ after the ubiquitous prop that, along with archetypally ‘modern’ practices and venues, including social dancing and dance halls, were codes to denote and mimic the aspirational middleclass leisured and consumer lifestyle of classic Hollywood studio system productions. Indeed, as Stephen Gundle and Ruth Ben-Ghiat have shown, fascist-sponsored Cinecittà films like Terra madre (1931) and Gli uomini, che mascalzoni! (1932), which incorporated social dancing and dance halls with the intent to highlight the ‘decadence of urban nightlife’, in so doing effectively ‘showcased the very sort of cosmopolitan glamour that the regime’s populist arm had pledged to defeat’.92 Whether Damerini encountered ‘Beguin [sic] the Beguine’, judged by Tomatis to be ‘emblematic of th[e] process by which exotic elements are normalised to the point of becoming assumed “Italian”’, through disc recordings or EIAR radio transmissions of Cole Porter’s ‘classic’, from the 1940 film version with Fred Astaire and Eleanor Powell, or indeed through the ‘French’ version that was being touted in dance lesson advertisements at the noted Sala Gay in Turin as early as 1932, we do not know.93 What is clear is that all of these conduits for socio-cultural transfer actively connected Italy with the international creative hot-spots of dance in the period,



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especially the United States, as did live performances by African American jazz artists and bands, from Louis Armstrong, who gave two sell-out concerts in Turin in January 1935, to longer-term resident musicians who joined Italian jazz bands in the 1930s, such as Alphonse Mathaus and Herb Flemming, who played with the Sesto Carlini Orchestra.94

Conclusion: social worlds of dancing between local, national and transnational frames In conclusion, the social world of dancing in interwar Italy was multifaceted and dynamic. While religious and political leaders united to voice their antipathy to the ballomania they saw encircling them in the 1920s and 1930s, with discourses inflected with gendered, racialised and nationalistic notions of so-called ‘moral panic’, this was also the period in which social dancing ‘became an industry’ in Italy.95 Given the fiscal value to the state rendered by the licensing system, and the exigencies of domestic and international tourism markets, the overarching instinct of the fascist Interior Ministry was to ‘let [Italians] dance’. Fascist buildings were ideally placed to be transformed into temporary weekend dancing venues, and social dances were frequently co-opted as financial and political opportunities for local PNF sections. As such, fascists themselves danced – even Mussolini – and enabled others to dance. Simultaneously, dancing and dancing venues were viewed as potentially suspect practices and places and subjected to surveillance by the state’s Public Security agents and the Interior Ministry, increasing especially towards the end of the 1930s. At the same time, both in ‘official’ sources, such as the records of the administrative police who were responsible for issuing and monitoring dance hall licences, and in the diary, epistolary and memoir accounts that document Italians’ own attitudes and practices towards dancing, we see considerable variation. Fascist policy on dancing and expected conduct at dances implemented and enacted by local practitioners of fascism often deviated from that intended and anticipated by government officials and regime ideologues at the centre. The carrying out of licensing and surveillance by the administrative and Public Security police was often patchy and piecemeal. Meanwhile, conduct at fascist-organised dances at times conformed more to the images of decadent hedonism and ‘imbecility’ of the type conjured by the Venetian Patriarch and Archbishop of Cremona than to the vision of ‘pure’ and ‘peaceful enjoyment’ painted by the Pavian fascists. The reports furnished ‘from below’, setting out when, how, where and why Italians danced, articulate the enormous versatility and range of

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­ ractices that comprised social dancing in interwar Italy. At the same time, p a general trajectory towards less seasonally bound and more commercially framed forms of social dancing practice can be observed, increasingly involving licensed dance halls and events, aided by the rapidly developing cultural technologies of radio, gramophone and film – a trajectory that would take off exponentially in the 1950s. Italians danced at weekends and (sometimes) on feast days; some danced more frequently during the summer, with holidays at seaside resorts often furnishing opportunities to learn dance steps for the first time, while for others the winter months when agricultural work was less time-consuming provided more frequent occasions on which to dance. Maria Damerini’s assertion that ‘everyone danced’, whilst not without foundation given the recurrent references to multigenerational dancing in local communities, friendship and family groups in the diaries and memoirs, should not mask the prospects that dancing also afforded for denoting age-based and other markers of difference. Her claim that Italians danced ‘everywhere’ is substantiated in the enormous span of dancing venues alluded to in the source material: not only dedicated dance halls like the Pincio-Dancing Bar – declared ‘the most elegant locale in Rome’ by Irene Brin96 – which in any case were largely found in the peninsula’s principal urban centres, but hotel ballrooms, taverns, alberghi and bars, neighbours’ homes, one’s own home, and – yes – fascist-run venues, which mostly entailed bringing blue- and white-collar Italians’ dancing into spaces controlled by the state, but at times also hosted upper- and uppermiddle-class dancers. To this end, Italians danced in and out of the gaze of the fascist state in ways that were not always strictly delineated by social class. Above all, despite fascist attempts to curb and shape social dancing in overtly nationalistic terms, the actual practices, lived and affective realities and experiences of social dancing in Fascist Italy were simultaneously locally and transnationally framed.

Notes  1 D. Forgacs and S. Gundle, Mass Culture and Italian Society from Fascism to the Cold War (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2007), p. 35.   2 Undoubtedly, the 1950s marked the era in which dance halls became ubiquitous across Italian cities and towns, and in which the musical style labelled the classic canzone italiana became fully established. To this end, Jacopo Tomatis argues that the period from 1928 to 1958 should be seen as a ‘long trentennio [thirty years]’ in terms of the development of both music and dancing in Italy (the period of fascist rule is often labelled the ventennio, or ‘twenty years’), emphasising the continuity of organising structures, such as the national radio

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­broadcaster, EIAR (Ente Italiana per le Audizioni Radiofoniche), and of individual musicians and dance bands through the Second World War and for several years beyond. J. Tomatis, Storia culturale della canzone italiana (Milan: il Saggiatore, 2019), pp. 46–8.  3 Forgacs and Gundle, Mass Culture, p. 6.  4 Ibid.  5 Archivio Centrale dello Stato, Rome (ACS), Ministero dell’Interno (MI), Direzione Generale Pubblica Sicurezza (DGPS), Divisione Polizia Amministrativa e Sociale (DPAS), b. 966, letter from the Fascist Confederation of Professional Artists, 4 September 1939.  6 A. Mazzoletti, Il jazz in Italia dagli origini alle grande orchestra (Turin: EDT, 2004), p. 21.  7 B. Casalino, Permette, Signorina? Un secolo di sale da ballo nel vercellese (Vercelli: Edizione Effedì, 2014), pp. 9–16.  8 M. Damerini, Gli ultimi anni del Leone: Venezia 1929–1940 (Padua: il Poligrafo, 1988), p. 86.   9 A. Tonelli, E ballando ballando: La storia d’Italia a passi di danza (1815–1996) (Milan: Franco Angeli, 1998). 10 Tonelli, E ballando, pp. 197–9. 11 The ‘ego-documents’ used in this chapter comprise both published memoirs and unpublished diaries and memoirs which are held at the Archivio Diaristico Nazionale (National Diary Archive; ADN) in Pieve Santo Stefano, Italy. The National Diary Archive conserves, and makes accessible to researchers, diaries, autobiographies, memoirs, epistolaries and other first-person life writings of Italians and/or residents in Italy from the late nineteenth century to the present day. The archive holds an annual competition, the Premio Pieve, as one means to attract archival depositions. Therefore, some of the life writings in the archive, and referenced here, may have been written specifically with the archive and prize in mind; others were written either before the archive opened (including, of course, the contemporary diaries and letters) or without the prior intent to deposit the material in the ADN. Some autobiographical works deposited in the archive have since been published. 12 [Let them dance, for pity’s sake!] ACS, MI, DGPS, DPAS, b. 966, Memo for the Personal Secretary to the Undersecretary to the Interior Ministry from the Chief of Police, 18 June 1925. 13 See Forgacs and Gundle, Mass Culture, p. 71. 14 La Settimana Religiosa (6 January 1935). 15 Ibid. 16 On the ‘crisis woman’ archetype in Fascist Italy, see N. V. Chang, The CrisisWoman: Body Politics and the Modern Woman in Fascist Italy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015); V. de Grazia, How Fascism Ruled Women: Italy, 1922–1943 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1992). 17 Tonelli, E ballando, p. 204. 18 Chang, The Crisis-Woman, p. 3. 19 De Grazia, How Fascism Ruled Women, p. 6.

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20 Whilst the ‘crisis woman’ was a fascist production and projection, she was also  recognisable as an Italian version of the global ‘Modern Girl’ phenomenon.  A. E. Weintraub et al., The Modern Girl Around the World: Consumption, Modernity, and Globalization (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008). 21 Cited in Tonelli, E ballando, p. 203. 22 The Ufficio Stampa (Press Office) was a government department created in 1922 to manage the regime’s official communications; it became the State Secretariat for Press and Propaganda in 1934, a Ministry in 1935, and ultimately was brought under the newly created Ministry of Popular Culture in 1937. P. V. Cannistraro, La fabbrica del consenso: Fascismo e mass media (Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1975), p. 80. 23 Tonelli, E ballando, p. 197. 24 Cited in L. Passerini, Mussolini immaginario: Storia di una biografia 1915–1939 (Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1991), p. 179. 25 Tonelli, E ballando, p. 105. 26 R.D. Legge di Pubblica Sicurezza, 6 November 1926. In addition, the Italian penal codes – the 1889 Zanardelli code, replaced in 1930 by the Rocco code – set out the punishments for infractions of dance licences and for staging ‘shows’ without permission. 27 ACS, MI, DGPS, DPAS, b. 966, Memo for the Personal Secretary to the Undersecretary to the Interior Ministry from the Chief of Police, 18 June 1925. 28 Ibid. 29 ACS, MI, DGPS, DPAS, b. 966, July 1930. 30 K. Ferris, Everyday Life in Fascist Venice, 1929–40 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), p. 14. 31 ACS, MI, DGPS, DPAS, b. 966, Communication from the Under-secretary to the Interior Ministry to the Ministry of Finance, 4 March 1925. 32 ACS, MI, DGPS, DPAS, b. 966, Communications from the Ministry of Finance to the Ministry of Interior DGPS, 1 July 1929 & 23 April 1930. 33 ACS, MI, DGPS, DPAS, b. 966, Letter to Mussolini from ‘some old fascists’, Pavia, 13 March 1929. 34 ACS, MI, DGPS, Direzione Generale Amministrazione Civile (AA GG e RR), Podestà and municipal councils, b. 91, f. 983, sf. 26. 35 ACS, MI, DGPS, DPAS, b. 966, Memo to the Interior Minister, 9 Jan 1940. 36 ACS, MI, DGPS, DPAS, b. 966, Communication from Prefect of Bologna, 1 Jan 40. The fascist syndicates representing business owners and industrial workers, among others, requested that opening hours be extended to alleviate the ‘impoverished conditions’ that musicians, dance hall managers and publicans found themselves in; this was granted on some occasions – for example, for Carnival in 1940 when local prefectures were granted discretion to extend hours on a case by case basis – but not in others – for example, in response to a similar request by the Unione Fascista dei Commercianti during the ‘autarky week for confectionery’ in late March–early April the same year. ACS, MI, DGPS, DPAS, b. 966, Memo to the Interior Minister, 22 March 1940.

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37 ACS, MI, DGPS, DPAS, b. 966: Memo from the National Fascist Federation of Licensed Premises to the Interior Ministry, 12 September 1939; Directive from Interior Ministry Cabinet Secretary 7 December 1939. 38 Archivio Diaristico Nazionale (ADN), MP/91, p. 22. 39 U. Ojetti, ‘Littoria’, in Cose Viste (Florence: Sansoni, 1951), p. 413; cited in C. Burdett, Journeys Through Fascism: Italian Travel Writing Between the Wars (New York: Berghahn, 2010), p. 107. 40 ACS, MI, DGPS, DPAS, b. 966, 3 September 1938. Cited in Tonelli, E ballando, p. 203. 41 Damerini, Gli ultimi, p. 87. 42 Casalino, Permette, Signorina?, pp. 13–18. 43 ADN, MP/91, p. 22. 44 ADN, MP/08, p. 15. 45 ADN, DP/09 2/03/27. 46 ACS, MI, DGPS, DPAS, b. 966, Memo from the Interior Ministry, 21 June 1933. 47 Although pre-unification legislation had forbidden dances ‘beyond midnight’ in parts of the peninsula, since unification the law was confined to specifying that dances should last only ‘until the early hours of the morning’. Tonelli, E ballando, p. 103 for both this point and the quotation. 48 ADN, MP/T2, p. 9. 49 It is less clear to what extent social dancing practised in commercial, public settings similarly encompassed multiple generations. The 1939 prohibition of ‘female minors’ in dance halls and night clubs unless accompanied by a parent suggests that before then adolescents were present in these venues, though the stipulation of specifically female children, in the context of a raft of measures intended to clean up ‘vice’, indicates that this presence was connected to possible sexual exploitation rather than inter-generational social practice as found in the domestic or colonial settings described by other contemporaries. In both Damerini’s and A. A.’s descriptions of dancing in commercial venues (in Venice and Tuscany), there is no reference to the presence of children; Damerini’s reference to ‘young people’ indicates young adults, rather than children. Damerini, Gli ultimi, p. 87. 50 ADN, Buti, p. 24. 51 Damerini, Gli ultimi, p. 87. 52 ADN, Domenico, p. 15. 53 ADN, Buti, p. 23. 54 Tonelli, E ballando, pp. 205–6. 55 V. de Grazia, The Culture of Consent: Mass Organization of Leisure in Fascist Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 55. De Grazia points out that the OND effectively functioned as an umbrella organisation, bringing together organisations and spaces that pre-dated fascism, those set up by Italian companies and situated in factories and other workplaces, and institutions and activities that were new fascist creations. As such, she understands the OND predominantly as a ‘mediating institution’ between state and society, one that

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certainly intended to fulfil the twin functions of garnering ‘consent’ and exerting surveillance and control, but, in reality, also an institution whose activities were determined from below as well as above. 56 ‘Anti-funzione del caffè di piazza’, Il Ventuno (March 1934), cited in Ferris, Everyday Life, p. 49. 57 Damerini, Gli ultimi, pp. 87–8. 58 ADN, MP/91, p. 23. 59 ADN, MP/08, p. 15. 60 Tomatis, Storia culturale, p. 106 and, on the professionalisation of dance teaching in the post-war period, pp. 106–10. 61 ADN, DP/07, v.d. 62 In 1924, for example, just 1,314 gramophones and 10,458 discs were sold nationally. See: A. Papa, Storia politica dello radio in Italia, vol. 1 (Naples: Guida, 1978), p. 38; and A. Harwell Celenza, Jazz Italian Style: From its Origins in New Orleans to Fascist Italy and Sinatra (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), p. 104. As Tomatis has noted, though, the recording and distribution of discs was ‘the last link in the production chain’ throughout the interwar period: ‘[S]ongs were recorded [onto disc] only if and when they reached a certain level of popularity on the radio, in the cinema, and in printed score sales’. Tomatis, Storia culturale, p. 35. 63 Tomatis, Storia culturale, p. 34. Whilst in 1924 ‘at least 12%’ of URI transmissions were of ‘dance and jazz music’, by 1935 SIAE figures showed that 21.7% of EIAR transmission were ‘light and dance music’. See Harwell Celenza, Jazz Italian Style, pp. 83, 110–11. 64 Radiorario 5/11, ‘Una nuova iniziativa: EIAR-JAZZ’, 31 March–7 April 1929, 4; see Harwell Celenza, Jazz Italian Style, p. 92. 65 According to de Grazia, Italy was home to one-quarter the number of radios in France in this period, one-eighth and one-thirteenth of the number in Britain and Germany, respectively. De Grazia, Culture of Consent, p. 155. 66 De Grazia, Culture of Consent, p. 155. 67 Tomatis, Storia culturale, pp. 34–5; de Grazia, Culture of Consent, p. 156. Between 1924 and 1927 the EIAR was known by a different acronym: URI. 68 ADN, MP/08, p. 15. 69 See Chapter 3 in this book. 70 Damerini, Gli ultimi, p. 87. 71 Ibid. 72 Ibid. 73 Tonelli, E ballando, p. 91. 74 See V. de Grazia, Irresistible Empire: America’s Advance through TwentiethCentury Europe (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006). 75 Cited in de Grazia, How Fascism Ruled Women, p. 209. 76 Harwell Celenza, Jazz Italian Style, pp. 86–90, 94–9. 77 Tomatis, Storia culturale, p. 45; see also Tonelli, E ballando, pp. 208–9. 78 Cited in Harwell Celenza, Jazz Italian Style, p. 112. 79 Harwell Celenza, Jazz Italian Style, pp. 86–114.

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80 A. De Grand, ‘Mussolini’s Follies: Fascism in Its Imperial and Racist Phase’, Contemporary European History, 13:2 (2004), 127–47. 81 Regime-sanctioned propaganda crystallised in the early 1930s around the imagined ‘crisis-woman’ and, from the mid-1930s, around the ‘anti-sanctions resistance’ campaign, which used the League of Nations’ economic sanctions placed on Italy for the 1935 invasion of Ethiopia as an opportunity to push the already underway drive towards autarky and national self-sufficiency, not only in key economic goods and materials, but also in everyday consumer and cultural practices, including dancing. 82 Harwell Celenza, Jazz Italian Style, pp. 110–18; see also Tonelli, E ballando, p. 212. 83 Harwell Celenza, Jazz Italian Style, pp. 119–21. 84 ADN, MP/T2, p. 9. 85 ADN, MP/91, p. 22. 86 Damerini, Gli ultimi, p. 86. 87 Tonelli, E ballando, p. 209; de Grazia, How Fascism Ruled Women, p. 203. 88 At the same time, it’s interesting to note that frequenters of particular dancing venues often referred to these with nicknames that effectively ‘Italianised’ international terms like ‘Dancing’ or, indeed, rendered them into the local dialect. This was the case with the ‘Dancing Italia’ venue in Vercelli which was known by locals as the ‘Densi’. Casalino, Permette, Signorina?, p. 13. 89 Both Tomatis and Harwell Celenza explore the nexus between the introduction and popularity of jazz and musica leggera, the principal musical styles associated with social dancing, and the expansion of the cultural, commercial industries of film and radio. 90 Damerini, Gli ultimi, p. 86. 91 I. Brin, Usi e Costumi 1929–1940 (Palermo: Sallerio, 1981), p. 153. 92 R. Ben Ghiat, Fascist Modernities (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2001), chapter 3; S. Gundle, Mussolini’s Dream Factory: Film Stardom in Fascist Italy (New York: Berghahn, 2013), p. 75. 93 Tomatis, Storia culturale, p. 75. 94 Ibid., pp. 86–114. 95 ACS, MI, DGPS, DPAS, b. 966, Letter from Archbishop of Susa, 7 July 1933. 96 Brin, Usi, p. 151.

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Co-ordinating for love: establishing conventions of romantic couple dancing in interwar Germany Klaus Nathaus Walter Carlos was a one-of-a-kind dance teacher. Tirelessly beating the drum for his original ideas of how to teach the latest steps to the greatest number of learners, he published from 1930 to 1932 a journal that proselytised his innovations in monthly instalments. The first two numbers of Der Tanz-Schlüssel (The Key to Dancing) introduced readers to the ‘dance carpet’, a two-by-two metres sheet divided into one hundred numbered squares, like an oversized chessboard. Carlos asked prominent figures such as the ‘professional world champion in social dancing’ Herbert Jenull to execute the steps of the day on this carpet and marked the position of the dancer’s feet on the numbered squares. In this way, he transcribed the steps into a ‘dance code’. In combination with the carpet, pupils could use the ‘coded’ choreography to practise the dance at home.1 Subsequent issues of the Tanz-Schlüssel presented the ‘dance clock’, a patented cardboard pocket-watch consisting of two discs. As dancers turned the upper disc clockwise, a cut-out revealed a picture on the lower disc that showed how to position the feet. Carlos claimed to have sold no less than 100,000 of these clocks within just eight days!2 Readers who rather used their hands to hold a partner than manipulate a cardboard clock would have preferred the ‘dance machine’, yet another device Carlos claimed would enable ‘everyone to dance everything’. The dance machine was based on the same principle as the dance clock, with a cut-out in a moving disc revealing the next step in a sequence. Measuring a good metre in diameter, the device was to be placed on the band podium, so that all dancers could see it from the dance floor. However, there was a complication: as the clock’s face turned automatically at a set speed, the band had to play in sync with the machine for the apparatus to fulfil its purpose.3 Carlos’s inventions as well as his swashbuckling self-promotion may seem little more than a quirky footnote in the history of social dancing. After all, none of his ideas had a lasting impact on the way people learned to dance. However, he was on to something very central to dancing that seemed particularly pressing around 1930. All his ideas – be it his m ­ echanical

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i­nventions, his endorsement of records with the ‘correct’ tempo, or his broadcasts as ‘the first radio dance teacher’ – were dealing with the same problem, namely the co-ordination of dancers’ movements with music. This chapter takes Carlos’s concern as a point of departure. Asking how and with what social consequences dancers co-ordinated their movements as well as their mutual expectations, it focuses on those who contributed to establishing conventions of social dancing through writing and playing music, managing venues, commenting on dancing, capturing dance on film, and teaching people how to dance. The chapter argues that the interrelated actions of musicians, dance venue operators, critics, filmmakers, and dance instructors resulted in establishing dance floor conventions that facilitated romantic couple dancing. While this was hardly their original objective, the separate moves of dance professionals coincided to make social dancing a conduit for courtship. The link between social dancing and romance is, of course, older than Carlos’s innovations. It can be traced back at least to the turn of the twentieth century, when dancing played a key role in practices of dating and courting pioneered by members of a new urban middle class.4 At that time, the idea that men and women could be struck by love and find their mate in anonymous crowds received ample coverage in the press and literary fiction. Many lonely hearts decided not to rely on fortuitous encounters though. They tried to increase their chances by placing personal ads in newspapers, taking up hobbies like tennis or cycling, or attending dance events. These new patterns of dating were neither undisputed nor unproblematic, mostly because they faced criticism from those who upheld older norms of courtship. Furthermore, well-publicised stories of conmen, prostitutes, and even murderers who exploited the vulnerability of those who sought love in the city rendered dating dangerous. Moral critique and gruesome reports tainted encounters with strangers with suspicion and undermined the legitimacy of people who pursued romance in the modern way. Fast-forward to the middle years of the twentieth century, we see the perception of love and the conditions for romantic engagement changed considerably. Love was by then accepted as the primary motive for courtship and marriage across social classes, and the methods of finding partners, including social dancing, appear to have been trusted to a greater extent. Claire Langhamer, who has studied romantic love in England, calls this change an ‘emotional revolution’. Pointing to the 1940s and 1950s as a transition period, she highlights affluence and the welfare state as factors that explain why romantic emotions gained importance over material concerns when searching for a marriage partner.5 Assuming that a similar development took place in Germany, the present chapter focuses on conventions that structured a key setting for the meeting of men and women

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seeking love. While it acknowledges that larger trends such as increasing material security helped to give love greater influence on the choice of partner, it stresses that affluence as such does little to disperse personal fears of embarrassment or exploitation in those who search for love. To understand why potential partners were more prepared to suspend these inhibitions, a closer look at settings for heterosexual interaction is necessary. Couple dancing appears a particularly important setting in this regard. In principle, it works as a conduit for romantic engagement. It gives men the license to approach women and provides an incentive for women to accept invitations, since invitations evidence her attractiveness in the eyes of both men and female peers. Crucially, dancing allows both parties to exit the temporary embrace without loss of face, simply by saying ‘thank you for the dance’ at the end of the music. However, for couple dancing to work as a bridge from romantic intent to romantic engagement, the dancing partners had to be able to rely on conventions. This chapter argues that the various professional facilitators of commercial social dancing established these conventions around 1930. Historical research on social dancing in Germany during the first half of the twentieth century has probed the phenomenon with other questions than the one proposed here. It has commonly taken the movement of limbs to music and the discourses surrounding modern dances as manifestations of widely shared beliefs or a strategy of resistance. From this perspective, dancing appears as a medium to express and ‘negotiate’ values. For instance, the ‘animal dances’ and the tango of the early 1910s as well as the various jazz steps of the 1920s are said to have eroded status hierarchies and introduced contemporaries of the ‘long’ turn of the century to the tempo, diversity, and anonymity of a new urban modernity.6 Focusing on the challenge of co-ordination, the following chapter treats the dance floor encounter not as emblematic of political–cultural trends, but as a practice governed by conventions specific to the ‘social world’ of the dance hall.7 In this social world, participants adapt their behaviour to the expectations of relevant others. By the 1930s, these relevant others were potential romantic partners. The first part of this chapter studies the dance hall setting in the 1920s. Challenging the familiar perception of dancing in the ‘Roaring Twenties’ as a spontaneous and emancipating outburst, it shows that dance floor encounters were in fact fraught with tension. Music and steps were outof-sync; the reputation of dance was tainted; the discourse about dancing warned dancers to be careful with whom they took to the floor. These coordination challenges were rooted in a severe crisis of the entertainment business. Much of the apparent excitement of music and dancing during the 1920s was due to the frantic efforts of amusement providers from cabaret

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proprietors to musicians and song publishers trying to make a living. This situation spelled insecurity about the conventions of social dancing. In turn, this offered opportunities for dancers to develop a ‘nocturnal self’ familiar with the ways of the modern city,8 but discouraged the timid from pursuing romance on the dance floor. The second part focuses on changes in technology and the entertainment industry that shaped couple dancing in the 1930s. As music, movements, and behavioural scripts aligned in new ways, couples were less likely to step on each other’s toes, both literally and figuratively. The co-ordination problems Walter Carlos had tried to solve around 1930 became far less pressing, and social dancing acquired its function as a primary setting to instigate heterosexual romantic relationships. It retained this function until the rise of discotheques and solo dancing in the 1960s.9

Industry in crisis, couples in doubt: social dancing in the 1920s At three o’clock in the morning of 4 January 1923, Berlin police raided the Potpourri theatre at 4 Bellevuestraße, just off Potsdamer Platz, interrupting a party in full swing. Of the 120 people who were making merry, more than half were foreigners. Most guests had been lured to the Potpourri from bars in the Friedrichstadt entertainment district, where waiters had given them so-called membership cards that counted as tickets. Other guests had been stopped while driving down Bellevuestraße and literally pulled out of their cars. Besides ordinary guests, the crowd consisted of registered prostitutes and known criminals. The latter were conspiring with the party’s organisers and earned a share from the merriment, where sparkling wine went for the inflation price of 30,000 marks per bottle. The party had been announced to the authorities as a private function of the Bellevue Gesellschaftsclub der Bühnen- und Filmfreunde, hence the handing-out of membership cards. This ‘Social Club for Friends of Stage and Film’ had been hosting similar events almost every night since the end of December 1922, officially for occasions such as ‘farewell parties for parting members’. The authorities had issued daily dance permits for these bogus ‘members only’ festivities.10 The men hosting those parties in their theatre were composer Walter Kollo and his songwriting partner Hermann Frey. Contrary to what one might expect from the scenario the police described in early January 1923,  Kollo was a well-respected impresario and popular operetta composer, a household name in Berlin’s musical theatre world. In autumn 1919, he claimed an annual income of 800,000 marks from his compositions. He co-owned a music publishing firm (Kollo-Verlag) as well as a theatre company in Stettin.11 In September 1922, he leased the former cabaret in

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Bellevuestraße for five years and invested heavily in its refurbishment.12 However, only days after the theatre’s opening, the well-respected impresario and composer began hosting illegal parties upon which the theatrical side of his business came to depend. A week after the raid Kollo threw in the towel, went into liquidation, and abandoned the house.13 The scenes at the Potpourri evoke familiar associations of the ‘Roaring Twenties’. Often conflated with the years of the Weimar Republic (­ 1919–33), the decade is commonly regarded as a time of liberalisation, emancipation, modernity, and democracy, manifested in the rise of jazz, raised hemlines and bobbed hair, loose morals, and unrestrained dancing.14 Taking the perspective of professionals like Kollo, however, we may see the scenes at the Potpourri not so much as an expression of a liberal Zeitgeist than as evidence for a severe crisis of the entertainment business. Already during the war, many dance and entertainment venues had closed down, since proprietors were called to arms or found it impossible to continue under wartime conditions. Apart from absences and economic difficulties, censorship had been reinforced during the war, which further constrained commercial amusements.15 Sharp regulations carried over into the mid-1920s, affecting social dancing. If public dances were not forbidden, closing hours were set at 11 p.m., much earlier than the late-night concessions of the pre-war years. In Berlin, public dances were restricted to certain weekdays, a regulation that was in force until 1 November 1925.16 Even when additional days were granted, some proprietors did not find it worthwhile opening on them, because they did not earn enough money to cover entertainment taxes and other expenses that would have been required.17 Restrictive regulation does not, of course, mean that people danced less often. Contemporary reports claiming that post-war Berlin was ‘infected’ with a new ‘dance fever’ in fact suggest otherwise. Be that as it may, the one thing that is certain is that prohibitive legislation drove latenight social dancing underground. Dance events hid in private flats or took place under the cover of bogus clubs, often with involvement of criminals and hustlers, as illustrated in the Potpourri example.18 During the first half of the 1920s, the entertainment business in Germany was restrained by tight legislation and burdened with increasing costs. Walter Kollo was not the only theatrical entrepreneur who got into financial trouble at that time. After an ‘operetta boom’ proved to be a flash in the pan,19 Berlin’s commercial theatre, a risky and unstable business since its inception in the last third of the nineteenth century, went into continuous decline during the Weimar years.20 Consequently, the operetta stage gradually lost the trendsetting function as the primary launch pad for new music, dances, and stars that it had firmly held before 1914.21 After the war, this function fell to the cabarets. Compared with theatres, cabarets

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were at an advantage because of their much lower overheads. Unlike the theatre concession, a cabaret licence usually did not require the producer to pay a deposit to guarantee artist fees and operating costs. Cabaret shows demanded less space; they involved acts and bands rather than large ensembles and orchestras. Performers were paid per appearance rather than for the duration of a production. This cut down costs as well as rehearsal time, allowing for a faster turnover of attractions. All these conditions lowered the bar for entrepreneurs with little capital and performers with lesser experience, making the cabaret the entry point into a fast-changing business and a laboratory for new amusement formats. As cabarets became the places for new music and stage dances, and were also used as spaces for social dancing, we need to take a closer look at them here. Popular music publishers forged close ties with the cabaret scene. Will Meisel, for example, a former professional dancer who had performed in Rudolf Nelson’s cabaret, set out as director of his own cabarets in 1923, before he ventured into music publishing in 1926. Typically for a cabaret operator, Meisel was a jack-of-all-trades, also writing Schlager tunes and playing the piano in Mr Meisel’s Jazzband aus New-Kölln.22 Older, established publishers turned towards the cabaret too. The Drei-Masken-Verlag, which was founded in 1911 in Munich and leased theatres in Berlin to promote operettas, published cabaret Schlagers and employed cabaret writer and conférencier Kurt Robitschek as head of its song-promotion operations. Advertisements in the trade press called upon cabaret singers to send Robitschek their address in exchange for the latest material from the DreiMasken catalogue.23 The most sought-after lyricists for popular tunes were regular contributors to the cabaret stage, among them Fritz Löhner-Beda, Richard Rillo, Arthur Rebner, Fritz Grünbaum, and Kurt Schwabach.24 In addition to that, music publishers also sought collaboration with dancers, either to promote songs tied to a dance currently performed on the cabaret stage, or to supply them with music that they advertised in their second job as dance compères in Berlin dance halls.25 Such close links between the song business and the cabarets shaped the aesthetics of the musical repertoire, which in turn had implications for social dancing. The new Schlager songs were irreverent and brash, devised to capture the attention of an impatient and likely intoxicated audience. After all, cabaret was entertainment ancillary to the catering trade; drinks sales were the pole of the amusement tent. Nonsense Schlager and double entendres emerged out of the day-to-day interaction between pop music publishers, songwriters, and performers who collaborated with the cabaret setting in mind. Examples include nonsense songs like Mein Papagei frißt keine harten Eier (My Parrot Doesn’t Eat Hard-boiled Eggs) and the suggestive Heinrich, wo greifst Du denn hin? (Heinrich, Where Do You Put

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Your Fingers?), a song in which piano-player Heinrich lets his fingers run off the keyboard, presumably into the lap of the female singer who would have performed the song with mock indignation. Such tunes allowed for all sorts of winks and quirky sound effects and encouraged participation from the auditorium. Publishers supplied venues and bands with free handbills that had song lyrics printed on them, inviting the audience to join in the fun. The cabaret setting was also conducive to the proliferation of so-called ‘jazz’. In the first half of the decade, the term ‘jazz’ did not mean the same as by the late 1920s, when it had crystallised into a musical genre. Before 1925, only a few Germans had heard jazz as it was played abroad. US bands avoided the country because, plagued by inflation and post-war austerity, there was little money to be earned there. Gramophones were rather expensive and American recordings difficult to get hold of.26 Still, the term ‘jazz’ was widely known. It evoked associations of frantic, noisy chaos for most Germans, thanks to the coverage of ‘jazz’ in print that made up for the absence of sonic information.27 In other words, jazz was known not so  much from hearing as from hearsay. In turn, that gave licence to all sorts  of performers to appropriate the label to enter the musical labour market, undercutting their formally trained colleagues and compensating for their lack of instrumental proficiency with showmanship.28 Since jazz  was mainly recognised by its visual spectacle, it suited the cabaret stage perfectly. However, its conspicuousness did not accommodate smooth couple dancing all that well. Instead, dancing to ‘jazz’ required similar skills of showmanship and improvisation from performers on the dance floors as from those on the band podium. This provided opportunities for individual dancers to ‘show off’, while not helping with the co-ordination of people who may have wanted to use dance as a means to a romantic end. The propensity for aggressive showmanship may also be observed in stage dancing, where there was a trend to lure audiences with the promise of something sensational or sexual, possibly in combination. This is exemplified by the Ballet Celly de Rheidt that performed in the Grille cabaret in Jägerstraße, covering the dancers’ ‘natural beauty’ with only the thinnest veil of ‘cultural refinement’. Apparently, the Grille was not the only establishment to use nudity to attract audiences. Berlin’s police president registered a general trend of venues advertising the promise of sexual titillation.29 The rise of irreverent songs, jazz, and erotic stage dancing was concomitant of an ongoing structural transformation in the entertainment business. As ties between musical theatre, music publishing, dance musicians, and the recording industry disintegrated, new competitors entered the field,

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often via the cabaret scene, bringing with them new skills and alternative ideas. Tumbling fees and media change opened the entertainment business for newcomers, who tried to survive through amplified showmanship. Seen from the perspective of entertainment providers, the 1920s appear as an interregnum between the pre-war era of syndicated culture that had operetta at its centre and the post-1930 period of mass culture that was going to be dominated by radio and sound film. The crisis of the entertainment business fostered ‘unconventional’ performances, which in turn spelled insecurity, at least for those dancers who would have wished for rules that prevented them from stepping on each other’s toes and who would have preferred reliable cues as to the outcome of the dance floor encounter. This insecurity stood behind the coordination problems dance teachers like Walter Carlos were addressing. Attempts to solve them met with little success though. When dancers in the 1920s looked for orientation, they found conflicting advice and incongruous information. As mentioned, the songs that hailed from the cabaret came with the name of a dance step printed on sheet music covers as well as on record labels.30 Marketed as dance tunes in this way, the songs’ irreverence framed the dance floor encounter as ‘fun’ and inconsequential. In turn, this allowed dancers to take liberties in movement and social conventions. That seems to have accommodated the more conspicuous and daring dancers, if we can take contemporary comments as evidence. However, it hardly assured those who were less inclined to take risks when exposing themselves on the dance floor. Already in the pre-war years, social dancing had attracted a host of comments, advice, warnings, and grand interpretations that charged it with conflicting meanings.31 Such comments grew even louder in the 1920s, as the foxtrot, shimmy, and Charleston came to bear the weight of profound discussions about morals, sexuality, gender relations, health, politics, commercial interest, race, or indeed the state of German culture and western civilisation. For their fiercest critics, modern dances were an ‘epidemic’ that rang the death knell for humanity and culture with a capital ‘C’. Equally overstating their case, the proselytisers of the fashionable dances called them a form of art, claimed that they had educational value, or proposed that they contributed to public health.32 The fact that organised dance teachers were getting involved in this debate suggests that it did not only take place in newspapers and magazines, but reached the dance halls, where it could make ordinary dancers highly self-aware.33 Widely publicised images of dancers were part of the negative commentary. Caricatures mocked the futile attempts of old, stiff, and overweight men to keep up with the latest dance vogue. The elderly gentleman in pursuit of an attractive young woman was a cliché that featured

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­prominently in cabaret songs and was exploited on sheet music covers. Wo sind deine Haare, August? (Where Is Your Hair, August?), for instance, a song written by Richard Fall and Fritz Löhner-Beda and published in 1926, asks what had happened to August’s ‘golden locks’, whose disappearance is linked to the decline of both the man’s exceptional dancing skills and his libido. Well-publicised stereotypes of the ‘new woman’ and the Eintänzer, the male dancer for hire, rendered the dance floor encounter a possible trap, too. The young woman manipulating wealthy suitors was a veritable trope in novels of the 1920s. The fact that some 1.7 million nubile German men had been killed during the war and that the country had about two million more women than men in the Weimar years may have added substance to the topos.34 The novels’ narrative strategies directed readers’ attention to the problem that young women felt forced to negotiate the popular myth of the ‘new woman’ when entering public spaces like dance halls, which invited the reader to identify with the character and made these fictional texts seem authentic.35 Equally problematic as the ‘new woman’ was the figure of the Eintänzer or ‘gigolo’, as he was also called, who offered his services to affluent female patrons of upmarket dance venues. Like the ‘new woman’, the gigolo gained notoriety through popular songs, magazine articles, and films.36 Good looking and well-mannered, fashion-conscious, necessarily subservient, and noticeably perfumed (to mask the smell of sweat resulting from dancing), his gender identity seemed as questionable as the trustworthiness of his polite veneer.37 He may have been an honest lieutenant fallen on hard times, as in the popular song Schöner Gigolo, armer Gigolo (Just a Gigolo) from 1929, but he could also be a ruthless conman angling for the purse of an inexperienced rich daughter.38 Both the ‘new woman’ and the Eintänzer stood in the tradition of the confidence trickster, who deployed deception to climb the social ladder. Both figures brought ulterior motives to the dance floor and exploited the trust that romantic relationships need in order to thrive. Like prostitutes, they turned the intimacy of the dance floor encounter into the most ­impersonal of relationships: the cash nexus. In the case of the ‘new woman’, the proximity between her acceptance of gifts for intimacy and actual p ­ rostitution was regarded as close. The contemporary discourse often conflated the ‘new woman’ with the prostitute, a confusion that was made easier by the fact that both these social types were said to be found in dance halls, their ‘natural habitat’.39 Of course, caricatures, novels, films, song lyrics, and the contemporary discourse around the ‘new woman’ did not simply reflect what was actually going on in the halls. However, ubiquitous stereotypes most certainly shaped expectations. At the very least, they fostered the ­attitude that unfamiliar dance partners had to be met with caution.

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The state of the dance teacher profession did little to dissolve those reservations. Dance teachers were divided into opposing factions that hailed from different social circles and pursued different dancing ideals. The Reichsverband für Tanzsport (from 1925: Reichsverband für die Pflege des Gesellschaftstanzes (RPG)), founded in November 1921 by about 120 amateur clubs, represented aspirational middle-class enthusiasm for fashionable dances which it championed throughout the 1920s. Like its affiliated clubs, it was socially exclusive. Its main purpose was to promote modern dances as sport through the organisation of tournaments. These dance competitions, particularly if they awarded money prizes, were criticised by the other big dance instructor organisation. The Allgemeiner Deutscher Tanzlehrer-Verband (ADTV) was formed in 1922 to unite the fragmented community of dance teachers and represent their interests to the authorities. However, it remained internally divided throughout the period, as it consisted of both teachers who vehemently opposed the modern dances and others who accepted them and sympathised with the Reichsverband. Counting just five hundred members by 1927, the ADTV was some way away from its declared goal of uniting all professional dance teachers. With the total number of dance instructors at an estimated fifteen thousand in 1929, most dance teachers in Germany remained outside the professional associations. Among them were the aforementioned Eintänzer as well as former cabaret dance couples, whom the ADTV castigated as ‘dilettantes’ and ‘bluffers’ and wanted to prevent from teaching through blacklisting and compulsory competence tests.40 Incidentally, the ADTV was almost as unfriendly to Walter Carlos, commenting on his ideas with a mix of scepticism and envy.41 Though the dance teacher profession as a whole committed publicly to standardise dance steps, the tensions within this community rendered this goal elusive.42 To settle the dispute, the ADTV in particular called upon the state to back it so that it could unite the profession by force. While this never materialised in the Weimar years, the Nazi government from 1933 made this strategy seem a viable option. We will come back to this in the second part of the chapter. Despite the fragmentation of the dance instructor profession, attending dance classes was still the most reliable way to learn steps that could be co-ordinated with a similarly trained partner. Alternative dance instruction was advertised in print, films, and through radio programmes, though the information that learners could gain from it was less conclusive than what they would be taught by a teacher in person. Regarding dance films, viewers still felt a separation between sound and images even when cinema musicians attempted to play music to match.43 Whereas dance films lacked synchronised musical accompaniment, radio dance instruction came without moving images. The ‘first radio dance

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instructor’ Walter Carlos issued a teaching manual, meant to help listeners of Funk-Tanzstunde to rehearse what had been explained to them verbally via radio. The booklet offered photos and diagrams showing where to place the feet in what order.44 However, as with similar visual aids and verbal descriptions, it appears questionable that one could actually learn to dance from them. This scepticism was shared by the Funkstunde, the very radio station that employed Carlos. Challenged by the ADTV that a public broadcaster should not advertise dance lessons by a private instructor, a representative of the station replied offhandedly that ‘nobody can seriously learn anything by following radio dance lessons’ anyway.45 At the end of the 1920s, dancers faced massive co-ordination challenges. The various components that had to come together to facilitate ‘accidentfree’ encounters on the dance floor were inadequate, unreliable, contested, and discordant. The music was written and performed to prick up people’s ears rather than to accommodate gentle couple dancing. Performance styles varied as musicians fought over the meaning of jazz and ‘good’ dance music. Dance instructors battled to secure pre-eminence for their preferred steps. Print, broadcasting, and film provided inchoate information about how to conduct oneself in dance halls. The proliferation of the Eintänzer and ‘new woman’ stereotypes as well as the presence of prostitution in the halls nurtured suspicion about the motives of dance partners. Debates about the wider significance of dance vogues charged the dance floor encounter with a seriousness that stood in the way of light-hearted conversation among couples who had just met. As these co-ordination challenges made dancers weary of pursuing romance on the dance floor, the absence of standardised steps and reliable conventions facilitated a different form of conduct. Surprise and the need to improvise suited nightlife explorers who collected material for favourable stories about themselves. To them, the looseness of conventions opened up opportunities to develop a ‘nocturnal self’: a persona that represents its bearer’s familiarity with things modern and fashionable, formed in the action of urban nightlife and performed largely to relevant others.46 This adventure-seeking in nighttime entertainment as a way to acquire cultural capital had been established by middle-class ‘slummers’ around 1900.47 The multifaceted co-ordination problem described in the present chapter suggests that this code of conduct was still an important strategy to navigate 1920s dance halls. The appearance of ‘slumming’ stories in dance instructor journals confirms this.48 It took fundamental changes around 1930 to transform this social world and start a ‘golden age’ of couple dancing with romantic intent. It is to these changes that the chapter now turns.



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Synchronising music, movement, and expectations: social dancing in the 1930s Irmgard Keun’s novel The Artificial Silk Girl tells the story of nineteenyear-old typist Doris, who tries to find her feet in Berlin, where she has fled to from the police after ‘borrowing’ a fur coat from a theatre cloakroom in her Rhineland hometown. In her diary, Doris takes note of the many entertainment venues she visits, mostly in the company of men who treat her to food, drink, and small presents. With ‘Garagen-Franz’, an employee at a car garage, she goes out to the Residenz-Casino in Blumenstraße, one of the most fashionable dance halls of the city. Doris describes the ‘Resi’ as a whirl of colour. Red light bounces back from mirror globes and is deflected by fountains, so that the lavishly decorated ceiling seems to turn to the right, while the dance floor appears to move to the left. Doris also mentions telephones and a tube mail system with which guests get in contact with each other. Whenever Franz goes to the bathroom, the phone on Doris’s table buzzes, evidencing her attractiveness. Doris also mentions the music. She hears the band playing Das ist die Liebe der Matrosen (This Is Sailors’ Love), a song that will have evoked in the contemporary reader’s mind the line that ‘a seaman’s heart, my darling / is no place to drop your anchor’. At the end of the evening, Franz learns a very similar lesson about Doris, who feels pity for this man with ‘tired hair and a bent back’. As she offers to return his treat with an unspecified sexual favour, he resents her for being an ‘easy’ girl.49 Set in late 1931 and early 1932, The Artificial Silk Girl demarcates a transitional moment in the history of social dancing. At first sight, the episode at the ‘Resi’ shows how the suspicion of economic motives just as much as real financial problems weighed heavily on the rendezvous and suffocated any romance that may have evolved between the dating partners. Neither Doris’s inebriation with the atmosphere nor Franz’s drinking disperses the uneasiness between the two. At the same time, however, the ‘Resi’ offers its guests technological means to overcome their shyness and establish contact, thus addressing at least some of the obstacles that had to be overcome to make social dancing a conduit for romantic love. In February 1927, the ‘Resi’ was the first dance hall in Berlin to introduce telephones with which guests could approach one another without having to leave the ‘safe harbour’ of their table. Two years later, the establishment added light signals: guests could indicate whether they wanted to be contacted or left undisturbed by switching on a blue or a red light at their table. Also in 1929, the ‘Resi’ pioneered a tube mail system. Guests could send orders for drinks, cigarettes, sweets, lipsticks, and perfumes via a tube to a backstage fulfilment centre, from where the requested item was sent to

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the designated table by tube. Appropriately dubbed ‘the translator for the timid’ by the local press, in Keun’s novel the tube mail delivers a bottle of cognac to Doris, accompanied by ‘a letter with savoir vivre’ penned by a man who uses the technical facility to make a favourable impression on Doris. The pneumatic post also allowed telephone callers to send a photo of themselves, which assured the patrons invited to dance that they did not have to buy the proverbial pig in a poke. An automatic photo booth allowed dance hall guests to take a picture at the venue.50 Berlin’s ResidenzCasino thus offered technical solutions for the challenging first approach, an important aspect of the co-ordination problems that plagued social dancing in the 1920s. The novelties featured prominently in the ‘Resi’s’ advertising material and were taken up by other larger, upmarket venues in due course. Eventually, the ‘Resi’s’ technical features made a splash across the Atlantic, where the entertainment weekly Billboard reported enthusiastically about table telephones and ‘dancing’ fountains. Apparently, the ‘Resi’ had even managed to co-ordinate the movement of water with the sound of dance music.51 Another change conducive to co-ordinating couples and facilitating romance concerns the music. Das ist die Liebe der Matrosen, the tune mentioned in Keun’s novel, was written by Werner Richard Heymann and Robert Gilbert for the film comedy Bomben auf Monte Carlo (Monte Carlo Madness). This film premiered on 31 August 1931, a few months before Doris and Franz visit the dance hall. Many ‘Resi’ guests as well as the band musicians would have been familiar with recordings of the marching song, and that shared knowledge minimised the risk of dancers being tripped up by the music. Even more consequential seems that the tune accompanies a long ballroom scene in the film. The scene shows the two male stars of the movie, Hans Albers and Heinz Rühmann, approaching dance partners and taking turns on the dance floor amid other couples. In a comedic way, the sequence also reflects on women’s strategies to gain men’s attention, as a female ballroom guest takes frequent peeks into a book titled Wie verführe ich die Männer? (How to Seduce the Men). Films like Monte Carlo Madness synchronised, for the first time, music and moving images in a way that lent itself to being emulated by cinemagoers. They depicted the dancing complete with the ceremony of asking a partner for a dance, looking him or her in the eye, showing poise, wearing appropriate attire, and starting a conversation. In this way, sound film d ­ isseminated the all-important script of couple dancing to a mass audience,  thus framing the practice with common and therefore reliable expectations. Music films gave their viewers orientation on how to conduct themselves in a dance hall setting, and there were enough of them to introduce the

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Figure 9  Poster of the Resi-Casino, artist unknown, n.d. [1929]

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cinema-going audience to this knowledge. During the first half of the 1930s, music films made up between 20 and 30 per cent of all feature films every year and were by far the most successful genre at that time.52 Many of them were cinematic operettas that followed tried and trusted storylines from initial confusion about love and status to foreseeable happy endings, where social hierarchies were re-instated and romantic bonds tied. What made these films even more predictable was that many of them featured the same male and female lead. The biggest stars of the genre were Lilian Harvey and Willy Fritsch, who were also thought to be an item off the set. Harvey’s and Fritsch’s presence in a film assured the viewer that initial conflicts between their characters would be dissolved by the end. Consequently, all conversations between the two main protagonists from beginning to end could be interpreted as flirtatious talk between a man and a woman who would inevitably fall for each other. Featuring dance and music prominently, early musical movies revived an older function of the stage operetta as a populariser of new music and dance trends. Before the war, Berlin’s Metropol and Passage theatres had been launchpads for fashionable dances like the maxixe and the two-step. These were subsequently taught in ballrooms such as the Palais de Danse, housed in the Metropol-Palast, a block away from the corner of Friedrichstraße/ Unter den Linden. Songs and dances that were popular on the Metropol stage were to be heard and seen in nearby cabarets, where patrons would extend their theatre evening into the night.53 The war and the subsequent crisis of the operetta had broken up this arrangement. Sound film operettas reintegrated plays, songs, and dancing again, while popularising new trends wider and faster than musical theatre had. As film production companies adopted sound technology, they acquired leading music publishing companies or founded their own catalogues. They did this to freely use contemporary hit songs in their films as well as to exploit the music their films were popularising. Das ist die Liebe der Matrosen, for instance, was brought out by Ufaton, the music publishing arm of the Universum Film AG (Ufa). The biggest German film production company had in 1929 also bought up the Wiener Bohême Verlag, a foremost imprint for Schlager tunes. Drawing on the catalogue, expertise, and contacts of Wiener Bohême and creating synergies between music, record, and film releases, Ufa promoted its film tunes through various channels. A year after the film premiere, almost 195,000 records of Das ist die Liebe der Matrosen had been pressed in Germany; some 21,000 copies of piano sheet music and twice as many scores for salon orchestra of the film album had been distributed.54 The substantial number of salon orchestra scores underlines the importance of the dance band market for music publishing in this period.

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The concentration and vertical integration of the entertainment business centred around sound film impinged on the aesthetics and function of popular music. In contrast to the brash style of earlier cabaret Schlager, featured movie tunes were mellower and more symphonic in sound, which made them more danceable as well. Whereas cabaret songs had attracted physically present listeners’ attention through quirky lyrics, music written for film accompanied on-screen action that unfolded as if no one was watching. Creating moods and atmospheres, movie music was often featured in instrumental versions, which were more conducive to dancing than cabaret songs with their witty words. The new focus on hit-making in films also had consequences for the image of popular music and dance. A heavily capitalised industry that aimed at an audience where women were thought to pick the films couples went to see, sound film sought to shed its earlier associations with scandal. The necessity to avoid censors’ intervention as well as the increasing professionalism of the various groups involved in film-making were powerful incentives to turn away from the titillating, sensationalistic content that had characterised cinema offerings of the 1920s to a large extent.55 Overall, films became more wholesome, and with that, ‘vamps’, the ‘new woman’, and ‘gigolos’ were replaced by less ambivalent characters and more conventional relationships. Thus, the figures haunting dance halls in pursuit of gullible victims appeared far less frequently in movies, replaced by characters who pursue honest love with a partner of the opposite sex, played by stars who guaranteed that all was going to end well. A similar development can be observed in popular and dance music, where formally trained musicians were in the second half of the 1920s calling the bluff of ‘dilettantes’ and showmen to establish symphonic jazz as the standard for the genre, cutting its association with the visual excitement and musical stunts. American musician Michael Danzi, an insider of the Berlin music scene throughout the Weimar years, credits pre-arranged jazz harmonies with exposing ‘fakers’. As the musical arrangements found their way to Europe in late 1927, they brought the ‘happy-go-lucky relationship between nightclub owners and small bands, which played by ear, and which entertained with cheap vaudeville stuff […] to an end’, claims Danzi.56 In a similar vein, Paul Whiteman’s ‘symphonic syncopation’ of jazz, which was based on written parts and bore a strong statement against improvisation, promised to harness the energy of jazz, do away with ‘mere’ showmanship, and in effect make jazz more conducive for couple dancing.57 The establishment of a first jazz class at a German conservatory in 1928 marked yet another important step away from jazz as showmanship. While jazz became institutionalised, the musical establishment and musicians’ unions in particular continued to campaign against ad hoc and bogus

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gig agencies, freewheeling agents, ‘dilettantes’, and ‘foreigners’. Calls for a forceful regulation of the musical labour market were audible throughout the 1920s and into the 1930s. They seemed to have been heard by the Nazi authorities. The Reich Chamber of Culture introduced proficiency tests for musicians and made it mandatory for semi-professionals to acquire a day pass. However, the effect of these measures on the style of music played should not be overestimated. As they were dropped again in 1935/36, the actual musical labour market policy of the Nazis did not differ very much from the situation of the 1920s, with the exception that ‘non-Aryans’ were sharply excluded. The livelihood of Jews was as much in danger in the music profession as in other social realms.58 The exclusion of ‘dilettantes’ from the labour market seems to have been more comprehensive in the dance instructor profession, though just as in the case of the musicians, the intervention of the Nazi state was of limited consequence. As the infighting in the dance teacher community continued from the 1920s into the 1930s, dance instructor associations sought backing from state and party organisations, pledging allegiance to the new regime and trying to forge organisational ties with bodies like the National-Socialist Teachers’ Association (NS-Lehrerbund) and the Kampfbund für die deutsche Kultur, led by the party’s ideologist Alfred Rosenberg.59 No exception to this, Walter Carlos adopted a ‘national’ rhetoric already before the regime change. In late 1932, he declared war on what he called ‘nigger dances’ and invented the Deutscher Sporttanz (German sport dance). With the ‘Deta’, Carlos committed himself to ‘German’ culture and subscribed to the idea that dancing benefited public health.60 Briefly, his strategy to advertise his services to the new regime and the German people met with approval from the authorities. At a moment when it seemed dance instructors would be incorporated into the national professional organisation for teachers, Carlos got into a leading position.61 However, the competition among Nazi organisations ultimately favoured the ADTV. Rewarding the association’s unreserved self-alignment with the principles of the new regime, the new Chamber of Culture in January 1934 incorporated the ADTV as the only professional body for dance teachers. Membership became mandatory for all independent instructors.62 By that time, the much-maligned Eintänzer had already disappeared from German ballrooms. Apparently, the polemics against the ‘nuisance’ of the lazy, taxavoiding, untrustworthy ‘gigolo’, combined with the closure of many dance venues after the onset of the 1929 crisis and the slowing down of the dance fashion cycle had an effect on the dancers-for-hire before the Nazi authorities could concern themselves with them.63 Regarding the nightlife business of which dance venues were a part, the 1929 crash had a greater impact than National Socialist policies on

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c­ hanging the industry in a way that made social dancing less exciting for some, but safer for most. Statistics about the venues with a dance permit in Berlin not only show an overall decline of almost 13 per cent between 1930 and 1931, but also underscore the shift from the old entertainment district around Friedrichstraße to the west of the city, which had been underway since the 1920s. While the number of dance venues in the Mitte district fell by over 50 per cent in one year, losses in Charlottenburg and Tiergarten were at 5 per cent. It was in the latter districts where grand dance halls like Schottenhaml (later Moka Efti), Palais am Zoo, Delphi, and Femina had opened in the years 1927 to 1929.64 To be sure, these grand venues struggled with the economic downturn, but managed to survive as they appealed to a more popular clientele, dropping dress codes and prices and hosting afternoon sessions for housewives. The statistics also reveal that dance venues opened in the suburbs, with the districts Lichtenberg/Friedrichshain and Steglitz/Zehlendorf being the areas of growth. This brought dancing out of the entertainment districts into residential neighbourhoods, which is in line with the observation that it began to shed its somewhat seedy reputation to become a respectable leisure activity. Considering the efficacy of various factors, it appears that the synchronisation of music, images, and movements was driven primarily by changes in technology and industry around 1930, rather than state interventions from 1933. As shown, the self-unification of dance teachers and musicians under Nazi umbrella organisations was neither new nor comprehensive. More influential than that seems to have been that sound film offered a mass audience guidance on how to co-ordinate music, movement, and expectations on the dance floors. This is not easy to evidence, but an observation made by journalist Siegfried Bergengruen, who frequently reviewed dance movies for the journal Der Tanz, suggests that the depiction of dances in sound films was taken up by ordinary cinema-goers as a behavioural cue. In one of his dance film reviews, Bergengruen mentions a conversation with a dancer in a venue in a Bavarian town. Noticing his ‘strange’ execution of certain steps, he had asked the young man where he had learned to dance that way. The man replied that he had seen it in a feature film that had recently been shown in that town.65 If sound film had indeed such a strong influence on the promotion of certain dance conventions among a wider public as this admittedly anecdotal observation suggests, we have an explanation for why social dancing in interwar Germany changed along similar lines to democratic countries like the USA or Britain. Apparently, the regime change of 1933 did not have much of an effect on the way people danced. A brief boom of ‘folk dances’ after January 1933 and endorsements of ‘German’ culture appear to have been largely rhetorical and not to have altered the styles of social dancing.66

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To be sure, the political interventions of the Nazi state on the entertainment business were drastic, especially with regard to the livelihood of many Jewish professionals, who were excluded, expropriated, expelled, or murdered.67 However, the National Socialist regime did not decisively affect the look and feel of popular culture. It is a fair point that this was hardly necessary: evidently, entertainment that is free from overt political propaganda can easily co-exist with a political regime based on racism and violence.68

Conclusion Starting from the observation that couple dancing requires the ­co-ordination of movements, music, and mutual expectations, this chapter has traced how dancing in interwar Germany changed from a means to perform a ‘nocturnal self’ to a conduit for men and women to engage in heterosexual romance. Conventions were pivotal for this process. Standard steps, danceable music, and well-established scripts for how to conduct oneself and what to expect in dance halls helped men and women taking the risk of looking for love on the dance floor. The dances of the 1920s had none of that to offer. Worse still, they were associated with untrustworthy characters, and their function and meaning were contentious. The present chapter has explained this by locating it within the crisis of the entertainment business, whose protagonists often deployed showmanship to navigate economic difficulties. Collectively, they created entertainment that was meant to surprise and entice, which in turn suited dancers who were prepared to think on their feet, while putting those in need of guidance on the spot. Steps, beats, and scripts changed around 1930 due to technological changes and the efforts of professionals in the dance business. Most importantly, the establishment of sound film and the popularity of music films contributed to new conventions that proved stable and trustworthy enough to encourage men and women to seek romance on the dance floor. These changes did not happen automatically, but resulted from the interaction of specialists, from musicians and dance teachers to critics and venue operators. As each of them pursued their own professional projects with their particular skills and orientations, their efforts happened to converge and shape the formal and informal rules of dancing. The close coincidence of this change with the rise of the Nazi government means that couple dancing, an unpolitical aspect of people’s everyday life, had political implications. While it can be said that the Nazi state did not take couple dancing down a German Sonderweg, the regime may have benefited indirectly from dancing’s transformation into a facilitator of romantic love. Once established, the conventions of romantic couple dancing opened



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the dance floor to the many timid, ordinary people who now were invited to court in the same way as film stars. For many ordinary Germans, the relative safety in which they could seek romance on the dance floor would have seemed a concrete improvement of their lives and may have contributed to their satisfaction with the regime. This, as well as the fact that couple dancing was heteronormative and reserved for the members of a racially defined ‘people’s community’, gave the apolitical practice of social dancing political relevance.

Notes  1 ‘Tangoschritte vom Tanzturnier Nizza 1930’, Tanz-Schlüssel, no. 2 (1930), n.p.   2 ‘Tanzneuigkeiten’, Tanz-Schlüssel, no. 5 (1930), p. 34.   3 ‘Tanze elektrisch’, Tanz-Schlüssel, no. 9 (1930), p. 66.   4 T. Carrington, Love at Last Sight: Dating, Intimacy, and Risk in Turn-of-theCentury Berlin (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019).   5 C. Langhamer, The English in Love: The Intimate Story of an Emotional Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), p. 24.   6 K. Maase, Grenzenloses Vergnügen: Der Aufstieg der Massenkultur 1850–1970, 4th edn (Frankfurt: Fischer, 2007); D. Morat et al., Weltstadtvergnügen: Berlin 1880–1930 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2016); K. Lange, Tango in Paris und Berlin: Eine transnationale Geschichte der Metropolenkultur um 1900 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015); A. Kusser, Körper in Schieflage: Tanzen im Strudel des Black Atlantic um 1900 (Bielefeld: transcript, 2013); C. Schär, Der Schlager und seine Tänze im Deutschland der 20er Jahre: Sozialgeschichtliche Aspekte zum Wandel in der Musik- und Tanzkultur während der Weimarer Republik (Zürich: Chronos, 1991); F. Ritzel, ‘“Hätte der Kaiser Jazz getanzt…”: Tanzmusik in Deutschland vor und nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg’, in S. Schütte (ed.), ‘Ich will aber gerade vom Leben singen…’: Über populäre Musik vom ausgehenden 19. Jahrhundert bis zum Ende der Weimarer Republik (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1987), pp. 265–93.   7 P. G. Cressey, The Taxi-Dance Hall: A Sociological Study in Commercialized Recreation and City Life (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1932).   8 For the concept of the ‘nocturnal self’ see D. Grazian, Blue Chicago: The Search for Authenticity in Urban Blues Clubs (Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 2003), p. 21.   9 K. Nathaus, ‘“Moderne Tanzmusik” für die Mitte der Gesellschaft: Diskotheken und Disk-Jockeys in Deutschland, 1960–1978’, in J. Danyel, A. Geisthövel and B. Mrozek (eds), Popgeschichte, Band 2: Fallstudien einer Zeitgeschichte des Populären (Bielefeld: transcript, 2014), pp. 155–76. 10 Landesarchiv Berlin (hereafter LAB), Pr. Br. Rep. 030–05, no. 2457, fol. ­193–202, police report by Kriminalkommissar Engelbrecht, 4 January 1923, and applications to dance permits. See also ‘Der Nachtbetrieb im Theater Potpourri’, Berliner Börsen-Courier (8 January 1923).

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11 LAB, Pr. Br. Rep. 030–05, no. 2457, fol. 101, letter to the President of Berlin police, 7 November 1919. 12 R. W., ‘Berlins jüngste Einakterbühne’, Berliner Börsen Courier (30 November 1922). 13 LAB, Pr. Br. Rep. 030–05, no. 2457, fol. 225, report by policeman Viestädt, 16 January 1923. 14 Schär, Schlager. For a general history of the period that pays attention to culture see D. J. K. Peukert, Die Weimarer Republik: Krisenjahre der Klassischen Moderne (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1987). 15 LAB, Pr. Br. Rep. 030–05, no. 148, letter by Rudolf Nelson to the Berlin police, 30 November 1916; LAB, Pr. Br. Rep. 030–05, no. 719, fol. 25, applications of ‘Stegreifdichter’ (improvising poets) to the Berlin police. 16 ‘Seit 1. November wieder täglich Tanz’, Der Artist (6 November 1925). 17 P. Schmidt, ‘Der Berliner Schwoof von heute’, Der Artist (8 August 1924). 18 ‘Um 11 Uhr Schluß – um 11 Uhr Eröffnung’, BZ am Mittag (3 February 1923). 19 ‘Der “Sieg” der Operette: Zweiundzwanzig Operettentheater in Berlin!’, Der Tag (4 June 1923). 20 T. Becker, Inszenierte Moderne: Populäres Theater in Berlin und London, 1880–1930 (München: Oldenbourg, 2014), pp. 318–20. 21 For details on links between musical theatre, music publishing, musicians, and the recording industry see T. Becker‚ ‘Die Anfänge der Schlagerindustrie: Intermedialität und wirtschaftliche Verflechtung vor dem Ersten Weltkrieg’, Lied und Populäre Kultur, 58 (2013), 11–40; K. Nathaus, ‘Popular Music in Germany, 1900–1930: A Case of Americanisation? Uncovering a European Trajectory of Music Production into the 20th Century’, European Review of History, 20:5 (2013), 755–76. 22 K. Eidam and R. Schröder, 100 Jahre Will Meisel: Eine Berliner Geschichte mit Musik (Berlin: Edition Meisel, 1996), pp. 11–14. ‘New-Kölln’ refers to the Berlin borough of Neukölln, where Meisel lived. 23 Advertisement of Drei Masken Verlag, Der Artist (8 August 1924). 24 E. Wengraf, ‘Aus der Werkstatt eines Schlagerverlegers’, Der Artist (16 January 1925). 25 Announcement of the ‘shimmy-Wip’ by Songa-Verlag, Berlin, Der Artist (20 May 1920); P. Schmidt, ‘Berliner Schwoof von heute’, Der Artist (8 August 1924). C. Stahrenberg, Hot Spots von Café bis Kabarett: Musikalische 26 Handlungsräume  im Berlin Mischa Spolianskys 1918–1933 (Münster: Waxmann, 2012), pp. 207–8. 27 M. J. Schmidt, ‘Visual Music: Jazz, Synaesthesia and the History of the Senses in the Weimar Republic’, German History, 32:2 (2014), 201–23. 28 Nathaus, ‘Popular Music’, 769; H. Schöder, Tanz- und Unterhaltungsmusik in Deutschland 1918–1933 (Bonn: Verlag für systematische Musikwissenschaft, 1990). 29 LAB, Pr. Br. Rep. 030–05, no. 1504, fol. 81, announcement by the head of Berlin police to the association of Berlin newspaper publishers concerning

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‘Schönheitstänze’ des Ballets Celly de Rheidt im Kabarett ‘Grille’, 15 February 1924. 30 Examples can be found at www.imagesmusicales.be and www.discogs.com. 31 Lange, Tango, pp. 164–72. 32 For the contemporary discussion see Schär, Schlager, pp. 123–5. For a prominent text that takes social dancing as a representation of bourgeois society see S. Kracauer, ‘Die Reise und der Tanz’ (1925), in S. Kracauer, Das Ornament der Masse: Essays (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1977), pp. 40–9. 33 The publications of the dance teacher associations contain plenty of examples. For example, see A. Zorn, ‘Körperkultur: Ein Rück- und Ausblick’, Allgemeine Deutsche Tanzlehrer-Zeitung, 7:7 (1929), 5–6; B. von Pelchrzim, ‘Der heutige Gesellschaftstanz und seine erzieherische Bedeutung’, Der Tänzer, 3:1 (1926), 27–8. 34 H. Schenk, ‘Gleichberechtigt? Chancen und Grenzen für Frauen’, in H.  A. Winkler and A. Cammann (eds), Weimar: Ein Lesebuch zur deutschen Geschichte 1918–1933 (München: Beck, 1997), p. 155. 35 Among the examples often analysed by literary scholars are novels by Irmgard Keun (Das kunstseidene Mädchen, 1932; Gilgi, eine von uns, 1931), Erich Kästner  (Fabian, 1931), and Gabriele Tergit (Käsebier erobert den Kurfürstendamm, 1931). For literary analysis see M. K. Hagen, Simulation: Verhaltungsstrategien und Erzählverfahren im neusachlichen Roman (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2012); M. Lickhardt, Irmgard Keuns Romane der Weimarer Republik als moderne Diskursromane (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2009); J. S. Feldhaus, ‘Performative Beauty in Gina Kraus’ Die Verliebten: A Psychological Struggle’, International Journal of Language and Literature, 3:1 (2015), 1–8. 36 L. Cassuto and J. Brammer, Schöner Gigolo, armer Gigolo (Berlin: Wiener Bohême, 1929); Der Tanzstudent (dir.: Johannes Guter, Universum-Film AG, 1928); Gigolo: Der schöne, arme Tanzleutnant (dir.: Emmerich Hanus, HaaseFilm, 1930). 37 M. Petrescu, ‘Billy Wilder’s Work as Eintänzer in Weimar Berlin’, New German Critique, 40:3 (2013), 65–84. 38 C. H. Bill, ‘Eintänzer: Zur Kulturgeschichte eines deutschen Sozialtyps aus der Weimarer Republik’, Nobilitas, 41/42 (2006), 95. 39 V. Harris, Selling Sex in the Reich: Prostitutes in German Society, 1914–1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 106–7. 40 P. Kumment-Rudolfi, ‘Hier fehlt der eiserne Besen: Das Pfuschertum in unserem Beruf’, Allgemeine Deutsche Tanzlehrer-Zeitung, 3:9/10 (1925), 9–10. 41 See, for example, the review of Carlos’s ‘dance carpet’ by E. Huppert, ‘Der Parquett-Tanzplan’, Allgemeine Deutsche Tanzlehrer-Zeitung, 8:5 (1930), 8. 42 Schär, Schlager. 43 See P. Schmidt, ‘Kinomusikalische Streifzüge’, Der Artist (7 and 28 December 1919), n.p. 44 W. Carlos, Funk-Tanz: Tanz-Stil 1928; ein Lehr- und Übungsbuch für Anfänger und Fortgeschrittene (Berlin: Verlag Funk-Dienst, n.d. [1929]).

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45 A. H., ‘Der Unterricht im Rundfunk’, Allgemeine Deutsche Tanzlehrer-Zeitung, 7:9 (1929), 4. 46 Grazian, Blue Chicago, 21. 47 K. Nathaus, ‘Gesichtswahrung, Statuskämpfe und soziale Grenzziehung: Interaktion im urbanen Vergnügen des frühen 20. Jahrhunderts’, Moderne Stadtgeschichte, 2 (2019), 47–58. 48 E. Engelbrecht, ‘In der Nachtkaschemme’, Der Tänzer, 3 (1926), 78. 49 I. Keun, Das kunstseidene Mädchen (Stuttgart: Klett, 2003), pp. 57–8. 50 For the various features of the ‘Resi’ and other prominent dance halls in the capital see K. Wolffram, Tanzdielen und Vergnügungspaläste: Berliner Nachtleben in den dreißiger und vierziger Jahren; Von der Friedrichstraße bis Berlin W, vom Moka Efti bis zum Delphi (Berlin: Edition Hentrich, 1992), pp. 123–6. 51 ‘Berlin Night Spot Has Clever Dancing Fountains’, Billboard (7 August 1937), p. 18. 52 M. Wedel, Der deutsche Musikfilm: Archäologie eines Genres 1914–1945 (München: edition text + kritik, 2007), pp. 26, 246. 53 Nathaus, ‘Gesichtswahrung, Statuskämpfe und soziale Grenzziehung’. 54 Bundesarchiv Berlin, R 109/1, no. 2656, p. 9 and attachment 2, UfatonVerlagsgesellschaft mbH, Berlin, annual report 1931/32. In the Ufaton books, these figures were second only to those of the film operetta Der Kongress tanzt (The Congress Dances), a vehicle for Harvey and Fritsch that bore the centrality of dancing in its title. 55 On the professionalisation of screenwriters in Germany see J. Scholz, Der Drehbuchautor: USA – Deutschland; Ein historischer Vergleich (Bielefeld: transcript, 2016). 56 M. Danzi, American Musician in Germany 1924–1939: Memoirs of the Jazz, Entertainment, and Movie World of Berlin during the Weimar Republic and the Nazi Era – and in the United States, as told to Rainer E. Lotz (Schmitten: Norbert Rückert, 1986), p. 32. 57 J. Kool, ‘Paul Whiteman und die Tanzmusik’, Der Tänzer, 3:14 (1926), 208–9. This article associates Whiteman with Bach, Mozart, and Richard Strauß, thus treating him as a composer rather than showman. 58 M. Rempe, Kunst, Spiel, Arbeit: Musikerleben in Deutschand, 1850–1960 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2019), ch. 9. 59 H. Fischer, ‘Kampfbund für die deutsche Kultur oder NS-Lehrerbund?’, Allgemeine Deutsche Tanzlehrer-Zeitung, 11:3/4 (1933), 7. 60 ‘Freie Bahn dem deutschen Tanz! Krieg den Niggertänzen’, Tanz-Schlüssel, no. 17/18 (1932), n.p. Aßmann, ‘Einheitsverband und NS-Lehrerbund’, Allgemeine Deutsche 61 Tanzlehrer-Zeitung, 11:7/8 (1933), 10. 62 ‘Reichstheaterkammer’, Allgemeine Deutsche Tanzlehrer-Zeitung, 12:1/2 (1934), 1. 63 Bill, ‘Eintänzer’, 109–12. 64 Wolffram, Tanzdielen, pp. 20–2.



Dancing conventions in interwar Germany 251

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65 S. Bergengruen, ‘Tanz im Film’, Der Tanz, 7:2 (1934), 14–15. 66 L. Karina and M. Kant, Tanz unterm Hakenkreuz: Eine Dokumentation (Berlin: Henschel, 1999), p. 126. 67 M. Kater, Different Drummers: Jazz in the Culture of Nazi Germany (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), pp. 38–46. 68 C. Ross, Media and the Making of Modern Germany: Mass Communications, Society, and Politics from the Empire to the Third Reich (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).

11

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Between control, education, and free communication: social dancing in the USSR from the 1920s to the early 1960s Igor Narskiy In the early 1980s, the young Soviet engineer and architect Kostya Kolobkov arrives in a small resort town at the Black Sea. Having come from Yasnogorsk, the regional centre, he has started working at his first construction site, where the building of a new sanatorium is underway. To begin the construction, the workers have to tear down the old open-air summer dance floor. To the surprise of Kostya and his colleagues, the dance floor still holds special significance in the province. Unlike in the large cities, where dance halls have become something of an anachronism, the dance venue of this provincial backwoods continues to thrive. In the evenings, young people come to dance, meet acquaintances, and form friendships. This is the place where some romances start, while others end. This is where some youth start families, while others experience betrayal. On Saturdays, older couples spend the whole day dancing on the same dance floor. With the accompaniment of the accordion and trumpets, they dance long-forgotten waltzes and the tango, remembering the days of their youth before the war. Gradually Kostya comes to understand that the dance floor serves as the centre of social interaction and is a place of memory for local residents. In the end, the architect finds his love here and, putting his own career at risk, he decides to defend the dance floor from its planned demolition. This is the plot of Samson Samsonov’s 1985 film Tantsploshchadka (Dance Floor). Leaving aside questions of artistic quality, the film can offer some insight into the history of European social dances in Russia and the Soviet Union. Because it casts our view back to the period between the 1920s and the 1960s, it contains all the key components of the nostalgic perception of the Soviet dance floor, which had entered the Soviet canon through memoirs, literary texts, theatrical plays, and narrative films. This nostalgic depiction of the Soviet dance floor provided a straightforward, simple, and unambiguous story about the Tantsploshchadka as a central place of communication among young people and a place of remembrance for the older generations. It made connections to a war-torn past and to planning a happy future, to love and betrayal. This depiction of the dance

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Social dancing in USSR, 1920s to early 1960s 253

floor avoids difficult questions pertaining to the relationship of social dancing and the Soviet state and its agents in the 1930s. This was the period when dance floors and halls became ubiquitous; classes and dance groups appeared in clubs and parks en masse. The film’s plot likewise leaves out the censorship and regulation of dance and music, masking the complicated fluctuations between prohibitions and permissions granted to dances like the tango, foxtrot, and Charleston of the 1920s and 1930s and the boogiewoogie, rock ‘n’ roll, and twist of the 1950s and 1960s. According to Soviet ideology, these ‘bourgeois’ steps were products of a decadent capitalism and subsumed under the general term ‘western dance’. The film shows no sign of the concerted attempts to expel ‘western dance’ from the USSR and create unique Soviet dances in their place. We find no mention of the efforts to categorise western steps on the basis of their moral and aesthetic worth; neither does it mention attempts to invent entirely new folk dances to replace them. This chapter reintroduces these complications into the history of social dancing in Russia from the 1920s to the early 1960s. It demonstrates how the Communist Party and the Soviet state attempted to ‘nationalise’ and regulate couple dancing in order to control the leisure of Soviet citizens. At the same time, the chapter looks at how these citizens, in response, used the state’s attempts at social control to regain autonomy of their own free time. To explore these phenomena, we have to consider, firstly, the impact Soviet cultural policies had on the status and development of western partner dancing in the USSR, including the activities of those individuals (professional choreographers and others involved in developing dance repertoires) who played a role in the implementation of these policies. Secondly, it is necessary to look at how young Soviet citizens reacted to state control and ‘recommendations’ in the field of choreography. We will also ask how they organised their own dancing. To this end, the chapter draws on interviews with contemporaries of the Stalin and Khrushchev eras as primary sources. Where particularities of the development of dancing in Russia necessitate this, the analysis will go beyond the usual periodisation of social dancing, which should not be mistaken for saying that social dancing in the USSR ‘lagged behind’.

Soviet attempts to nationalise social dancing Prior to the Revolution in 1917, social dance in Russia developed in line with pan-European trends. Peter I introduced social dance to Russia, after which it became an indispensable component of another of his innovations – the balls at court. In the eighteenth century, like other segments of cultural life

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in Russia, dance became subject to a radical split. On the one hand, there was the Europeanised, elite style of dance; on the other, we see an allegedly authentic ‘folk’ one. The European ballroom partner dance – comprised of formally learned movements and discipline on the dance floor – became a defining feature of the culture of the nobility, as well as a fixed part of the curriculum in military and civilian educational institutions. In contrast, the supposedly natural and spontaneous style of plyaska became enshrined as a traditional element of peasant culture. In the words of dance scholar Irina Sirotkina, ‘[i]f … in dance, particularly in ballroom dance, there is more order than freedom, then it is the exact opposite in plyaska, where there is more freedom than order’.1 In the nineteenth century, ballroom dancing in the Russian Empire continued to feed, uninterrupted, on impulses coming from Europe. It shared all the trends of European dance and, by the turn of the twentieth century, had become democratised, having penetrated, to one degree or another, every level of urban culture. By 1900, it had blended with ‘folk traditions’ in the urban lower classes and had been at least ­partially accepted into the life of rural celebration.2 The Bolsheviks coming to power started a paradoxical trend, which Sirotkina calls ‘dancing (plyaska) according to instructions’.3 It was characterised by numerous attempts throughout many years to create a Soviet dance that would serve to counter western dance.4 The new Soviet rulers approached culture in a utilitarian fashion; they saw it as one of the instruments for building socialism. They saw the organisation of ‘consciousness’ and meaningful leisure as a useful way to achieve one of this plan’s objectives, namely the formation of the citizen of the new communist society. Meaningful leisure was supposed to be predominantly collective and built upon the creative work and the initiative of the citizens themselves. In Soviet terminology, these were ‘amateur performances’ (khudozhestvennaya samodeyatelnost). In the first decade following the revolution, the Bolsheviks lacked a clear cultural and political programme, as well as a coherent system for managing culture. Artists and other cultural producers possessed ample room for artistic experimentation and for the formation of autonomous artistic associations.5 Since dance, in contrast to the written word, was difficult to employ in the service of agitation (it was delegated primarily to parades and processions), many questions about its societal role remained unresolved amongst the Bolshevik leadership. They could not, for example, reach a consensus about the fate of ballet’s classical heritage or the Eurythmics of Émile Jaques-Dalcroze, which aimed to combine dance and gymnastics. Likewise, they had no unanimous opinions on topics like Isadora Duncan’s choreographic practices of free dance or Nikolai Foregger’s experimental and eccentric ‘dance of the machines’.6 Amateur choreography developed

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under the conditions of the radical fight against the bourgeois heritage by left-wing radical organisations such as Proletkult (cultural and educational organisations of the proletariat) and Komsomol (Communist Youth Association). Under these circumstances, European partner dancing found itself in an ambiguous situation. On the one hand, dances like the tango, foxtrot, and two-step became incredibly popular in Russia after the Civil War (1918–20). When in 1921 the Bolsheviks replaced their unconditional eradication of private property and market relations with partial toleration of private enterprise, private dance classes and halls (where western partner dances had been the most popular) reappeared rapidly and became ubiquitous. Music accompanying the tango and foxtrot could be heard in newly opened restaurants; the dances and their sound quickly became the acoustic and visual symbol of the NEP (New Economic Policy) and the ‘new bourgeoisie’ (‘NEP men’). On the other hand, the Proletkult and the Komsomol in the 1920s delegated western dances, much like the classical ballet theatre, to the ranks of the outdated, despised remnants of a capitalist past, making them subject to ruthless destruction. War was declared, first and foremost, on those dances which had come from across the Atlantic to ‘conquer’ Europe in the early twentieth century. The Proletkult and Komsomol press conducted endless campaigns against any dances deemed meaningless and harmful to the development of conscious builders of communism. The tango and the foxtrot, which were particularly popular among the youthful, were brandished as ‘sexual’, ‘vulgar’, and especially harmful for young people. The left-wing press described these dances as ‘an ugly squid’ that ‘spreads its slippery tentacles’. It blamed dance classes, restaurants, cinemas, and even theatres for popularising those ‘corrupting’ dances.7 As a rule, those who were not part of the world of choreography – like, for instance, the Proletkult and Komsomol activists – advocated the complete expulsion of European dance from Soviet life. Those who concerned themselves with dance professionally – including ballet masters and tutors, dance teachers, dance scholars, and critics – held more nuanced opinions on these issues and shifted between different positions. Most Soviet dance theoreticians claimed that dance was an important means to disseminate the new revolutionary culture among the youth, calling dance a ‘cornerstone of the arts’. On this basis, they drew two conclusions for old and new couple dances of ‘western’ origin. The first suggestion was to conduct an audit of European dances in order to keep the most valuable and discard those deemed unfit. At the All-Russian meeting on artistic political-enlightenment work at the end of 1925, an attempt to comprehensively ban independent dance club evenings

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provoked sharp protest from the Ukrainian delegate, who begged to differ. After stating that ‘[w]e recognise dancing’, he explained that ‘the whole question is about how to approach [the dances]. We, of course, do not allow dances with sexual “tendencies” [s polovymi ‘uklonami’] (foxtrot, etc.), but dances in general, of course, are permissible.’8 The aforementioned ballet master Nikolai Foregger thought that fashionable dances captured the ‘mood of the time’, declaring that the ‘mechanised movements of the one-step, two-step, ragtime, and the foxtrot [were] imitations of the syncopated movements of working machines’.9 Accordingly, he choreographed his Machine Dances to convey the urban rhythm of the new city as well as technological progress. In the mid-1920s, he and his followers created dances to fit marches, jazz, and the galop. These steps were easy to learn and gave dancers the opportunity to talk with one another while on the dance floor.10 A second approach to dance, taken by many, called for the entire replacement of European repertoire with newly invented Soviet steps. The discussion about this was both open and intense and generated a range of ideas.11 The former dancer Militsa Burtseva, for instance, developed the idea and practice of mass Soviet plyaska, which was simple both in choreography and in music. The Moscow Association of Rhythmists similarly developed their own version of this simplified replacement for European-style dances.12 In the big debate about dancing, the Bolshevik party and government maintained an ambivalent position during the 1920s. For example, the People’s Commissioner for Education, Anatoly Lunacharsky, shielded the classic Russian ballet from the campaigns of the Proletkult and the Komsomol. At the same time, he found modern dances particularly outrageous. In an interview in 1927, he characterised the Charleston and the black bottom as ‘extremely hideous and destructive’.13 In 1929, however, the party made a drastic and pragmatic shift in cultural policy. With a special decree, the party now ‘demanded that cultural work be turned to face matters of political urgency, to production, and to agriculture’.14 Culture and art were supposed to mobilise the population for the collectivisation of agriculture and for industrialising the country. The decree formulated the demand to ‘eradicate the elements of apoliticism and limited cultural development’.15 In the realm of leisure, this decision was followed by the massive closure of private dance schools, among other things. As a reaction, Soviet choreographers around 1930 intensified their attempts to adapt European and American dances to the conditions under communism by politicising or censoring them. At the end of the 1920s, the organisers (massoviki) of events at the Gorky Central Park of Culture and Leisure introduced a novel way of ‘politicising dance material’ by writing

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slogans to accompany ‘bourgeois’ dances and expecting the dancers to chant the text in unison.16 The slogans, which were concerned with topics like the timely realisation of plans to industrialise the Soviet Union or the unmasking of capitalism, were written in measures that aligned with the rhythm of dances like the pas d’Espagne or the polka. Around the same time, Leningrad-based choreographers attempted to ‘Sovietise’ the incredibly popularly foxtrot, creating the ‘Sport-trot’, which combined the prohibited dance with physical exercises.17 However, the new step was ignored by the public and failed for reasons that will be explained in the second part of the present chapter. While new Soviet dances were promoted to replace western steps and the latter were harnessed by political settings, the foxtrot and other styles of American origin were repeatedly banned from being performed in public. The very fact that the authorities intervened in this way evidences that western couple dancing remained contested in the Soviet Union in the interwar period. Despite the prohibitions, people continued to dance these steps openly. The closing of private dance classes and halls in the late 1920s did not fundamentally change dance practices.18 The audience voted for western social dancing with their feet. Part of the explanation for why they were able to do so lies in the fact that leisure clubs for workers as well as nationalised restaurants could not be as strictly regulated as private dance classes and dance venues. Clubs and restaurants had to be financially viable, and they therefore had to be attractive enough for visitors. As a consequence, their managers had to make concessions to what the public wanted. At times, western dances were accepted in clubs as the lesser evil, as when, at the end of the 1920s, ‘dry’ evenings with couple dancing were promoted to keep workers away from alcohol. The first flourishing of Soviet jazz in the second half of the 1920s was an additional factor that helped the persistence of western couple dances in the Soviet Union. Leading jazz bands like Alexander Tsfasman’s played in the best restaurants, were featured in radio programmes and sound films, and produced records.19 In the 1920s and at the beginning of the 1930s, western couple dancing provoked huge criticism and was forced to make ideological concessions, but persisted as a popular practice. Yet another sharp turn in cultural policy strengthened its standing in the 1930s. The completion of the first five-year plan and collectivisation of the countryside required new shifts in ideological work. Instead of mobilising a dedicated and selfless workforce, there was now a demand to highlight successes and celebrate achievements. The decree of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, On the Restructuring of Literary-Artistic Organisations, in 1932 assigned outstanding importance to literature and art. This included

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widespread amateur (massovoe samodeyatel’noe) art, which was supposed to be organised under the watchful eye of the State. It was intended to demonstrate Soviet achievements that had made life ‘better and more fun’.20 Researchers generally agree that the 1930s were a formative period in the history of dance in the USSR. In this decade, ‘cheerful’ music and dance became important tools for instilling Soviet patriotism and spreading the message of the achievements of socialism in the international arena. This trend is fully reflected in the world of amateur choreography. The period of Proletkult experiments and the persecution of pre-revolutionary choreography came to an end. At the First All-Union Conference of Stakhanovites (workers who followed the example of Alexey Stakhanov in producing more than required to support the Soviet Union) in November 1935, Joseph Stalin famously declared that ‘[l]ife has become better, comrades. Life has become more cheerful’, which, among other things, prompted the largescale opening of dance classes, groups, and halls.21 Among the acoustic and visual symbols of 1930s Stalinism were Soviet jazz comedies like Vesyolye rebyata (Happy Guys, 1934) and Volga-Volga (1938), both directed by Georgy Aleksandrov. Furthermore, the triumph of the Soviet delegation at the International Folk Dance Festival Exhibition in London 1935 gave the Soviet leadership proof that dance could be used to display Soviet achievements and thus serve as a means of propaganda.22 At the same time, a new concept of socialist culture emerged that integrated professional art, folklore, and amateur art. Like other cultural figures, choreographers were now expected to ‘learn from the people’ as well as from the classics of the nineteenth century. As a result, a stable institutional network of artistic dance appeared. Cultural departments in the party and in the Soviets, trade unions, Komsomol, and industrial companies became official sponsors of professional and amateur choreography in addition to state bodies for cultural management. The new houses of folk art and houses of amateur art supported amateur choreographic cadres, and a common repertoire emerged. In the mid-1930s, a system for popular choreographic performances began to take shape. The ballroom dance conference of 1949 marks the next step in the development of policies for social dancing. Held in Moscow, it brought together leading ballet choreographers, composers, and leaders of amateur dance groups. Its aim was to ‘shape a form of recreation for young people, which would serve as both a source of their development and a form of cultural entertainment’.23 To reach this goal, a number of seminars for ballroom dance teachers from numerous regions were held in the two years following the conference. At these meetings, a good sixty couple dances created by Soviet choreographers were demonstrated and assessed. About half of them were deemed ‘useful’.24 Initially, the list of approved dances did not include

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the tango, foxtrot, and rumba, which were considered morally dangerous until the World Festival of Youth, which took place in 1957 in Moscow.25 That year, competitions in modern ballroom dancing that followed the European standards were held. Official policy regarding western social dances remained controversial and fluctuated according to the general political course of the country and the state of international relations. On the whole, however, the period between the early 1930s and the mid-1950s was a time when western couple dances were acknowledged in the Soviet Union. In addition to Stalin’s tolerance of the ‘bourgeois’ heritage and his declaration that life had got better, the acceptance of western dances was due to two events. Firstly, the inability of Soviet officers to dance European ballroom steps, which had become apparent at a meeting between the Soviet Military Commissar Kliment Voroshilov and a delegation of the French military in the 1930s, had caused a certain degree of awkwardness. The story of these officers who did not know how to dance modern steps or a waltz made the rounds in the Soviet Union. It made it de rigueur to master classic and modern dances (the foxtrot, rumba, and tango) not only for officers, but for everyone who deemed themselves civilised.26 The second event to help the development of modern dance in the USSR was also linked to concerns about international prestige. During the 6th World Festival of Youth and Students in Moscow in 1957, it became clear that the youth of the capital needed to be able to speak with their international guests in one corporal language – the language of modern dance. Fearing that Soviet youth were not up to the task, Soviet festival organisers mobilised professional and amateur choreographers in a massive campaign to teach young people modern ballroom dancing and give them a basic understanding of dance culture. On the eve of the festival, the Soviet media actively promoted European partner dances of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.27 The official position of politicians, ideologists, and leading choreographers towards dances from the ‘West’ remained ambivalent, however. The recognition of European couple dances did not apply to modern American dances. The scepticism towards modern steps of American origin was rooted in the idea that those dances embodied the ‘decadence’ of ‘western’ culture and threatened to corrupt Soviet youth morally and physically. This mistrust towards American dances grew in the post-war period, with the beginning of the Cold War, as ‘western’ music and dancing continued to be politicised. In the late 1940s, jazz was banned in the USSR.28 The fight against boogie-woogie and rock ‘n’ roll was a prominent feature of the 1950s, and the twist was condemned in the early 1960s. In the 1950s and early 1960s, Nikita Khrushchev personally and repeatedly spoke out

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against the new dances from the West. The words he chose to condemn these steps at the exhibition of Moscow Artists in December 1962 reverberate with the dance critique of the 1920s:

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After all, these dances are indecent. They say that it is new, but it’s not new, it is from Blacks. You look at black dances and American dances – it is just twirling with a certain body part. And this, they say, is dancing. What kind of dance is this? What the devil!29

A year later, Khrushchev voiced his opinion of contemporary dances on two different occasions, in March at a meeting with artists and in June during the Plenum of the Communist Party Central Committee. The Plenum decided to condemn the uncritical perception of western tendencies in art.30 About the same time, in the spring of 1963, a conference on contemporary narrative dancing was held in Moscow. Its participants – the country’s leading choreographers – tactfully reacted to Khrushchev’s attacks. Rostislav Zakharov, former ballet-master of the Bolshoi Theatre and longtime champion for the creation of a Soviet repertoire of social dances, summarised Soviet efforts to develop its own ballroom repertoire and protect Soviet youth from the ‘corrupting influence’ of modern western dance in a way that echoes the outdated demands of the 1920s and 1930s: Our ballet-masters and ballroom dance enthusiasts have composed a number of interesting, beautiful, modern dances. We must continue to work in this field and widely promote and disseminate what has already been created … It is necessary that all dance groups include the study of ballroom dancing in their class programme. In this way, participants in these groups will themselves become propagandists and distributors of the new dances. Leaders (conductors of balls and dance evenings) should be nominated from the ranks of the participants engaged in amateur choreographic activities. They will be the organisers of these mass events, the pioneers of healthy and joyful recreation for the youth.31

Shifting the focus from the debates about policies and dance steps to the implementation of cultural policies, we see that the European and American partner dances that were partially rehabilitated during the 1930s returned to the cultural parks of Moscow and Leningrad, as well as to clubs and newly built venues throughout the country. From the 1930s onward, the state created in enormous numbers venues to accommodate dance events. Approximately 10,000 urban culture palaces and workers’ clubs and over 100,000 venues of this kind for the countryside were supplemented with thousands more restaurants, spa resorts, and recreational houses. Dancing took place in the foyers of the 28,000 cinemas of the country, accompanied by musicians who played between film screenings.32 Soviet jazz, which

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reached its zenith in the 1930s, boosted the popularity of modern couple dancing.33 As to the control and – if applicable – censorship of the dancing at these venues, the Instructions on the Organisation of Paid-Entrance Dance Evenings, published by cultural departments of the trade union councils in 1933, offered practical orientation to the organisers. They allowed a number of European dances to be publicly performed, including the waltz, the pas de quatre, the krakowiak, and several others. While some dances of the peoples of the USSR and revolutionary dances were recommended as good options to learn and perform, the most fashionable dances of American origins, such as the foxtrot, the Charleston, the tango, and others were originally not permitted. However, such restrictions were not maintained for long and eventually these dances were allowed too.34 These ‘instructions’ are typical for the Soviet discourse on couple dancing as they favoured European dances that were in the 1930s incorporated into the Soviet canon as ‘classical’ heritage. The concept of social dancing as a school of etiquette was derived from the dance discourse of the Tsarist period. Under Stalin and Khrushchev, Soviet professional choreographers confirmed this concept. ‘Indecent’ American dances did not align with Soviet ideas about the social function of couple dances that were established between the 1930s and 1950s: Dances adorn everyday life; they are the form of collective fun; they are simple and accessible. Dances, like songs and sport, help maintain an individual’s cheerfulness. […] Dances develop in girls an innate gracefulness, emotionality, and a sense of self-worth. […] Young men, in turn, acquire good posture, a sense of dignity, and develop a proper gait and deftness. […] Finally, dances always support each person’s natural desire to be neat, elegant, and tastefully dressed. […D]ances serve not only as a pleasant form of entertainment … alongside music, drawing, and sports, they contribute to the comprehensive development of a person. They form his aesthetic tastes and teach him to understand that which is beautiful.35

At the local level, slogans against the nuisance of American dances translated into the observation of public dance events, conducted at times by the militia, but more often than not by self-appointed protectors of Soviet morals. In most cases, these were Komsomol activists; at other times, it was pensioners who had lived through the Stalin era and who felt entitled to exclude young people from dance events for their ‘perverted’ dancing.36 The directors of dance evenings also had the right to control them. They were given practical recommendations on how to proceed against ‘vulgar’ dancers: Explain their mistakes to them, suggest dancing correctly and decently in a public place. If your remarks are unsuccessful, stop the dance and tell the

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‘dancers’ to leave the hall to the music of a march. It’s good to then show how one should properly and beautifully dance the foxtrot. One should also immediately, in a joking manner and without harshness and attacks, make fun of the act of dancing incorrectly.37

Regardless of the diversity of proposals from the 1920s to early 1960s to ‘domesticate’ western dances, professional dance instructors and dance critics shared a similar approach to modern European dance, which they saw as secondary and insignificant to both Soviet dance and Soviet culture. Young people’s enthusiasm for ‘fashionable’ dances was seen as a temporary misunderstanding. Social dances of non-Soviet origin were disregarded for the most part. In cases where they did receive any sort of attention, they were understood only as raw material for solving issues related to physical, aesthetic, and moral education, so long as they were subject to strict control and carefully combed through for suitable steps.

Dancers and the practice on the dance floor 1920s to the early 1960s From the days of the Civil War, the Soviet press characteristically (and with a great sense of irritation) noted the unbreakable commitment of Soviet citizens to thoughtless ‘dances’ (tantsul’ki). As such, in 1919, the Proletkult journal decried the absence of consciousness and personal austerity among dance enthusiasts: In Tikhvin, they warn that, because of the siege, the beginning of the dance will start somewhere else and, in order to dance more, the theatrical plays are deliberately shortened to the point of non-recognition. In the People’s Soviet Theatre, the old public masquerade balls are being resurrected, complete with prizes of galoshes and money for costumes and dances. Moreover, in the Soviet Press, there is disagreement about whether or not the awarding of prizes occurred properly or not. In Kozlov, the professional unions organise balls with luxurious buffets. Dances, dances, and flashy reports.38

In the 1920s, newspapers and journals regularly fixated on instances where foxtrot enthusiasts disrupted Soviet dance festivals and managed to dance the foxtrot to any music, including some marches. Organisers of dance events were constantly confronted with the disappointment of dancers who asked why the foxtrot was not danced. Stage plays and academic lectures at workers’ clubs fell through if they were not advertised as part of an evening with dance. In the 1950s and 1960s, newspapers focused on similar incidents, but this time the culprits were the stilyagi who perturbed dance floor visitors with their long hair, provocatively colourful clothing, and American dances (the boogie-woogie, rock ‘n’ roll, and the twist).39

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Starting with the Stalinist musical comedies of the 1930s, scenes depicting dance festival and balls, recreational dance evenings, and ballroom dance circles (kruzhky) featured prominently in cinema.40 They were mentioned in the artistic works of Soviet writers and provided the setting for a number of paintings and posters made by Soviet artists.41 However, as a rule, they all reflected the official Soviet view of dance practice, which was supposed to demonstrate a happy, joyful life under socialism. Much less is known about the views of young people to whom the state policies and media images were addressed. They were the ones who regularly or occasionally attended dance evenings in schools, pioneer camps, clubs, parks, palaces, and who visited houses of culture, cafés, and restaurants. Those who at the time of writing are between sixty and seventy years of age post numerous nostalgic memories of dance on the internet, remembering their adolescence and youth. They recall through text and image the dance floor of the 1970s, the spirit of dance captured on film (discussed briefly at the beginning of the chapter), and the discos of the 1980s.42 Considerably fewer accounts ‘from below’ and views on social dancing have survived from earlier periods, though there are numerous references to dance evenings in connection to events such as school graduation balls or visits to Gorky Park.43 For example, the eminent Soviet functionary Boris Volin’s daughter Viktoriya, a fourteen-year-old teenager in 1935, told the author of the famous book about the House of Government, Yuri Slezkine, how she watched films, ate ice-cream, skated, strolled around the park, and attended balls.44 In spite of these occasional accounts, it is difficult to uncover the nature of non-Soviet social dance instruction, to find out how people danced, which dances they chose, how they interacted with one another during dance gatherings, and what consequences the participants faced because of their activities. First, despite the abundance of memoirs, information about dance practices within them are usually fragmentary and their systematic collection and analysis is a matter for the future. Second, reliable knowledge of the practice of European and American social dances in the USSR is complicated by the conditions under which they took place during the Soviet period. To begin with, it was almost impossible to control the preferences of those who came to the Soviet dance floors, primarily because the State had created boundless possibilities for setting up dance evenings since the 1930s. In addition, the perception of dance recreation by state authorities and choreographic professionals as being rather ideologically unmarked created a situation in which non-Soviet social dances, their instruction as well as their implementation at large gatherings, with rare exceptions in the metropole, were never systematically organised. Professional choreographers and teachers, who dominated

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the dance discourse, were more interested in the mass dissemination of ‘Soviet ballroom dances’ and the newly invented ‘dances of the peoples of the USSR’, the latter being derived from steps observed in the countryside and then performed on the city stage. As a result, the Soviet discourse on modern ballroom choreography focused almost exclusively on competitive and organised dances, while largely neglecting the most popular forms of social and leisure dancing. Only if the latter practices caused scandal did choreographers deal with them in a more systematic and practical manner. As a result, the everyday practice of social dancing slipped out of the patronage of the state. Igor Vlodavets, after the aforementioned story regarding the embarrassing episode with the Red Army Officers, recalled how people from his social circle developed their skills, which, owing to the marginalisation of European partner dances in the first fifteen years of Soviet rule, had been very rudimentary indeed: And so, Professor Slavyanov decided that it was better to organise such a dance club in his apartment. One of his graduate students offered to train the rest. As far as I can recall, he was also a geologist, but nevertheless, managed to teach us. He taught us the waltz, the polka, the mazurka, the foxtrot, the tango, and even some recently invented Soviet dance called simply infizkul’t.45

During interviews with people of older generations about the realities of dance during the decades from the 1930s to the 1950s, the author of this chapter repeatedly encountered considerable confusion on the part of his interviewees. Although they had at one time been famous for their skilful performance of European and American partner dances, they usually responded in one of the following ways: some claimed that nobody had taught them or explained that they had been taught some basics by someone in their family circle or in a private setting, outside the structure of the state. Others simply did not understand the question and went on to talk about ballroom dance ensembles or competitions in which they had participated. The following insights are derived from interviews with four contemporaries of the time of Stalin and Khrushchev.46 Vladimir N., born in 1928, was a graduate of the Moscow Choreographic School and worked as a ballet soloist in the theatres of Donetsk, Kuibyshev, and Chelyabinsk. Vasiliy Ch., born in 1939, was a graduate of the Suvorov Military School and the Chelyabinsk Polytechnic Institute. He later worked as a leading engineer at the Ural Institute of Mine Design. Tamara N., born in 1928, was a graduate of the Gorky School of Choreography and the choreography instruction department of the Leningrad Conservatory. She worked as an instructor and coach of ballet troupes in Donetsk (where she married Vladimir N.), Kuibyshev, and Chelyabinsk. In Chelyabinsk, in the late 1960s, she served as head of the Department of Choreography at the recently opened Institute

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of Culture. Tamara Ch., born in 1940, was a graduate of the library department of the Chelyabinsk State Institute of Culture. She was a museum and trade union worker, the spouse of Vasiliy Ch. The selection of interviewees promises information about people from cohorts of various ages. Two of the interviewees were professional ballet choreographers, while the two others had nothing to do with the world of professional choreography. Finally, the interlocutors are both married couples, allowing us to check or control their statements by comparing them with the information provided by their spouse. The results of the survey enable us to provisionally speculate that European social dances existed on a larger scale in poorly organised and poorly controlled dance evening meetings in the USSR. Dance enthusiasts fulfilled their desire to dance in their private living quarters or, more often, in government institutions that were specifically designed for leisure activities. Before the 1960s, the majority of the urban population in Soviet Russia lived in communal flats, with several families under the same roof. After this time, most Soviet citizens moved to individual flats and began to organise their dancing in private. Vladimir N., the oldest interviewee, did not recall dancing in his family. He learned the basics of social dance in 1940 or 1941 in the club at the radiator plant in the city of Zheleznodorozhny in the Moscow region. He was taught by a female friend from his drawing class who was five years older than him and asked him out for a dance evening. Vasiliy Ch. completely denies having had to learn to dance in the first place. He regards dancing as an activity that did not warrant any effort. In his youth, he preferred ‘more serious’ forms of entertainment, such as chess and billiards, sports and hiking. In the Suvorov school in the mining village of Kopeysk near Chelyabinsk, where he studied from 1950 to 1956, there were never any dance classes or evenings, he says. He learned to dance only after he completed his military service and danced mainly during dinner in restaurants. With male bravado, he rejects the notion of a ‘correct’ way of learning to dance: ‘Once I hear the music, I simply move along with it. I have no idea at all if it’s good or not.’ The dance memories of the two female interviewees are connected to family. Tamara N.’s early memories of social dancing date back to the mid1930s, when she saw her parents dancing the waltz or the tango. Her parents studied modern dance in a specially organised group at the Gorky Thermal Power Station. Tamara Ch. became acquainted with European partner dancing in 1950, at her parents’ home at the Poletaevo railway settlement near Chelyabinsk. Her father and uncles, the children of a gold mine administrator in the Orenburg governorate in the Tsarist Empire, knew how to play many musical instruments and assembled their own home-orchestra. They played waltzes such as Amur Waves (1909), On the Hills of Manchuria (1906),

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Beryozka (1911), and the most popular polkas. When the brothers gathered in the childhood home of Tamara Ch., they lined the children up in pairs. The children leapt into the air to the music and then changed the position of their arms with their partner, alternating them in front of themselves and behind their head. This was the polka, the first dance that she danced. Around that same time, during the New Year’s holiday, her uncle Sasha, who worked as a supervisor on part of the Southern Ural Railway, taught her to dance the waltz. Her grandmother played the piano and provided accompaniment. All four interviewees remember the same dance repertoire for the period from the 1930s to the 1960s. It includes waltzes, foxtrot, and tango. Tamara N. adds to this the Charleston as well as European dances from the nineteenth century like the krakowiak, the pas d’Espagne, and the pas de grâce. For Tamara, to be able to dance the pas de grâce is still a matter of prestige and a symbol that one belongs to ‘better’ society. She remembers that the pas de grâce was taught to local teenagers by the children of evacuated teachers from Kiev and Leningrad. Therefore, they only danced the pas de grâce until the children entered university at Chelyabinsk after finishing the tenth grade. For Tamara Ch., the repertoire from the 1930s to 1950s was still relevant in the early 1970s. She recalls dinners at restaurants where orchestras played: ‘At the restaurant, we primarily danced the foxtrot and, of course, the waltz. The waltz was less common, because it required a lot of space. But there was always the foxtrot and the tango.’ Tamara met her future husband, Vasiliy, in the Artika restaurant in Chelyabinsk in 1972, where he first invited her to dance a tango with him. For the American dances from the post-war period like the boogie-woogie, rock ‘n’ roll, and the twist, the two interviewees, who were born in the 1920s and 1930s, felt ‘too old’. Dance training usually lacked formal organisation and qualified instruction. Using observation and imitation, aspiring dancers learned by following others on the dance floor. Vladimir N. remembers his friend, who had invited him to dance at the club. Even though he was already enrolled at the Moscow Choreographic School at the Bolshoi Theatre, she was teaching him social dances, on the spot: And she shows me how to [dance]. She took me and led me; I was like her [dance] partner, but she showed me everything. I remember [she showed me] the foxtrot, the tango, and other dances … somehow, I caught on very quickly. There were no leaders there. Nothing was being shown, but there was music playing. They probably turned on a record. And that’s all. Everybody was dancing. That’s it. There was no organisation.

Vladimir N. figures that the records were probably played by the director of the club. He visited the club a few times and remembers that ‘everyone danced to the best of their ability’.

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Tamara Ch.’s memories of the dance evenings at the railway club are among the few detailed description of such events. At the age of fifteen, in the company of her brothers and friends, she started to go dancing at the railway club at Poletaevo Station. Dances were held on Saturday and Sunday after the last movie screening. Tamara recalls that the dance evenings were very similar to the scenes shown in the comedy film Devchata (The Girls, 1961). Once the film ended, the benches were pushed aside to make space in the hall. The sons of the club director switched on the record player and played the records to which guests would dance. They learned the dances by observing the dancers and listening to the music: How did we learn to dance? They [older visitors of the dance evenings] were older than us. For example, Yurii, my older brother, already danced pretty well. I just remember that we came to the dances and watched how they danced. At these dances, we simply paired up, watched each other, and learned how to dance.

Tamara Ch. and her friends attended the dance evenings with paid tickets. According to her, the price of these tickets was minimal and significantly lower than the cost of a ticket for an evening movie. The director of the club himself admitted young people to the dances. Youth were only allowed to enter from the age of fourteen or fifteen. Aspiring dancers also learned by watching cinema films. Musical comedies from the 1930s like the aforementioned Happy Guys and Volga-Volga were not dance films in the strictest sense, nor were they meant to serve as instructional movies for dancers. Apparently, the mere incorporation of dancing in the films was sufficient for the audience to take them as guidance. The use of film as dance instruction was not limited to sound films. Silent movies, both domestic and imported ones like the films featuring the enormously popular Charlie Chaplin, were also watched for their dance scenes. In the later period, films like Karnaval’nava noch (Carnival Night, 1956), Kollegi (Colleagues, 1962), and the aforementioned Devchata (The Girls, 1961) served as models for dance steps as well as for how to conduct oneself at dance venues. Foreign cinema was particularly helpful in this regard, especially the so-called ‘trophy’ music films such as Sun Valley Serenade (1941) and Die Frau meiner Träume (The Woman of My Dreams, 1944), which came to the USSR after the Second World War and were shown to the Soviet public between 1946 and 1956.47 Produced in the (former) allied countries or in Nazi Germany, these films served as a highly effective conduit for Soviet youth to learn non-Soviet aesthetic standards and body language. This is probably what Joseph Brodsky was referring to when he said that ‘without these films, I don’t even know where we would all be’.48

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Tamara N.’s own training in modern European partner dancing was based on imitations of what she saw at the cinema too. Her memories are very detailed in this regard, and her (TN) dialogue with the interviewer (IN) warrants verbatim presentation: TN: ‘I remember the dances we danced. […] I remember The Woman of My Dreams, where there were many dances. The film included, of course, the foxtrot, the tango, and the Charleston. This was an American film [sic] and we went to watch it seven or eight times, precisely because it had dances in it. Then there was a lot of dancing in Charlie Chaplin’s films.’ IN: ‘But this was a silent movie!’ TN: ‘But there were dances! And so what if it was a silent movie? They were moving after all … Sun Valley Serenade, much like The Girl of My Dreams – these were the dances with which we were fascinated. And we studied [them] through films, as opposed to anywhere else, because we were not allowed in adult society at all.’

Asked about the social function of dance evenings, Tamara Ch. remembers that the majority of dancers who visited the club were secondary school students, students of technical schools, college students, and young professionals who had not yet started a family. Friends and unmarried partners typically went to the dances together. Once people got married, they stopped attending dance evenings. The age and educational profile of the participants suggest what motivated young people to attend dance events apart from the sheer pleasure of dancing. For Tamara N., the communicative function and exposure to adult life were the main reasons for meetings on the dance floor: ‘First of all, it’s communication between the sexes. It’s the first time you can stand next to a young man.’ Apart from opportunities to get noticed by members of the other sex, mastering modern dances was an integral part of socialising and, according to Tamara N., a necessary skill for any ‘decent’ person: ‘The krakowiak, the pas d’Espagne, and the pas de grâce … everyone knew these dances and they were obligatory on the dance floors, in the houses of culture, [and] in the clubs. Not knowing how to move was indecent, even if you only moved your feet to the music.’ Groups did not only go to dances to socialise with people in their social circles. They also met new people there. They fell in love at the dances. Families were even started by couples that had met on the dance floor. ‘There were many cases like this,’ Tamara Ch. explains. Likewise, when asked about marriages that had begun on the dance floor, Vladimir and Tamara N. both exclaimed, in one voice, that there were ‘many, very many of these cases, of course’. Once they grew older and started families, my respondents no longer visited dance club evenings, but they did continue to

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dance in restaurants, at workplace celebrations, and when visiting others or hosting guests. According to Vladimir N., many banquet guests asked him if he planned to come with his wife. They wanted to watch and admire their dancing. It is telling that none of the interviewees mentioned any of the attempts to introduce Soviet social dances into youth dance culture, which had been the focal point of many choreographers since the 1920s and particularly during the 1950s and 1960s. Purtova lists three dozen Soviet ballroom dances that were originally in the repertoire of the All-Russian and All-Union competitions but ‘did not survive for even a day after the removal of the repertoire’s censorship’.49 The project of creating a Soviet ballroom dance had suffered defeat, as was evident long before the Soviet Union’s demise. Attempts to ‘domesticate’ dances by embedding them in propagandistic singing and chanting, for instance, had been rejected by the audience already around 1930, the time this idea appeared. Early Soviet politicised dances were conceptualised as collective dances and meant to be danced in large spaces or in the open. They suited large stages and processions better than dances at clubs, restaurants, or cinema foyers. The collective nature of those display dances and the chanting that accompanied them made communication between partners, which dancers found in the intimate setting of the couple dance, impossible.

Figure 10  Dancers under the open sky in Satka (Chelyabinsk region) on a Sunday evening, 1957

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The organisers of dance evenings depended on the audience whose tastes and preference for western dances they had to cater to. As a consequence, the state’s attempts at controlling the leisure activities of its citizens and using culture as a means to educate loyal youth failed in the realm of social dancing. Those who were born in the 1920s and 1930s showed a clear preference for western couple dances. Members of subsequent cohorts, however, turned increasingly to American-style dances in the first decade after Stalin, which each dancer performed individually in a larger group.

Epilogue This chapter has focused on the period from the 1920s to c. 1960 as the ‘golden era’ of couple dancing. The discussion about western dances and attempts to keep them at bay by promoting Soviet alternatives, however, did not end with the rise of solo dancing in the West. From 1963 to 1974, three All-Russian and All-Union competitions were held in order to create new social dances and accompanying music. Judges evaluated the repertoire of dance evenings and orchestras, the skill level of dancers and ensembles, and the training and preparedness of dance organisers and promoters.50 As in the decades before, this new attempt at promoting a Soviet dance repertoire ended in failure. By 1974/75, critics described Soviet dances as primitive and lifeless, pretentious, and boring.51 Their choreographers were accused of mechanically combining standard movements derived from canonical ballroom dances, folk dances, and new steps imported from the West. There was a consensus among dance experts that young people preferred western to Soviet dances because the former offered the dancers much more space for improvisation. In turn, improvisation gave young people opportunities to develop an individual body language, to distinguish themselves from others while remaining part of a group. In this discourse, dance was considered key for the transformation of youth into adulthood, as adolescents could try out the role of the adult in a playful mode. Western steps accommodated this need by allowing for free play, whereas Soviet dances with their structured repetition did not. While this was the immanent critique of Soviet dancing, the political promotion of Soviet steps also failed because of factors external to the choreographers’ debates, though these were hardly stated in public because of censorship. After the World Festival of Youth in 1957 and the American National Exhibition in Moscow in 1959, the Iron Curtain started to burst at the seams. Soviet goods, whether tangible consumer products or ideology, had lost credibility. Modern dance and rock ‘n’ roll music were just two of many fields of consumption in which the Soviet alternative had

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been defeated. In this respect, the failure of Soviet dances serves as a metaphor for the decline of the Soviet project as a whole, which turned out to be equally obsolete and lifeless. Both were rejected by Soviet youth who deemed them unfit for guiding them into adulthood. Reflecting global trends, European and American social dances advanced in the USSR throughout the period of study. This advancement happened against the efforts of ideologues, politicians, and producers of culture to keep them at bay, put them under surveillance, or incorporate them for propagandistic means. Such attempts were more systematic and longer lasting than in other totalitarian or authoritarian regimes in the twentieth century. They, in turn, gave the stubborn preference for western steps among the often young Russian dancers a particular political edge, even though many enjoyed western dances primarily as a way to drop out of the sometimes difficult and dangerous experiences of everyday life. This was the case during what Eric Hobsbawm called the ‘31-year war’ of 1914–45, but continued in the post-war decade, when the Soviet Union was ruled by a ruthless state and exposed to debilitating economic and social experiments. There were surprising asynchronicities between the history of social dancing and politics, as when Stalin himself saved European ball dances from Proletkult attempts to replace them with Soviet plyaska. Attempts at creating a modern Soviet couple dance continued alongside attempts to implement greater control over Soviet youth. These ambitions reached their peak in the 1950s and 1960s. From this time onward, Soviet youth, much like their western counterparts, became exceedingly infatuated with dances of African American origin, such as the boogie-woogie and rock ‘n’ roll. At the time the twist marked a break-up of closed-couple dancing in Europe and the West, Khrushchev, with the support of Soviet choreographers, cast himself as the saviour of partner dancing from a ‘western infection’. Indeed, it appears that European partner dances remained popular on Soviet dance floors slightly longer than they did in the USA or Europe. Eventually, in the 1970s and 1980s, Soviet youth danced African American steps, using their feet to vote against the Soviet project of social dancing. Translated from Russian by Nicholas Seay.

Notes   1 I. Sirotkina, ‘Plyaska po instruktsii: sozdanie “sovetskogo massovogo tantsa” v 1920-e gody’, Vestnik Permskogo universiteta. Ser.: Istoriya, 1:44 (2019), 153.   2 For further information, see: M. Vasil’eva-Rozhdestvenskaya, Istoriko-bytovoy tanets (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1987); N. Ivanovskiy, Bal’ny tanets XVI–XIX

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vekov (Kaliningrad: Yantarnvi skaz, 2004); T. Narskaya, Istoriko-bytovoy tanets (Chelyabinsk: CHGAKiK, 2009).   3 Sirotkina, ‘Plyaska po instruktsii’, 153.   4 For more on this see I. Narskiy, Kak partiya narod tantsevat’ uchila, kak baletmeystery ey pomogali. I chto iz etogo vyshlo: Kul’turnaya istoriya sovetskoy tantseval’noy samodeatel’nosti (Moscow: NLO, 2018), pp. 307–451.   5 See S. Rumyantsev and A. Shul’pin, ‘Nekotorye teoreticheskie problemy I chudozhestvenno-esteticheskie osobennosti samodeyatel’nogo tvorchestva ­ 1920-kh godov’, in S. Rumyantsev et al. (eds), Samodeyatel’noye khudozhestvennoye tvorchestvo v SSSR: Ocherki istorii. 1917–1932 (St Petersburg: Dmitry Bulavin, 2000), pp. 24–63, specifically pp. 24–44.   6 See T. Purtova, Tanets na lyubitel’skoy stsene. 20 vek: dostizheniya I problemy (Moscow: GRDNT, 2006), pp. 21–6.   7 ‘Khronika proletkul’ta’, Proletarskaya kul’tura, 7–8 (1919), 68; Muzyka I revolyutsiya, 4 (1926). Cited in Sokol’skaya, ‘Plastika I tanets’, in Rumyantsev et al. (eds), Samodeyatel’noye khudozhestvennoye tvorchestvo, pp. 373, 395.   8 D. E. Berezov et al. (eds), Politprosvetrabota I iskusstvo, 5 (1926), 37–8. Cited in Sokol’skaya, ‘Plastika I tanets’, pp. 377–8 (emphasis in the original).   9 N. Forreger, ‘Avangardnoye iskussnvo I myusik-kholl’, Ermitazh, 6 (1922), 7. Cited in Purtova, Tanets, p. 27. 10 Purtova, Tanets, p. 28. 11 Ibid., p. 27. 12 See Purtova, Tanets, pp. 30–1; Sokol’skaya, ‘Plastika I tanets’, pp. 377, 395; Sirotkina, ‘Plyaska po instruktsii’, 155–6. 13 ‘Iz otvetov A.V. Lunacharskogo na voprosy korrespondentki amerikanskogo agenstva pechati L.-P. Naurboker’, Literaturnoye nasledstvo, 82 (1970), 55. Cited in Sokol’skaya, ‘Plastika I tanets’, p. 395. 14 ‘Pod rukovodstvom partii’, Kul’turnaya revolutsiya, 15 (1930), 1. 15 Postanovleniye CK VKP(b), ‘O kulturno-prosvetitel’noy rabote profsoyuzov’, in A. G. Yegorov and K. M. Bogolyubov (eds), KPSS v rezolyutsiyakh I resheniyakh s’yezdov, konferentsiy I plenumov CK: Vol. 4 (Moscow: Institut marksizma-leninizma pri CK KPSS, 1984), p. 424. 16 See Sokol’skaya, ‘Plastika I tanets’, pp. 381, 397. 17 Ibid., p. 380. 18 See Sirotkina, ‘Plyaska po instruktsii’, 155, 158. 19 See A. Batashev, Sovetskij dschas. Otscherk (Moscow: Muzyka, 1972), pp. 25–6; J. Jelagin, Kunst und Künstler im Sowjetstaat (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1961), pp. 161–2; M. Lücke, Jazz im Totalitarismus: Eine komparative Analyse des politischen motivierten Umgangs mit dem Jazz während der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus und des Stalinismus (Münster: LIT, 2004), p. 74; S.  Frederick Starr, Red and hot: Jazz in Russland von 1917–1990 (Wien: Hannibal, 1990), pp. 63–4. 20 Postanovleniye CK VKP(b), ‘O perestroyke literaturno-khudozhestvennykh organizatsiy’, in Yegorov and Bogolyubov (eds), KPSS v rezolyutsiyakh, vol. 5, pp. C. 407–8.

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21 A. Sokol’skaya, ‘Tantseval’naya samodevatel’nost’, in S. Rumyantsev and A.  Shul’pin (eds), Samodeyatel’noye khudozhestvennoye tvorchestvo v SSSR: Ocherki istorii. 1930–1950 ee. (St Petersburg: Dmitry Bulavin, 2000), p. 99. 22 Purtova, Tanets, pp. 76–8. 23 ‘Bal’nyy tanets’, Klub, 4 (1951), 28. 24 Ibid., 28. 25 Gabovich, ‘Pust’ tantsuyet molodezh!’, Klub, 10 (1956), 14; Zaytsev, ‘Yesli tantsevat’, to krasivo’, Klub, 5 (1957), 26. 26 N. A. Formozov, ‘Beseda s I.N. Vlodavtsom’, Fond ‘Ustnaya istoriya, 31.10.2012, URL: http://oralhistory.ru/projects/science/chemistry/vlodavets_3. Cited in Sirotkina, ‘Plyaska po instruktsii’, 158. 27 Gabovich. ‘Pust’ tantsuyet molodezh!’, 14; Zaytsev, ‘Yesli tantsevat’ to krasivo’, 26. 28 See S. Rumyantsev, ‘Muzykal’naya samodeyatelnost’ 30-kh’, in Rumyantsev and Shul’pin (eds), Samodeyatel’noye khudozhestvennoye tvorchestvo, pp. 411–20. 29 A. N. Artizov et al. (eds), Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev: Dva tsveta vremeni; Dokumenty iz lichnogo arkhiva N.S. Khrushcheva, vol. 2 (Moscow: MFD, 2009), p. 523. 30 See Narskiy, Kak partiya, pp. 307–10. 31 R. Zakharov, ‘Obraz sovremennika v tantse’, in L. Alekseyeva (ed.), Sovremennost’ v tantse (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1964), pp. 18–19. 32 See L. A. Umanskiy (ed.), Narodnoye khozyaystvo SSSR. 1922–1982: Yubileynyy statisticheskiy sbornik (Moscow: Finansy I statistika, 1982), pp. 423, 455, 483, 489, 527. 33 Starr, Red and hot, p. 135. 34 See Purtova, Tanets, pp. 51–2. 35 A. Azarov, ‘Tantsevat’ krasivo’, Klub, 3 (1958), 12–13. 36 Al’, ‘V vikhre val’sa’, Kul’turnaya rabota profsoyuzov, 2 (1938), 64; ‘Besposhchadnoy kist’yu’, Klub, 6 (1958), 17; D. Kedrinskiy, ‘Stilyagam – net!’, Klub I khudozhestvennaya samodeyatel’nost, 1 (1964), 30. 37 A. Azarov, ‘Vecher tantsev’, Khudozhestvennaya samodeyatel’nost’, 5 (1958), 25. 38 ‘Khronika proletkul’ta’, 68. 39 See Sokol’skaya, ‘Plastika I tanets’, pp. 373–7, 394–5; Narskiy, Kak partiya, pp. 124–7. 40 This includes films like Vesyeyye rebyata (1934), Volga-Volga (1938), Muzykal‘naya istoriya (1940), as well as later films Karnaval ‘naya noch (1956), Devchata (1961), Kollegi (1962), and others. 41 For writers see, for example, V. Aksyenov, Kollegi (1959), www.litmir.me/ br/?b=1002&p=1; B. Bednyy, Devchata (Moscow: Goslitizdat. 1961); for examples of paintings and posters see, for example, www.plakat.ru; www.russian poster.ru/. 42 See, for example, ‘Tantsploshchadka – territoriya lyubvi’, Muzey SSSR “20-y vek”: Retro, vospominaniya, nostal’giya, http://20th.su/2012/05/31/tancploshhadka-

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territoriya-lyubvi/; ‘Sovetskava tantsploshchadka – territoriya lyubvi’, https:// maxpark.com/community/3782/content/2266230; M.  Mirovich, Diskoteki v SSSR, kak eto bylo (foto), https://maxim-nm.livejournal.com/328173.html. 43 See, for example, the reference material in K. Kucher, Der Gorki-Park: Freizeitkultur im Stalinismus 1928–1941 (Köln: Böhlau, 2007). 44 See Y. Slezkine, The House of Government: A Saga of the Russian Revolution (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017), p. 472. 45 Translator’s note: Infizkul’t is short for the Institute of Physical Culture, presumably where the dance had originated. Cited in Sirotkina, ‘Plyaska po instruktsii’, 158. 46 The interviews took place in September 2019 and are located in the personal archive of the author. 47 K. Tanis, ‘Trofeynoye kino v SSSR v 1940–1950-e gg.: k istorii formirovaniya fenomena’, Kultura I iskussnvo, 12 (2017), 85–91. The German musical-film Die Frau meiner Träume (dir. Georg Jacoby) was watched by 104 million people in the Soviet Union. 48 I. Tolstoy and A. Ustinov, ‘“Molites’ gospodu za perepischika”: Vokrug pervoy knigi Iosifa Brodskogo’, Zvezda, 5 (2018), https://magazines.gorky.media/ zvezda/2018/5/molites-gospodu-za-perepischika.html. 49 Purtova, Tanets, p. 32. 50 Purtova, Tanets, pp. 131–4. 51 For this and the following see N. Vaynonen, ‘Sladost’ I gorech zapretnogo ploda’, Klub I khudozhestvennaya samodeyatel’nost’, 2 (1974), 25; V. Isayev, ‘S etim chto-to nado delat’, Klub I khudozhestvennaya samodeyatel’nost’, 7 (1974), 37; ­ hudozhestvennaya V. Lapshin, ‘Zachem molodyezh khodit na tantsy?’, Klub I k samodeyatel’nost’, 15 (1975), 31.

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Index

ABC Club (dance club) 99 academias see dance academies adjudicators (of dance competitions) 8, 26, 48, 93–4, 100, 144, 167, 270 Africa (cabaret) 22 African American 3, 44, 46, 91–2, 110, 112, 118, 135, 143 dancing tradition 135–6, 271 music 47 music composers 218 musicians 43, 52–3, 57, 221 performers 218 see also black African Hall 99 African Theatre Trust 10, 95–6 age 42–3, 55, 67, 77–9, 135, 146, 163, 188, 192, 206, 209–11, 222, 225n, 235–6, 255, 266–8, 270 Aín, Casimiro ‘El Vasco’ 22 L’Ainglon (dance hall) 26 alberghi see taverns Albers, Hans 240 Aleksandrov, Georgy 258 Alex Moore School of Dancing 94 Allgemeiner Deutscher TanzlehrerVerband (ADTV) 237–8, 244, 247 Ambassador Ballroom 187 ‘American dances’ 25–6, 29, 34, 145, 256, 259, 260–2, 266 see also boogie-woogie; Charleston (dance); foxtrot; rock ‘n’ roll; shimmy; twist American Federation of Musicians (AFM) 46, 52–4 American mass culture see mass culture Americanisation 3, 28–9, 34, 88, 131, 143, 201, 217 see also ‘western dance’; ‘westernisation’

‘animal dances’ 44, 51, 82, 230 see also bunny hug; foxtrot; grizzly bear; turkey trot Armani, Eduardo 22 Armenonville (dance hall) 21 Armstrong, Louis 218, 221 Arolas, Eduardo 22 Artika (restaurant) 266 Astaire, Fred 11, 99, 220 Astor House Hotel 179–81 Astoria Palais de Danse 93–6, 100–1 Auckland jazz club 132 audience 7–8, 11–13, 25, 41, 46, 49, 91, 93, 100, 147, 161, 170, 182, 185, 220, 233–4, 240, 242–3, 257, 267, 269–70 baile formativos 24 see also dance balls Baird, Edith 142 ballet 254–6, 258, 260, 264–5 Ballet Celly de Rheidt 234 ‘ballomania’ see dance ‘craze’ ballroom 1–2, 4, 7, 11–15, 21, 33–5, 42, 47, 53–60, 64, 71, 74, 88–90, 92–5, 98, 100–1, 112–13, 117, 119, 142, 144–5, 156–9, 163–4, 166, 168, 171, 177–85, 187–8, 191–5, 202, 209, 212, 119, 220, 222, 240, 242, 244, 254, 258–60, 263–4 chains 10 circuit 57–8 culture 43, 183 industry 43, 54, 99 see also ballroom dancing; dance competitions; dance floor etiquette; dance instructors; management (of dance venues); milongas; ownership (of dance venues)

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276

Index

ballroom dancing 8–9, 80, 82, 88, 90, 93, 95–6, 99, 101, 118, 141–4, 155–8, 163–4, 171, 179, 254, 259–60 balls 11, 20–1, 23–6, 31–2, 34, 89–91, 104, 125n, 138, 147, 150n, 154, 156–8, 179–80, 209–10, 212, 253, 260, 262–3, 271 see also baile formativos; ‘charity balls’; masquerade balls; ‘movie balls’; society balls Baltimore, The 135 Bambalina 135 banana slide 143 bands see dance band; orquesta típica Bantu Men’s Social Centre 100 Baright, George F. 56 bars 96, 161, 178, 181, 187, 222, 231 Bates, Phyllis 141, 146, 151, 152n BBC Orchestra 98 Beck, L. O. 56 Beiping, Li Li 193 Berlin, Irving 8, 48–9 black 9, 12, 15, 31, 41–4, 46–7, 52–3, 57, 60, 87–8, 90–3, 98–102, 110, 140, 218, 260 Africans 28 culture/tradition 28, 53 elite 90, 101 black bands and orchestras 4, 52, 57 black bottom 57, 91–3, 143, 256 Black Cat Cabaret 183 ‘black’ dances 9, 218, 244 ‘black’ dancing 43, 57 ‘black’ music 12, 43, 52, 140 black musicians 46, 52–3, 57 blackface 47, 57 blackness 92, 160 blues 217, 219 see also new blues; Yale blues (dance) boîtes 22–3, 33 see also cabarets bon-odori 158 boogie-woogie 253, 259, 262, 266, 271 booking agencies 43, 48, 52, 56 Boston waltz 26, 165, 219 ‘bourgeois’ dances 253, 257 see also social elites Bradley, Josephine 68, 142, 152n British Association of Dancing Teachers 143

broadcasting 4, 11, 13, 41, 57, 87–8, 95–6, 98, 215, 238 see also radio broadcasters see broadcasting Broadway cabarets 42, 47, 50–1 see also cabarets bunny hug 8, 42, 80, 82, 135 Burke, Clifford 96 Burtseva, Militsa 256 cabarets 2, 4, 6–8, 10–11, 15, 19–24, 28–34, 42, 47–51, 54–5, 62, 132–8, 140–1, 146–7, 178, 183, 186, 188, 193–5, 204, 208, 230–7, 242–3 performers 49, 60 songs 236, 243 see also boîtes; Broadway cabarets; ‘cinema cabarets’; dancings cafés 48, 50, 156, 161–2, 167–8, 180–1, 183, 187, 191–2, 205–6, 212, 263 see also kafê; music cafés Café Parisien 181 Canaro, Fransisco 22 Castle, Irene and Vernon 25, 51, 53, 60, 160 Café Martin (cabaret) 48 Caledonian Ball 179 Canidrome Hotel 187 candombe 26 ‘carioca’, the 210 Carlos, Walter 9, 228–9, 231, 235, 237–8, 244 Carlton Café 180–1, 183 Carlton Hotel 91, 95, 102 Casa Suiza (dance hall) 22, 26 Casanova (dance venue in Buenos Aires) 23 Casanova Ballroom (Shanghai) 187 Casino Pigall (dance hall) 22 Cathay Hotel 181–2, 187 Centro Asturiano (dance salon) 20 Centro Catalán (dance salon) 20 Chaplin, Charlie 147, 267–8 chanson 167 Charleston (dance) 1–2, 6, 9, 12, 25–6, 28, 34, 57, 81, 90–3, 121, 135, 141, 143–4, 147, 177, 180, 217, 219, 235, 253, 256, 261, 266, 268 Chantecler 21–2 ‘charity balls’ 11, 23, 213 Chez Paree (dance venue) 146

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Index 277

choreography 81, 108, 123, 145, 212, 228, 253–61, 263–5, 269–70 Cinderella (dance palace) 55 cinema 2, 7, 10–11, 19, 29, 56, 72, 95–6, 100, 130, 134–5, 141, 147, 183, 185, 202, 208–9, 214, 220, 226n, 237, 240, 242–3, 245–5, 260, 263, 267–9 audiences 11 films 2, 267 ‘cinema cabarets’ 134 Ciro’s Nightclub 187 Cirque des Ambassadeurs 22 class 3, 6, 8, 10, 14–15, 19, 24, 30–1, 35, 38, 42–3, 46–7, 50–1, 53, 59, 64, 71, 75, 88–90, 92, 100–1, 109–11, 121–3, 155–6, 160–2, 166, 171, 178, 187–8, 193, 200n–1, 213, 215, 222, 229 discourses of 3 marginalisation 43 middle class 2–4, 6, 24–6, 34, 41–4, 48–50, 53, 68, 75–7, 87–92, 99, 101, 117, 119, 155, 164, 169, 171, 191, 212, 220, 222, 229, 237–8 upper class 22, 25, 27–30, 34, 41, 49–50, 89–90, 155–7, 160, 162, 170, 188, 212, 222 working class 2–4, 6, 22, 24–6, 28–30, 34, 42–4, 46–8, 50, 66, 77–8, 83, 92, 137, 155, 161, 212–13, 254 see also social elites classical music 52, 170 Clef Club of New York City (musicians’ guild) 52 Click-Clack Cabaret 10, 134 Club Social Balvanera 20 Club Social y Deportivo Villa Malcolm 25 collegiate walk 135 colonialism 1, 10, 89, 101, 108–9, 111–19, 121–3, 127n, 195, 225n Columbic, Harry 101 commercial amusements/entertainment 2–3, 5, 13, 19–21, 45, 54, 60, 89, 101, 202, 232 rise of 45, 59 commercial venues see dance halls; music halls commercialisation (of social dancing) 42–3, 59

community dances 7, 43, 110, 203, 208–9, 212–13, 256, 270 see also society balls control/regulation (of social dancing) 10, 21, 25, 51, 59, 79–80, 82, 99, 130, 143, 155, 162, 171, 205, 208, 211–12, 216, 222n, 232, 252–3, 261–3, 265 see also management (of dance venues); social surveillance conventions (of romantic couple dancing) see dance floor etiquette co-ordination (of social dancing) 11, 57, 120, 229–31, 234, 237–8, 240, 245–6 coperas 23 see also taxi-dancers cosmopolitanism 10, 49, 132, 134–5, 178, 186, 195, 204, 219–20 cotillion 142 couple dancing 1–2, 4, 7, 12–15, 32, 42, 53, 58–60, 87–8, 90, 92, 110–11, 113, 117–18, 121–3, 156, 158–9, 162–3, 171, 177, 185, 203, 228–31, 234, 238, 240, 243, 246–7, 253, 257–8, 261, 269–71 courtesan houses see prostitution courting 4, 8, 13–14, 19, 33, 51, 53, 58, 70, 77–80, 113, 136, 178, 185–6, 190, 192–3, 195, 229, 239, 242, 247 courtship see courting critics (of social dancing) 43, 52, 94, 229, 235, 246, 255–6, 262 ‘crowded room fox trot’ see fox trot ‘crush dancing’ 134 Crystal Slipper (ballroom) 55 cultural appropriation 51, 123 ‘culture industry’ 1 ‘cultural revolution’ 6 dance academies 8, 20–1, 23–4, 26–7, 34, 41, 51, 92–4, 181, 185, 264 see also dance instructors dance band 1–2, 4, 54, 56, 63, 96, 220, 223n, 243 business 43–4, 54–7 see also black bands dance carnivals 146 dance classes 27, 67, 72, 96, 99, 119, 237, 253, 255, 257–8, 265 see also dance instructors

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278

Index

dance clubs 75, 92, 99–100, 112, 119, 132, 202, 255, 264 see also social clubs dance competitions 8, 26, 48–50, 55, 75, 93–4, 98–100, 118–19, 142, 144, 152n, 190, 223n, 237, 259, 264, 269 dance conference 258, 260 dance conventions see dance floor etiquette dance ‘craze’ 7–8, 27–8, 43, 47–8, 50–4, 67, 73, 89, 91–2, 95, 99, 102, 118, 130, 135, 143, 180, 202, 232 dance exhibitions 47, 93, 96, 102, 134, 179–80, 260 dance floor etiquette 2, 13–15, 25, 27, 31–2, 34, 59–60, 65, 75, 78–9, 81, 87–8, 93–4, 185, 228–31, 235, 238, 245–6, 261–2 dance halls 1–2, 4, 10–14, 18–22, 25–6, 28, 30, 33, 35, 41, 43–4, 47–8, 50, 54, 57, 59–62, 64–70, 72–7, 79–81, 83, 88, 96, 101–2, 114, 132, 134–7, 139–41, 144–5, 147, 158–9, 162, 164–5, 169–70, 177, 183, 185–6, 188–92, 194, 202, 205, 208, 215, 221, 224, 230, 239, 240 chains 67 culture 14, 18–20, 28, 35, 186 emergence of 29 industry 11, 54, 66, 88 see also dance floor etiquette; management (of dance venues); recte; patrons (of dance venues); saloon (dance) hall; taxi-dance halls dance hall entrepreneurs 21–2, 41, 43, 159, 202, 233 dance industry professionals 6–7, 46, 49, 60, 72, 229–30, 232, 246 see also dance instructors; professional dancers dance instructors 4, 8, 11, 27, 41, 51, 55, 57, 59, 67, 92–3, 96, 137, 141–2, 144, 147, 162, 170, 185, 229, 237–8, 244, 255, 262–4, 266 organisations/associations 9, 93, 237, 244 see also Castle, Irene and Vernon; professional dancers dance magazines 88, 98, 166

dance manuals 27, 31, 53, 74–5, 163–6, 185, 238 dance marathons 58 dance movies see film dance music 1, 12, 43, 47, 49, 52–4, 57, 87–8, 98, 102, 132, 157, 167, 170, 180, 182, 218, 222n, 226, 238, 243 industry 55–6 dance musicians see musicians dance palaces see dance halls; Palais de Danse dance teacher associations see dance instructors Dance Teachers’ Association see Imperial Society of Teachers of Dance (ISTD) dance theoreticians 255 dancers see patrons (of dance venues); professional dancers Dancing Club Italia (dance club) 202 Dancing Feet (film) 41–2, 58–60 Dancing Italia (dance venue) 209, 227n Dancing for Strength and Beauty (dance manual) 74 Dancing Rubicone 202 dancings 22–3, 33 see also cabarets Danse La Fleur 50 dansi 108, 110–17, 120, 122–3 Dansu to Ongaku (journal) 167, 170 Danzi, Michael 243 dating see courting Dawson, Frederick 72 Debroy Somers Band 98 Defensores de Villa Crespo 20 Del Monte 188–9 Delphi (dance venue) 245 Deutscher Sporttanz 9, 244 Die Frau meiner Träume (The Woman of My Dreams) (film) 267 Diggers Hall 99 dissemination (of social dancing), 1–2, 5, 7, 27, 87–8, 93, 118–19, 155, 159, 186, 240, 260, 264 diversity 20, 30–1, 34, 89, 230 Dixieland Cabaret 134–5, 137–8, 140, 147 Dopolavoro centres see community events Dorothy Dance Hall 139 Dreamland (ballroom) 41–3, 53, 55, 59–60



Index 279

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Drei-Masken-Verlag 233 dress codes 11, 74–5, 96, 240, 245 see also dance floor etiquette Duncan, Isadora 254 effeminacy see masculinity; feminisation (of male dancers) Eintänzer 236–8, 244 El Casino (music hall) 19 elitism see social elites Elsie Reed (dance academy) 93 emancipation 6, 13, 81, 83, 114, 186, 191, 205, 230, 232 Embassy Salon 134 Empire Palace of Varieties (music hall) 91 Empire Theatre 95 English style, The 8–9, 80, 82, 84n, 142, 144–5 entertainment industry 10–11, 15, 46, 50, 56, 60, 178, 231 crisis 230, 232, 234–5, 246 structural transformation 234 vertical integration 243 era dei ritmi 202 see also ‘jazz age’ Ermoll and His Music Masters 182 Ermoll, Serge 182 Estivo 202, 209 ethnicity 15, 19–21, 30–1, 47, 108–10, 114, 122–3, 178–9, 188 Etiquette at a Dance (dance manual) 75 Europe, James Reese 50–1 ‘European dances’ 108, 110–11, 114–16, 118, 121–3, 136, 255, 261, 266 Eurythmics 254 Far Eastern Dance Hall 183 Femina (dance hall) 245 femininity 13–14, 68, 70, 136 feminist movement 18 feminisation (of male dancers) 64–5, 72–4 feste see community dances film 2, 4, 7, 11–13, 26, 28–9, 31, 41, 57–60, 87–8, 91–2, 95–6, 98–9, 102, 119, 130, 147, 150, 163–4, 178, 183, 185, 189, 191, 193, 214, 220, 222, 227n, 229, 231, 235–8, 240, 242–3, 245–7, 252–3, 257, 260, 263, 267–8 dance film 4, 58, 191, 237

industry 29, 34, 95, 185, 189 music film 11–12, 242 producers 4, 229, 242 studios 183 Firpo, Roberto 22 ‘Flannel Dance’ 74 Fleming, Harry 218 Flemming, Herb 221 flirting see courting Florida (dance hall) 169–70 Folies Bergère (cabaret) 48–9 folk dance 44, 89, 245, 253–4, 258, 270 folk music 182, 185 Foregger, Nikolai 254, 256 foxtrot 1–2, 9, 11, 25–7, 57, 66, 71, 75, 78, 82, 90, 94, 100, 102, 108, 110–12, 114, 119, 125n, 134, 144, 147, 177, 179–80, 210, 217, 219, 235, 253, 255–9, 261–2, 264, 266, 268 French Club 180–1, 187 Fresedo, Osvaldo 21 Frey, Hermann 231 Fritsch, Willy 242 galop 142, 256 geisha dances 156, 161 gender 6, 20, 42–3, 45, 59, 70–1, 73, 79, 83, 111, 123, 136, 155, 202, 204–5, 221 equality 28 identity 14, 64, 236 norms 14, 17, 31, 65 relations 4–5, 10, 13, 18, 31, 35, 64, 70, 77–9, 83, 108, 189, 191, 193, 235, 268 roles 18–19, 68 General Amusements Corporation 57 George Washington’s Birthday Ball 179 German sport dance see Deutscher Sporttanz Gerrard, Gerry 94 gĩcukia 113–14 see also dansi gigolos see prostitution; Eintänzer Glenn Miller and His Orchestra 98 Gli uomini, che mascalzoni! (film) 220 ‘golden era’ of social dancing 14, 101, 238, 270 Great Eastern Ballroom 183, 187 Grille (cabaret) 234 grizzly bear 8, 80, 82, 135

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280

Index

Grünbaum, Fritz 233 Harris, Henry B. 48 Harvey, Lilian 242 Haylor, Miss Phyllis 144 Healey’s (cabaret) 48 heebie jeebies 135, 143, 145, 152n heterosexuality 7, 10, 13–14, 42–4, 53, 58–60, 70, 77, 80, 83, 230–1, 246 see also courting; homosexuality; romantic love/relationships Hiraoka, Hirotaka and Shizuko 159 homophobia see homosexuality homosexuality 71, 75–7 homophobic reactions to 14 homosociability 43–5, 69–70, 77–8, 83 hotel ballrooms see hotels Hotel Danieli 209, 213 Hotel Excelsior 209, 212–13 Hotel Martini 209, 213 hotels 10, 15, 22, 55–7, 89–92, 95, 98, 102, 137–8, 142, 151n, 154, 179, 180–3, 187–8, 202, 204, 206–7, 209–10, 212–13, 222 How to Dance Argentinian Tango (1930) (dance manual) 164 How to Dance the Foxtrot (film) 147

134–7, 139–41, 144–6, 148, 167, 170–1, 175n, 177, 179–83, 185–6, 194, 197, 215, 217–19, 221, 223, 226–7, 230, 232–4, 238, 243, 247, 256–60 bands 130, 132, 134, 145–6, 179–82, 221, 233, 258 criticism 43 Italian style 9, 218, 221 musicians 134, 181, 197n orchestras 23, 180–1 Soviet style 257–8 ‘jazz age’ 54, 183 jazz dances 12, 57, 91, 99, 132, 135, 140, 180 see also Charleston (dance) jazz music 22, 87, 130–1, 182, 194, 218 Jenull, Herbert 228 jitterbug 6, 57, 87, 91–2, 99, 102, 121, 177 jive 6, 87, 91–3, 102, 121 Joseph Smith’s Orchestra 181 juba (dance) 135

immigrant see migrant Imperial Society of Teachers of Dance (ISTD) 9, 68, 93, 141–5, 151n–152n Imperial Society’s Congress 142 Imperio (cabaret) 22 improvisation (of dance steps) 2, 42, 44, 92, 102, 160, 162, 234, 243, 265, 270 Inchcape Hall 99–100 infizkul’t 264, 274n Inoue, Kaoru 157–8 International Dance Congress 143 International Folk Dance Festival Exhibition 258 Iowa Ballroom Operators’ Association 57 irua (dance ritual) 115 isicathamiya (acapella groups) 92

kafê 162–3, 170 see also cafés; taxi-dancing Kagetsu-En (amusement park) 159 Kaloleni (social hall) 119 Karnaval’nava noch (Carnival Night) (film) 267 Katō, Hyōjirō 162, 166–8 Katō, Yae 166 Kawakita, Nagatoshi 164–6 Kehl, Leo 94 Kenya African Union (KAU) 108, 110, 116–17, 119, 122 Kidd’s Dancing Rooms 78 Kigera Cultural Group 111, 120, 124 Kikuyu Central Association (KCA) 109–11, 115–17 Kilbirnie Hall 134 Kojunsha 164 Kokka 170 Kollegi (Colleagues) (film) 267 Kollo, Walter 231–2 krakowiak 261, 266, 268 Kunz, Charlie 213, 217, 219

James, Fred and Ngaire 135 Japan Association of Teachers of Dancing (JATD) 166 jazz 9, 12, 22, 26, 34, 43, 53–4, 73, 87, 98, 100, 119, 227n, 130–2,

La Argentina (dance hall) 22 Ladow, Louis 181 Lambeth Walk (dance) 67 lancers 89, 142 Lasky, Jesse L. 48



Index 281

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Lee, Lily see Beiping, Li Li Li, Jinhui 185 Li, Minghui 185 Liang sisters 191 lilt 99, 146 ‘live’ music see music Liu, Na’ou 186 Local Native Council (LNC) 110, 118 Löhner-Beda, Fritz 233, 236 Loveday (dance venue) 94, 96, 100–1 MacDonald, Miss Constance 144 Machine Dances see Foregger, Nikolai Maipú Pigall see Casino Pigall (cabaret) Majestic Ballroom see Majestic Hotel Majestic Hotel 180–3, 187 management (of dance venues) 4, 8, 48, 51, 54–5, 57, 67, 79, 96, 101, 137–8, 145–6, 177–8, 187, 190, 208, 224n, 229, 243, 257 Mans, Madge 93 Marabú (cabaret) 22 Marjorie Ward School of Ballroom 93 masculinity 6, 13–14, 64–6, 70, 72, 74–6, 79–80, 83, 137, 163, 205 hegemonic 65, 70, 81, 175n working class 66, 77 masquerade balls 158, 262 mass culture 13, 29, 31, 34, 41–2, 59, 148, 235 mass media see mass culture Masters of Ceremonies (MCs) 76, 79, 145 Mathaus, Alphonse 221 Matshikiza, Todd 88 Matsubara, Yosuke 170 mazurka 142, 264 maxixe 154, 161, 242 Mecca (dance hall chain) 10–11, 66 Mecca (dance venue) 66–7 media 7, 10, 13, 15, 18, 20, 24, 33, 50, 52, 57, 87–8, 91, 93–8, 102, 130, 132, 138, 141, 143, 154–5, 160–1, 165, 183, 185, 190–2, 194, 204–5, 229, 233, 235, 240, 255, 259, 262–3 technology 1, 4, 87, 102, 231, 239–40, 242, 245–6 see also mass culture Megata, Baron Tsunayoshi 159, 164–5, 167 Mei, Lanfang 182 Meisel, Will 233

members’ clubs 166, 231 see also social clubs Merry Blackbirds 98, 100 Metropol 242 Metropole Gardens Ballroom 187 middle class see class migrant (also immigrant) 7, 19, 24, 34, 43–4, 50, 90, 112, 116, 181 milongas 20, 24–5, 30–4 milongueros/milonguitas 22–4, 29–30, 34 minstrel troupes 91–2 Modern Ballroom Dancing (1927) (dance manual) 143, 163–4 ‘Modern Waltzers’ 164–5 see also waltz modernity 2–3, 22, 108–9, 111–14, 120, 131, 139, 141, 187, 191, 194, 205, 230, 232 Moka Efti see Schottenhaml Mokuyōkai 164 ‘Monte Carlo’ dances 146 Monte Carlo Madness (film) 240 Montparnasse Tango Ensemble 170 Moochi (dance) 146 Moon Palace Dance Hall (Yuegong Wuting) 186 Moore, Alex 94 see also Alex Moore School of Dancing moral panic 2, 10, 15, 20, 29, 88, 130, 149, 151, 202, 204, 221 moral reformers 2, 4, 42, 44 Mori, Junzaburō 164–7 Morris, William 56–7 Moscow Association of Rhythmists 256 ‘movie balls’ 11, 147 ‘Mr Rector’ (dancer) 161 Mu, Shiying 186, 190, 192, 199n Mumm’s Café 181 Murray, Arthur 94 music 5, 10–13, 15, 17, 22–3, 25, 28, 33, 42–3, 45–9, 51–3, 57, 59–60, 70, 72, 81–2, 87–8, 90, 94–100, 108, 118–21, 130–2, 137, 145–6, 148, 154–6, 159, 166–8, 170–1, 182, 185–6, 202, 204, 215, 217, 219–20, 222n, 229–33, 235–40, 242–46, 253, 255–6, 258–9, 261–3, 265–8, 270 European-style 100 industry 55–6, 166

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Index

music (cont.) ‘live’ music 103, 167, 169–70, 175n, 180, 221 popular music 2, 25, 47–8, 50, 82, 132, 177, 233, 243 see also ‘black’ music; classical music; dance music; film, music film; folk music; jazz music; music hall; musicians; recording industry; tango, music music cafés 12, 166–7 Music Corporation of America (MCA) 56 music hall 1, 7, 19, 21, 48, 61, 91, 95 music publishers 48–9, 233–4 see also songwriters musica leggera see jazz musical film 168, 242, 263, 267 see also musical theatre musical theatre 46, 57, 72, 108, 121, 132, 135, 146, 161–2, 168, 171, 182, 217–18, 222n, 227n, 231, 333–4, 237, 242–4 directors 48, 51 see also musical film; theatre musicians 4–5, 8, 12, 15, 24, 41–3, 45–8, 52–4, 60, 72, 87, 98, 113, 131, 134, 137, 146, 167, 169–71, 177, 180–2, 185, 208, 218–21, 224n, 229, 231, 234, 238, 240, 243–6, 260 see also black musicians mũthĩrĩgu (dance-song) 115–16 mutual aid societies 19, 22 mwomboko 108, 111, 120–3 Naka and his Tiger Boys 170 National Attractions Inc. 10, 56 nationality 178–9, 187–8, 193 Neo-Sensualists 186 network broadcasts see broadcasting new blues 143 New Inchcape Palais de Danse see Inchcape Hall New Zealand Dancing Journal 142 NHK Kōkyō Gakudan see Shin Kōkyō Gakudan Nichibei (dance hall) 164–5 nightclubs 55, 185–7, 193, 202, 204, 208, 243 Nishinomiya y su Orquesta Muchachos 170 Nottingham Palais de Danse 75

Ocean Club (dance hall) 28 O’Connor, Margaret 141–2, 145, 152n one-step (dance) 25–6, 90, 144, 161, 219, 256 ongaku kissa see music cafés Opera Nazionale Dopolavoro 203 operators (of dance venues) 10, 42, 51, 55–8, 130, 229, 233, 246 see also management (of dance venues); ownership (of dance venues) operetta 7, 215, 231–3, 242 orchestra 2, 21–4, 26, 45, 49, 52, 60, 98, 100, 161, 169–70, 181–2, 187, 205, 211, 233, 242, 265–6, 270 see also orquesta típica Original Dixieland Jazz Band 181 orquesta típica 22 ownership (of dance venues) 8, 21, 24, 48–9, 51, 56, 91, 96, 101, 137–8, 140, 147, 151n, 159, 162, 180, 208, 231–2, 243 Pabellón de las Rosas (dance palace) 21 Palais am Zoo 245 Palais de Dance (short film) 96 Palais de Danse 7, 95–6, 132, 134 see also dance halls Palais de Danse (dance venue in Berlin) 242 Palais de Danse (dance venue in Cape Town) 95 Palais de Danse (dance venue in Johannesburg) 95 Palais de Danse (dance venue in Hammersmith) 96 Palais de Glace 10, 21–2 Palmerston North (dance studio) 144, 147 Paradise Ballroom 184, 187, 198n Paramount Ballroom 67, 76 Park Hotel 187, 192 Parkes, Beth 146 pas d’Espagne 257, 266, 268 pas de grâce 266, 268 pas de quatre 261 Passage 242 paso-doble 219 patriarchal culture 14, 70, 83 patrons (of dance venues) 2–12, 18, 20, 23–5, 27–8, 30, 33–4, 41–3, 45–7, 49–57, 59–60, 66–8, 72–3, 79–83, 88, 90–6, 98–103, 112–13,

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118, 120, 122, 132, 134–41, 144–7, 155, 162–5, 168, 170–1, 177–9, 182–3, 192, 205, 207, 209, 210–11, 216, 222, 228–31, 234–6, 238, 240, 242, 246, 256–7, 261–2, 266–71 see also milongueros/milonguitas Paul Whiteman and His Orchestra 181 see also Whiteman, Paul Pavlova gavotte, The 154 Payne, Jack 1 Peach Blossom Palace 183, 185 performers see musicians Peter Pan (dance venue) 10, 134–5, 137–8, 146–7 ‘pheasants’ (yeji) see prostitution Pincio-Dancing Bar 202, 219, 222 Pirate Shippe (cabaret) 146 pivoting see ‘spieling’ Pla-Mor Ballroom 55–6 plyaska 254, 256, 271 polka 28, 142, 155, 161, 257, 264, 266 Pont, Floyd Du 145 Porter, Cole 209, 219, 220 Potpourri 231–2 Powell, Eleanor 220 Prelude to the Social Dance Study, The (1932) see Mori, Junzaburō press see media private dances 2, 20, 47, 90, 100, 115–16, 119, 179, 212–14, 232, 265 professional dancers 4, 8, 50, 71, 96, 147, 162, 228, 233, 244, 255 see also choreography; dance industry professionals; dance instructors prostitution (prostitute) 4, 12, 23, 25, 44, 50, 51, 58, 89, 114, 162–3, 174n, 179, 185, 187, 189–92, 229, 231, 236, 238 public halls see dance halls pubs 67, 69–70, 137–8 Purim Ball 179 quadrille 142, 179, 219 Queen’s Hall 142 quickstep 94, 119–20 race 4, 6, 8, 43, 45, 51, 58, 61, 72, 101, 135–6, 140, 143, 155, 160, 169, 178, 193, 204–5, 235, 218, 247 boundaries 4, 6, 88, 92, 102, 193 relations 3, 14, 140, 193

race riots 58 racial identity 3 racial segregation 88–90, 99–100 racialised bodies 43 racism 57–8, 93, 109, 117, 160, 203, 218, 221, 246 radio 12, 15, 41, 56–7, 59–60, 87–8, 96, 98, 123, 130, 146, 168, 171, 202, 215–16, 218, 220, 222n, 226n, 227n, 229, 235, 238 programmes 12, 98, 218, 237, 257 ragtime 47–8, 53–4, 90–2, 160, 256 music 47, 131 Rebner, Arthur 233 record companies 49, 155, 166, 168, 215 recording industry 4, 12, 87, 97–8, 215, 234 see also music, industry Reed, Elsie see Elsie Reed (dance academy) Reichsverband für die Pflege des Gesellschaftstanzes (RPG) see Reichsverband für Tanzsport Reichsverband für Tanzsport 237 Reisenweber’s (cabaret) 48 refinement (of social dancing) 8–9, 43, 51, 53, 71, 92, 152n Reko-kon (record concerts) 168 Resi (dance hall) see Residenz-Casino Residenz-Casino 10, 239–41 restaurant cabarets see cabarets ‘restaurant dancing’ 134 restaurants 10, 19, 21, 48–52, 55, 92, 95–6, 134, 167, 190, 255, 257, 260, 265–6, 269 Revellers (band) 100 Rezant, Peter 88, 98, 100 Richardson, P. J. S. 144 Richman, Harry 99 Rillo, Richard 233 Ritz, the (dance venue in Shanghai) 188 Ritz, the see New Inchcape Palais de Danse Robitschek, Kurt 233 rock music 12 rock ‘n’ roll 6, 253, 259, 262, 266, 270–1 Rogers, Ginger 11, 99, 220 Rokumeikan (entertainment venue) 157–8

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romantic love/relationships 2, 4, 10, 13–15, 35, 42–3, 45, 58–9, 68–9, 79, 83, 115, 134, 136, 141, 156, 177–8, 180, 187, 189–95, 228–31, 234, 236, 238–40, 242, 246–7, 252 see also dancing friendships Rotary Club 212 Royal Pigall (dance hall) 21 Rudolf Nelson’s cabaret 233 Rühmann, Heinz 240 rumba 26, 119, 146, 177, 179–80, 219, 259 rural 15, 32, 108–9, 111–12, 114, 117, 119, 140, 157, 204, 207, 212–13, 254 Rush Munro’s Conservatoire de Danse 134 Russian Ball 179 Rye Lane (dance club) 75 ryūkōka (song genre) 168, 175n, 176n St Andrew’s Ball 179 St George’s Society Ball 179 St James Restaurant 96 Sala Gay 202, 220 Sala Moderna 202, 209 sale da ballo see dance hall Salón Rodríguez Peña (dance hall) 22 saloon (dance) hall 20, 22–3, 25–6, 42–3, 45, 47, 50, 55, 59 Santillán, ‘El Pardo’ (dancer) 22 Savoy Cabaret 135 Schlesinger, Isidore 95 Schottenhaml 245 schottisches 132 Schwabach, Kurt 233 Scott, Edward 74 Seikosha 164–5 Sesto Carlini Orchestra 221 sexual activity 2, 42, 44–5, 50, 92, 121, 139, 189, 191, 216–17 see also gender; prostitution; sexuality sexual orientation 43 sexuality 4, 6, 35, 42, 44–5, 69, 80, 82, 84n, 108, 114, 121, 138, 158, 161–2, 177–8, 182, 186, 191, 193–5, 203–5, 207, 225n, 234–5, 239, 255–6 see also heterosexuality; homosexuality; sexual activity; sexual orientation

Shall We Dance (film) 99 Shanley’s (cabaret) 48 ‘shebeens’ 100, 102 shimmy 18, 25–8, 235 Shimmy Club (dance association) 26 Shin Kōkyō Gakudan (orchestra) 170 show business see entertainment industry Silvester, Victor 71, 94, 142–4, 163–4, 166 singers see musicians Slow Foxtrot see foxtrot ‘slumming’ 6, 8, 41, 50–1, 238 Smith, Whitey 181–3, 185 Smolar, Miss Dorothy 161 social clubs 2, 19, 21, 25, 118, 231 see also Club Social Balvanera; Club Social y Deportivo Villa Malcolm; mutual aid societies social club dances 21, 25 social halls see social clubs social elites 10, 25, 50, 52, 90, 93, 95, 101, 109, 117, 122–3, 134, 137, 156–9, 164, 168–9, 171, 179–82, 185, 187–8, 192, 202, 209, 212–13, 254 social mobility 19, 30, 50–1, 108, 112, 190, 236 social surveillance 24–5, 113, 136, 203, 205, 207, 212, 221, 226n, 231, 271 society balls 28, 89–90, 179 see also community dances Son of the Sheik, The (film) 91 songwriters 48, 186, 233 sound film see film South African Dance Teacher Association (SADTA) 93–4, 98, 100, 102 Soviet dances 9, 253, 257, 262, 264, 269–71 see also plyaska speakeasies 54 ‘spieling’ 44 ‘Sport-trot’ see foxtrot stage dancing 8, 57, 90–1, 95, 132–3, 155, 234 stage dancers 7, 164 Stoedel, Harry 95 Sun Valley Serenade (film) 267–8 symphony orchestras see orchestras ‘sweet jazz’ see jazz



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swing 72, 76–7, 81–2, 87, 148, 175n music 82, 98 see also Truckin’ Tabarís (cabaret) 21–2 Taggart, James 182 Takahashi, Tadao 167 Tamaki, Shinkichi 163–6 tango 1–2, 6, 8–9, 12, 18, 20, 22–3, 25–9, 31–5, 50, 88, 91–4, 98, 100, 102, 154–6, 159–71, 173n, 176n, 179, 209–11, 216, 219, 230, 252–3, 255, 259, 261, 264, 266, 268 ‘Argentinian’ tango 12, 155, 159, 164, 166–71 ‘Brazilian’ tango style 161 ‘British’ tango style 164 dancers 22, 154 ‘European’ tango 167 ‘French’ tango style 9, 159, 164 music 23, 29, 34, 154–5, 164, 166–71 ‘Spanish’ tango 163 tango de salón 25 ‘tango pirates’ 50 Tango tempi 94 Tanz-Schlüssel, Der (journal) 228 tap dance 41 taverns 205, 207, 214, 222 taxi-dancing 4–5, 23, 41–2, 58, 162, 178–9, 183, 188–9, 191 taxi-dancers 5, 177, 191, 194 see also coperas taxi-dance halls 5, 42, 55, 186, 188–9, 191, 193–4 Taylor, Major Cecil 68, 143 tea dances 64, 180, 206, 213 Terra madre (film) 220 theatre 19, 21, 31, 45, 87–8, 91–2, 95–6, 99, 121, 135, 159–61, 202, 205, 208, 212, 220, 231–3, 239, 242, 255, 260, 262, 264 chains 95 see also musical theatre; variety theatre; vaudeville tiaowu xuexiao see dance academies Tips to Dancers: Good Manners for Ballroom and Dance Hall (dance manual) 38n

Totem Pole Ballroom 55 ‘tough’ dances 44–5 see also ‘spieling’; ‘animal’ dances treating 4, 6, 8, 29, 44–5, 59, 239 Truckin’ (dance) 72, 82–3 see also swing Tsfasman, Alexander 257 turkey trot 8, 42, 44, 53, 81–2, 135, 147, 154 twist 253, 259, 262, 266, 271 two-step 26, 111, 165, 242, 255–6 ukureka (performance style) 92 Union dancehall 169 Unión y Benevolenza (dance salon) 20 upper class see class urbanisation 19, 45, 90, 131, 140 Valentino, Rudolph 26, 91, 163 variety theatre 2, 7, 48–9, 55, 91 vaudeville 4, 7, 47–50, 52–3, 56, 91, 243 veglie see community dances waltz 8, 26, 28, 57, 78, 90, 94, 98, 100, 102, 111, 119, 132, 142, 147, 154–5, 161, 164–6, 209–11, 217, 219, 252, 259, 261, 264–6 see also Boston waltz Wellington Town Hall 132 ‘western dance’ 177, 183, 253, 260, 270 ‘westernisation’ 113, 157–8, 160, 259 William Morris (booking agency) 56–7 Winter Garden 10, 135 Whiteman, Paul 146, 152n, 181, 243 ‘whitewashing’ see cultural appropriation Wooding, Sam 218 workers’ clubs see social clubs working class see class working-class dances 42, 46–7 wunü see taxi-dancing xenophobia see racism Y. P. S. (Yipinxiang) Hotel 183 Yale blues (dance) 143–4 Yang, Peiying 185 ‘yellow music’ 186 Yu, Hanmin 185