Popular and Social Dance

I

Introduction

Popular and Social Dance, overlapping terms referring to dances performed by the participants for their own enjoyment and not belonging to any folk tradition. Such dances characteristically emerged among the aristocratic or wealthy in past societies and developed in the urban, mass-media-influenced cultures of the 20th century.

Scholars vary in their usage of the terms popular dance and social dance. Some apply popular dance to dances of the 20th century. Some reserve social dance for the dances of the more urban and often more affluent members of society who gather to see and be seen. Still others consider social dance to encompass not only urban or elite dances but also recreational folk dances (as opposed to ceremonial or ritual folk dances). The focus in this article is on nontraditional, or nonfolk, social dances popular among the elite of past centuries as well as among members of 20th-century, largely urban, society. The steps and patterns of such dances tend to reflect the values and attitudes of society during the periods in which they developed. The dances often cross geographic boundaries and are enjoyed by large numbers of people. Many are rooted in folk dance, and, like recreational folk dances, they can be contrasted with theatrical dance (which is meant for an audience and is performed by highly skilled and trained individuals). Like folk dances, however, popular social dances have often been employed and transformed by choreographers for use in the theater. Although popular and social dance forms exist to some extent in non-Western cultures, they are particularly prominent in Western culture, and throughout their documented history, they have influenced and been influenced by Western music and theater.

II

Middle Ages and Renaissance

The earliest specific documentation of the social dances popular in Western Europe is from the Middle Ages (5th century to 15th century). The predominant dance forms of the early Middle Ages were chain dances, in which the participants, linked in a line, accompanied themselves with singing. Carol, reigen, branle, and farandole are the dances most frequently mentioned. In the later Middle Ages, members of the feudal nobility concerned themselves with chivalry, knighthood, and troubadour songs about courtly love. In this environment, couple dances began to achieve popularity. The estampie was one of the first formal couple dances; a slow, stately dance, it was performed to instrumental accompaniment in the courts of Europe.

During the Renaissance (14th century to 17th century), the nobility were joined as cultural leaders by a powerful mercantile class. As humanism and an interest in classical Greece and Rome gained prominence, dances tended to reflect secular values. In their ordered patterns, the dances of the Renaissance seem to mirror the contemporary philosophical fascination with the harmonious movements of the planets and other celestial bodies. Many of these dances were created by professional dancing masters hired by the nobility. For the first time, instruction manuals became available, showing the steps and patterns of the various court dances—the trend-setting dances of the 15th through the 18th century. The 15th-century manuscripts of such dancing masters as Italians Domenico da Piacenza and Guglielmo Ebreo are available for study, along with a dance manual published in the late 1490s by French printer Michel de Toulouze.

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The dances taught were balli and balletos, the bassadanza, and its northern counterpart, the basse danse. Danced with simple movements and gentle shifts of weight by couples who touched hands at arm’s length, the basse danse proceeded around a hall in quiet, stately manner, led by the highest-ranking couple. When Italian noblewoman Catherine de Médicis became queen of France in 1547, she brought to the French royal court not only Italian influences, but also her Italian dancing master.

The dance manuals published between 1550 and 1630, written by Thoinot Arbeau of France, Cesare Negri of Italy, and other dancing masters, describe dances such as the pavane, galliard, allemande, courante, saltarello, and volta, as well as circular branles and progressive longways dances (for a line of couples, in which each couple repeats the pattern with one new couple after another; see Country Dance). The sense of order and harmony so important during the Renaissance gave rise to formalized suites of dances; pavanes, for example, were followed by galliards. The pavane replaced the basse danse as the usual processional dance. The galliard, with its springy leaps and kicks, became a dance of male display to a more subdued female partner. See also Suite.

III

17th Through 19th Centuries

In 1643 Louis XIV became king of France, then the center of power in Europe. Pavanes and galliards began to die out, and dances such as the sarabande, chaconne, gavotte, musette, hornpipe, gigue (see Jig), rigaudon, and bourrée became prominent. During the 1660s at the French court the minuet appeared; its hierarchical format, complex patterning, and contained elegance reflected a world of order, convention, and extreme emphasis on detail. It was danced by one couple at a time, in order of rank; with erect posture, small, precise steps that sank and rose at the knee and foot, and small, precise hand and arm movements, the dancing couple outlined a specific floor pattern (at first an S, later a Z).

The minuet had a lengthy popularity, and its demise overlapped with the beginnings of the waltz and with significant historical events—the American and French revolutions, the Industrial Revolution, and the rise of the middle class. In parallel with the fascination of literary and musical romanticism with folk music and folk life, the waltz was derived from a folk dance (the Austrian ländler), as were other 19th-century couple dances such as the mazurka and polka. Everything about the waltz was new and different—the impetuous tempo, couples dancing simultaneously with others in random patterning, partners facing each other instead of side by side, and the radically new embracing hand positions. It retained extensive popularity through the 1870s.

IV

Ragtime Through World War II

Not long after the first performance in 1867 of the “Blue Danube” waltz, by Austrian composer Johann Strauss the Younger, dominance in the development of popular dance shifted from Europe to America. Previously, American emphasis had been on imported English country dancing and the French contredanse and cotillion. In 1889, however, American bandmaster John Philip Sousa’s “Washington Post March” gave birth to the two-step in ½ meter, with a quick marching step with skips.

Ragtime, with roots in black American music, emerged in the late 1890s. With its lively, syncopated rhythms, it gave rise to a popular craze for dances imitating animals, such as the turkey trot (in which syncopated arm gestures simulated wing movements, and the feet moved with one step to each beat), the grizzly bear, and the bunny hug, from about 1910 to about 1915. Also popular during this time were the tango, a sensual dance imported from Argentina, and the maxixe. The radical changes in dance styles mirrored the changes in society: automobiles and airplanes, radios and telephones, suffrage for women, the rise of labor unions, the writings of Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, and the Russian Revolution of 1905.

The dances of the teens and 1920s, such as the Charleston, with its kicks, swinging arms, mobile torsos, and blaring rhythms, reflected a euphoric sense of prosperity and freedom. The Jazz Age of the 1920s was brought to an end with the stock-market crash in 1929. In the 1930s swing emerged as the new musical sound, played by big bands led by musicians such as Benny Goodman. Wanting respite from the Great Depression, Americans eagerly watched motion-picture extravaganzas by the dance director Busby Berkeley as well as the movies of dancers Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.

To swing music, teenagers danced the jitterbug, an outgrowth of the 1927 lindy hop. The fox-trot, a fast, trotting dance from about 1913, returned in the 1930s in a slower, smoother version. In 1939 at the World’s Fair a samba orchestra played at the Brazilian pavilion. Soon, popular culture was swept with a rage for South American dances such as the rumba, mambo, chachachá, and conga line. The Latin forms and sensual hip movements became popular at a time when women were gaining increased freedom, working in factories and managing homes and businesses while men were away at war during the 1940s.

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