The Waltz
 From German verb, ‘walzen’
meaning “to turn or rotate”
 Developed in the 18th century
 3/4 time dance
From the Minuet to the
Waltz
 The Minuet
“menuet” - meaning small:
a dance of tiny
movements, minimal
touching, meant more as a
display of oneself than a
connection to a partner
 The Waltz
“lascivious music and
voluptuous movements”
Objections to the Waltz
Medical considerations
 Dizziness
 Fainting in women
 Probably due to wearing a corset
Moral objections
- Closeness to partner
- Inappropriate Touching
 Etymology: Middle
English, from Latin
vertigin-, vertigo, from vertere to
turn
 Date: 15th
century
 1 a: a sensation of motion in which the individual or
the individual's surroundings seem to whirl dizzily b: a
dizzy confused state of mind
Chapter 8 of Madame
Bovary, one of the most
evocative descriptions of
social dance ever penned.
Morally
reprehensible
dances
“That dance…has been proved to
be the moral graveyard that has
caused more ruination than
anything that was ever spewed out
of the mouth of hell.” - Early 20th
Century Preacher Billy Sunday
Fad (Freak or Animal
Dances)
 Grizzly Bear
 Buzzard Lope
 Fanny Bump
 Fish Dip
 Possum Trot
 Bull Frog Hop
 Shimmy
 Funky Butt
NY Sweatshop
Cheap Amusements
Union Square, 7:45 Monday
Morning
Coney Island, 1903
Babbling Brook, Luna Park, Coney
Island, 1903
Outside the Nickelodeon,
1912
Bumper Belts
African Dancing on American Soil
Anonymous folk painting, South Carolina, c.1777-1794. (The Abbey
Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum, Colonial Williamsburg, VA)
The Cakewalk
The Lindy Hop
The Charleston
Hip Hop
Tap Dancing
Stepping
 Barbara Glass writes, “dances that we
think of as quintessentially American,
such as the Cakewalk, Charleston… came
from the black community out of the
bedrock of African-based dance
movement” (“Two Dance Traditions,” 3).
 Why is this not a particularly apt
metaphor?
 During the 18th century alone, more than 6 million
Africans were brought to the Americas as slaves
 Over a period of 20 centuries, between 14-20 million
Africans were enslaved.
 To support the production of cotton, coffee, sugar,
indigo and tobacco, they represented a cheap, abundant
and renewable “resource.”
Congo
Square
(New
Orleans)
I See America Dancing p. 57
and 73
The Ring Shout
Women Hulling Rice, Sapelo Island,
Georgia (1900)
Ring Shout
 A pseudo dance form that
flourished in a culture of
deprivation, which functioned
as a kind of African cultural
incubator
 Georgia Sea Islands
Women Hulling Rice, Sapelo Island,
Georgia (1900)
Works Cited and Consulted
 Fauley Emery, Lynn. Black Dance from 1619 to Today. Second Ed.
Princeton Book Co, 1988.
 Faulkner, Thomas. From the Ballroom to Hell.
http://manybooks.net/titles/faulknert1875918759.html
 Glass, Barbara. African American Dance. An Illustrated History. McFarland
and Co, 2006.
 Needham, Maureen. I See American Dancing
Published by University of Illinois Press, 2002
 “Waltz” Grove On Line Music Dictionary.
http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/public/book/omo_gmo
 Peiss, Kathy. Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Turn-ofthe-Century New York Temple U Press, 1986