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Re: [TANGO-L] Ballroom dancing - jerky tango head movements

A curriculum is used everytime a teacher starts presenting classes.

Standardization happens everywhere you have a dance school with a teaching staff and students.

Ballroom standardization owes its dominance to the British & American Ballroom Associations, but in the US it is maintained through the marketing power of the chain studios. If the British academy started in the 1920s, the US couldn't have been much later.

Organic change (if that is a contrast to standardization) is characteristic of "folk dances" i.e. dances learned on the street rather than from a formal instruction. Even with standardization you can't help but have some variation and change, whether intentional or not (culture, inability, invention, contamination, etc...)



Vernon & Irene Castle brought tango back to the US from France about 1912, along with the Maxixe, and I presume a few other dances. They were already performing couple dances on stage in 1910 before they left for Europe. Vernon died as a pilot in WWI. See the ORIGINAL "Story of Vernon & Irene Castle", a silent movie they made in the 1910s.

Teaching at resorts around the East Coast of the US, they were primary drivers of the huge ballroom dance craze of the 1910s, which included many dances such as:
- one-step
- two-step
- quick-step
- half & half (Waltz in 5/4 time)
- Not to mention all the novelty dances, named after animals.

Foxtrot came later, I guess as a simplification and standardization from some of the dances listed above.

Wasn't the Waltz was invented in Europe? I don't know the dates that the dance developed, but it had to be before 1900. Also the Polka. Then we have all the scandinavian couple dances.


The rhythmically driven dances listed above had influence from african american culture. But I'm not an expert. Probably had some relationship to social events like Cakewalks.

The Peabody is a direct descendant of the one-step. It was contemporary with the Lindy, and danced in the same venues by the same people.

I'm not sure of the origin of the balboa.


Maxixe, Samba and Choro are improvisational social dances from Brazil. Popular Samba today is very different from the Samba of the 20s-30s. Not sure if Ballroom Samba is a partial shapshot of that vintage Samba.

I saw Choro being danced in Brazil in 1979 (well before the recent tango craze). It looked a lot like close-embrace milonga with some quebradas.


The Ballroom Tango undoubtedly derived from the A. Tango of 1910.

Who knows what was sanitized vs what was added. Some have suggested that the head snap comes from the influence of the Apache, a "pimp- beats-up-whore" show that was performed in the same Paris nightclubs where the Castles were performing Maxixe, one-step and slapstick skits, and others were showing tango.

Rudy Valentino does a version of tango in the early 20s silent movie, "The Four Horseman of the Apocalypse" complete with lunges and a knife fight in a brothel. As a dance performer in the 1910s, Valentino would have learned the pre-standardized vintage tango, either in Europe or as a taxi dancer in New York. His dance doesn't look choreographed, so much as staged. The movie also features a waltz when he dances with the young maiden in the ranch house. (As this is a silent movie you have to watch closely to identify the dance as a waltz).

Richard Powers, the dance historian at Stanford University, has dance manuals from the early 20s (I believe) from Europe and Argentina that show very similar foot patterns. So some kind of standardization was starting to occur by teachers at that time.


On May 16, 2005, at 7:30 AM, Ecsedy Áron wrote:

Dear Nicole,


...England.  I know they were around in the 1910's. So the
British form of Ballroom dancing was developed in the early
1900's, and became a regular part of British culture by the
1920's-30's. The American form started to take hold about
this time, in the 1930's, specifically with people like
Arthur Murray who helped to popularize it.


You are right in that standardization was done by the English. However, the
dances themselves were not invented by the English. See short history:
http://www.dancerite.co.uk/Ballrom_dancing.htm (NB: it has a reference to
the invention of jerky tango head-movements in the 1930s)

The first standardizations had been done by the Imperial Society of Teachers
of Dancing (http://www.istd.org/) in the early 1920s. There was also NATD
(http://www.natd.org.uk/), which contributed to many things now part of
ballroom dancing (such as the medal system).

The guy you were referring to is Alex Moore, who was active from the late
1920s.

Cheers,
Aron


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