Chapter 4

Social Dance
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ocial dancing socializes. This may sound
like a tautology, but it points to a pow-
erful mechanism of social control that
is rarely acknowledged; we only become
aware of how much our social dances
reflect the values of our society when we
come into contact with a society whose
dances differ greatly from our own. For
most people, social dancing begins in
pleasure; if they must dance to please
the powers that be or to earn a living or
to avoid ill consequences ofone sort of
another, it's not social dancing. Of
course, people sometimes feel pressure to
dance in ways that are otherwise associ-
ated with pleasure; social dancing can
serve many functions in a society. The
point is, even when people get up and
dance for their own pleasure, what they
do and whom they do it with is of vital
interest to the society at large. To see
why, we have only to look at the social
occasions on which people dance. These
occasions often have to do with rites of
passage; for example, in the Middle
East, people dance at circumcisions; in
Africa, they dance at funerals; in Puerto
Rico, they dance at baptisms; and virtu-
ally everyone dances at weddings. There
are also rites ofpassage that are not tied
to a particular time and place: whenever
and wherever young people seek each
other out for companionship, music and
dancing are almost always part of the
scene.
Few societies pass up the chance to
monitor and regulate activities such as
these, which bear directly on the per-
petuation of the group. New generations
must be nurtured and educated along
socially approved lines; and dance,
which displays the body in public, is
one of the channels of communication
used to pass along important social
skills from one generation to the next.
Through dance, young people can be
taught how men and women behave in
their society; through dance, they can
practice gender-specific behaviors and
attitudes. Dance also provides an arena
where people can negotiate challenges
to group values posed by minorities or a
new generation or behaviors imported
from other societies. And all this can be
accomplished not through threats or
coercion but in the name of pleasure.
The people of Rarotonga, an island
in the South Pacific twenty-one hun-
dred miles northeast of New Zealand,
take great pleasure in dancing. They
also take their dancing seriously. They
dance on all social occasions and on
their major holidays, like Constitution
Day
(August
4). The constitution in
question is New Zealand's. Previously
a territory of New Zealand, Rarotonga
and the thirteen smaller islands that
make up the group known as the Cook
Islands became self-governing in 1965.
The population of Rarotonga is ten
thousand; the native language is Maori,
but everyone learns English in school.
Portuguese explorers were the first
Europeans to visit these islands, at the
beginning of the seventeenth century,
but not until Captain
James
Cook, the
English navigator, made three separate
trips between 1773 and 1777 did the
island culture come under pressure from
outside influences. This pressure grew
severe after Protestant missionaries (sent
out by the London Missionary Society)
began arriving in 1823. As elsewhere in
the Pacific, the missionaries were deeply
disturbed by what they saw as the inde-
cent dances of the natives. They were
hesitant to describe these dances in so
many words, but if the movements at all
resembled what today's Cook Islanders
call "traditional" dance, the focus was
on the lower part ofthe body: side-to-
side hip-swinging by the women and
vigorous knee-flapping by the men.
Some sources also indicate that, as in
Tahiti, dancing could lead directly to
copulation. To the missionaries this was
sufficient evidence that Satan ruled
here unopposed. (The
abundance of
god-images with prominent phalluses
did nothing to allay their suspicions.)
The. missionaries' attempts to convert
the populace to Christianity were
remarkably successful, but their cam-
paign to discourage traditional dancing
was not. Like many other Polynesians,
the Cook Islanders were.more willing to
give up their fertility deities than their
pelvic-centered dance.
Sir Thomas Davis, known through-
out the islands as Papa Tom, is a former
space scientist who returned to Raro-
tonga from the United States in 1975
and served as prime minister for nine
years. In the 1930s he had been one of
the first islanders to go of island for an
education. When he took up duties on
Rarotonga as a medical officer in 1945,
he found that the New Zealand authori-
ties had banned all native dancing in
favor ofwhat he refers to as "the cheek
to cheek and the breast to breast and
the belly to belly and the rhigh to
thigh." Papa Tom, who had competed
with the best dancers in the Cooks as a
young man, led a protest that reversed
the ban and revived the traditional
dance style.
In traditional Cook Island dancing,
which is performed by highly trained
teams, men and women never touch
109
Votiue
figures
like this one (left),
representingthe godTe Rongo
from
the islml. of Rarotonga,
discomforted missiolnies. One missionary sent srrch a sculptwe back to London with on
apologetic note regarding this " object of ueneration to the deluded Rarotongans ."
Below
,
d"aily clnss at the Auorua School on Rarotonga. The occasion is a dress rehearsal
for
a
trip to New Zeakmd, which is why the boys are weming grass skires. Normally, the boys weor
shorts and ?shirr and the girls weor mtn4muus.
each other. They line up in alternating
rows, by gender, and execute chore-
ographed sequences of body movements
and hand gestures in unison. Successful
choreographers gain great prestige in
the community. In the dances called
drum dances, which are thought to go
back to training exercises for warriors,
the men take the lead; in the so-called
action or story-telling dances, the
women are often featured. The men's
sequences tend to be vigorous and ath'
letic, the women's smooth and graceful.
All team dancing is directed toward an
audience: the teams perform for some
large social unit, such as the extended
family or the assembled community
or, in recent years, a group ofpaying
tourists. But even when Cook Islanders
dance one-on-one at parties, men and
women avoid body contact; they may
come very close, in a teasing display of
gender-specific movements, but good
dancers take pride in their ability to fit
their bodies together in matching curves
without actually touching.
Papa Tom believes that the primary
function of Cook Island dancing is the
same as dancing everywhere: "lt's the
world's way of letting boy meet girl."
But the emphasis on dancing in orderly
rows separated by gender, rather than
couple by couple, also expresses some-
thing basic to Cook Island culture:
"Here, the nuclear family has absolutely
no importance. The extended family is
everything. lTithout the backing of an
extended family, you are left out of
everything." Team dancing contributes
to the islanders'sense of belonging to a
large, cohesive social group. Through
carefully coordinated movements and
gestures, the dancers draw out "hidden"
meanings in the lyrics of songs that tell
familiar stories or express commonly
shared emotions, often about love:
At the touch of your loving hands
I love it so much.
You're just like a
Queen
Your beautiful body
You're such a beautiful
Queen
Your beautiful body
O turn your eyes to me
O your soft and loving hands . . .
You're such a beautiful
Queen
Your beautiful body
Olloveitsomuch...
110
Throughout Polynesia, the impact of Christian missionaries on dances and dance attire was
strong. The effect of missionarJ
Nessure
is obuious in the clothes wom by the hula dancers
(below) inHawaii, c.1875.8y 1910, astheceremony atWaikikicommemoratinganec)ent
in the reign of King Kanehameha I
, bottom, st ggests
,
the hula was becoming a symbol of
national identitl in Haw aii.
In?
{
-t,
Instruction in rhis kind of dancing is
built into the school curriculum; regular
classes run as long as two hours a day.
Along with teamwork and the proper
movements for each gender-women
swing their hips but don't flap their
knees, men flap their knees but don't
swing their hips-school children learn
the fine points that distinguish Cook
Island dancing from other Polynesian
styles. For example, no matter hou-r'ig-
orously a Cook Island u'oman st'ings
her hips from side to side, her pelvis
should never move in a circular thshitrn
and her shoulders should remain
motionless. Cook Islanders are knou'n
throughout the Pacific as fine dancers.
Among their rivals in this respect are
the people of Tahiti, where the women
rotate their hips in a full circle. Cook
Islanders refer to this rotatory motion
as "the washing machine dance."
While formal classes are necessary to
train dance teams, no one has to teach
Cook Island youngsters the rules and
customs that govern one-on-one social
dancing. These they pick up by observ-
ing their elders at parties, where gender-
specific movements are important but
so are changing attitudes about sex and
the sexes in what was once a polygy-
nous, male-dominated society.
\7omen were among the first converts
to Christianity in the Cook Islands. The
new religion offered women an alterna-
tive to a religious-political system that
limited their freedom in ways both
minor (they were forbidden to eat cer-
tain foods or be seen in certain places)
and fundamental (in a land,based econ-
omy, they were forbidden to own land).
The high chiefs and priests enforced the
laws of tabu, which prescribed death for
a
111
many infractions. Obedience by men as
well as women was ensured by fear: the
survival of society was thought to hinge
on adherence to the sacred laws. The
arrival of the Europeans cast doub$ on
the sanctity of this system; here were
people who, ignorant of the islanders'
gods and tabus, not only survived but
prospered.
Over the last quarter century, the
traditional division of labor in the Cook
Islands-between men who farm and
fish, and women who keep house and
care for children-has given way to an
economy in which the majority of wom-
en on Rarotonga hold salaried
jobs
and
more women than men are pursuing
university-level education. A woman
can now inherit [and. But men retain
most levers of economic and political
power; and when it comes to gender
roles, many men still profess belief in a
double standard, which defines house-
keeping as the exclusive responsibility
of the woman (even when she brings
home more money than her husband)
and encourages men (but not women) to
pursue sexual encounters before mar-
riage and to "run around" after marriage.
Even active feminists who are work-
ing to extend women's rights on the
job
and in the home see no problem in
teaching their children gender-specific
dance movements. Poppy Apera, a
health education officer in the islands,
puts it this way: "Cook Island men
maintain their masculinity by dancing
the way a man should dance, and the
women maintain their femininity by
dancing the way a woman should dance
here in the Cook Islands." In team
dancing, she points out, "there are cer-
tain times when the man leads and the
t12
women have to follow, or the woman
leads and the men have to follow." But
informal social occasions are something
else again. At parties women typically
get up and ask men to dance. And no
one leads. "No way," Apera says. "'S7hen
it's
just
socializing, I'11 do my own thing.
I never want any man to lead me in my
dancing."
The importance of dance in defining
a Cook Islander's identity is something
both men and women can agree on.
John Jonassen,
a well-known composer
of songs, says that the origin of the dis-
tinction between knee-flapping for men
and hip-swinging for women is unclear.
He does not think that it heightens sex-
ual excitement. But as the father of
three daughters and a son, he would not
want his children learning the dance
movements appropriate to the opposite
sex: "l'd like my son to pick up the tech.
niques of male dancing. . . . I'd like him
to dance as a boy and be seen in the
minds of the public as a boy. So as part
of growing up, I would probably tell him
off if I saw him swinging his hips, be-
cause that's how girls dance. Boys don't
dance that way."
Ll
alfway around the world, in the
Jl Moro.."n city of Fez, the rules
governing social dance convey different
messages about the way men and women
should interact. The population of
Morocco reflects a history of invasion
and assimilation that is characteristic of
North Africa in general. Living side by
side are descendants of the Arabs who
brought Islam from its Middle Easrern
homeland after the Prophet's death in
632; descendants ofthe indigenous
Berbers who adopted both Islam and
the Arabic language soon after the Arab
incursions; remnants of a once flourish-
ing
Jewish
community; the largest French
presence in North Africa; Spaniards
and other Europeans.
Among Moroccan Muslims, encoun-
ters between the sexes are traditionally
regulated by laws and customs that trace
their authority to the Koran, which con-
servative Muslims take to be the literal
word of God. In fact, local practices,
which may predate the arrival of
Islam, have played an important role in
determining when, where, and how
people dance. No text in the Koran ex-
plicitly condemns or endorses dancing,
although religious authorities have pen-
ned a great deal of commentary on both
sides of the issue. Some minority sects,
like the so-called
\JThirling
Dervishes,
move in ways designed to bring the wor-
shiper into communion with God, but
these movements are not usually referred
to as "dance." In general, dancing has
no place in the devotional practices of
observant Muslims. But in Morocco, as
in all Islamic countries, many communi-
ties maintain vigorous dance tradi-
tions-from all-male "combat dances"
to all-female wedding dances-outside
the boundaries of worship. Since the
Koran is mute on the subject, attitudes
toward dance have been largely shaped
by attitudes toward gender embedded in
the local culture, which itself reflects
Arabic and Islamic influences.
The Koran gives men authority over
women and enjoins women not to dis-
play themselves before men other than
blood relations. At the same time the
Koran spells out the rights of women
(even slaves) in a detailed way that was
The Mawlawi
fratemity
of Deruishes (left)
in Konya, Twkey
,
gaue music an impor-
tant place in religious ceremonies. Their
whirling ceremony is one of the
few forms
of danced worship in the Islamic worV. Tfu
donce inqtolq.tes complex choreographl, and.
reuolues around the sheikh, or leal"er of the
congregation, in the middle of the room.
This
fratemity
was suppressedin 1925, but
an annual
festiual
is held. with gouemment
approval, and other groups'inTurkey and"
ekewhere continue to incorporate ecstatic
dancing into their worship.
Perhaps becarne dancingin Arab counuies
tends to be segregated by genfur
,
there is an
wtderament of male doncing that parodies
the social dancing of women. The male
dnncers
(belnw)
impersonating women in
Luxor, Eg1pt, orc performingin a cafd while
the onlookers clap in time. Such dntcing is
considered slightly disrepunblc, but it
requires shll and practice.
113
li
The French Romtntic painter Eugine
Delacroix (1799-1863) traueled to
Morocco in 1832 .
'While
there, he uisited
a
Jewish wedding where a
female
performer
entertained the gtests in the dance stlle
indigenous to the counrry .
Jewish
\Tedding
in Morocco was painted about seven
yems later.
unusual for its time. Islamic scholars cite
the relative freedom that women enjoy-
ed in the society of Mohammed's day:
they took an active part in public affairs,
even engaging in religious debates with
men. Only as Islam expanded into the
larger Mediterranean world and came
into contact with other faiths and cul-
tures did the role of women grow more
circumscribed, especially in cities where
the streets were filled with strangers.
Here, public life was reserved for men;
women were obliged to concentrate
all their energies on home and family,
which is to say on the tasks ofreproduc-
tion and nurturing.
In contrast to the deeply ascetic
strain in Christianity, however, ortho-
dox Islam has always celebrated the
sexual nature of men and women; it re.
gards the sexual act as a God-given joy
as well as a procreative necessity, and
holds each partner responsible for the
other's pleasure and fulfillment. This
acceptance of the body as a source of
pleasure is not far from the traditional
Polynesian view. But whereas Polynesian
society conspires to bring the sexes to-
gether through dance, Islam has insisted
on a strict separation of men and women
in many parts of the Muslim world. In
essence, women were considered danger-
ous to the social order because men were
thought to be vulnerable to female
charms. There is an Arabic word,
fima,
that refers to the loss ofcontrol an
unwary man may experience in the pres-
ence of an attractive woman. If physical
attraction leads to sexual activity out-
side the approved channel ofmarriage,
the men who are legally responsible for
the woman's behavior-her father, her
husband, her brothers-will be dishon-
ored in the eyes of their community.
One way for these male guardians to
avoid disgrace is to keep their women
hidden from the eyes of any man who
is not a member of the extended family.
This is the rationale behind the face-
concealing veil, the various types of
garments that conceal the entire body,
and, more drastically, the secluded wom-
en's quarters known as the harem. As
for dance, the Islamic view of sexuality
l4
The uast majority of Yemenis are members of tribes, *rd
f*
Yemeni men' to
be able to
perform the bar"a
(below) is synonymoas with belonging to a tibe.
tYlhile
not a combat dance, the barcarequires atlaast a dngger, and often a
rifle, to be d,anced propuly
,
and the way the daget is wielded uaries
from
nibe n fibe. Tlw donce embodrcs tribal uahes of ttaW and cooperaaon anA
is darced at weddngs, hnportrntt tribal occasiots, ud on religious holidays .
In tlv 1980s, thebar'abecome a symbol of Yemen as anation.
has found expression in two related
dance traditions in Morocco, each of
which acknowledges, in its own way, the
power of the female body and society's
need to keep it under control.
For pious Muslims, the male.female
couple dancing that originated in the
West and spread to many other cultures
around the world is not an option-
at least not in public. But alternatives
exist, especially for women. While some
of the devout avoid dancing altogether,
they are the exceptions. Even in a city
like Fez, which is famous as a center of
religious studies, it is perfectly accept-
able for Muslim women to dance at
all-female parties and celebrations.
At such a gathering, a married wom'
an may get up and dance before her
peers to the music of hired female musi-
cians or to recordings of popular Arabic
songs. She may have arrived at the party
in a traditional outer garment that cov'
ered her entire body. But among her
friends she will take off this garment to
reveal a stylish silk dress, gold bangles
on each wrist, high-heeled shoes, and a
shawl tied around her hips. This is her
dancing outfit. As she dances, her upper
torso shimmies from side to side while
she rotates her hips in a series of circles
that seem to radiate outward from her
pelvis and up the trunk ofher body.
Most of the time she keeps her eyes
demurely downcast, but once or twice a
smile plays across her lips as she glances
up at the circle of onlookers, who com'
ment openly on her physical attractive'
ness and skill.
\U7hen
one dancer sits
down, another stands up and tries to
outdo the first in a frank exhibition of
the female body that is no less sensual
for being addressed to an all-female
audience. Through the movements of
the dance, each woman demonstrates-
even boasts about-her ability to fulfill
the traditional role of wife and mother
that society has assigned to her, using
body language that might be para-
phrased as follows: "I am beautiful
and sexually appealing; therefore I am
secure in my husband's affection and
protection."
At wedding celebrations, unmarried
young women may perform similar
dances before family members and invit,
ed guests, including married couples
and unmarried young men and their
mothers who are on the lookout for
prospective daughters-in-law. Among
the qualities that enhance a young
woman's matrimonial potential is the
ability to dance well.
There is no masculine equivalent to
the dance that Muslim women practice
among themselves. In the countryside,
following traditions that may be older
than Islam itse[ men in many Muslim
countries take part in dances that
emphasize athletic prowess and often
employ warlike props such as swords,
daggers, and rifles. But in the cities,
dance for Muslim men is more of a spec.
tator sport. At parties in private homes
or in public rooms hired for the purpose
or in hotel nightclubs, groups of men
gather to watch female entertainers
sing and dance; in form the dancing of
these professionals closely resembles the
spirited movements of the amateurs at
all-female parties and celebrations.
Despite the fact that this dance is indis-
solubly associated with women, some
115
male spectators will get up and dance
along briefly with the entertainers.
These men undulate their shoulders and
hips in what looks like a sel0mocking
parody of traditional gender roles, com-
bined with a sheer delight in rhythmic
physical movement.
The tradition of the dancing girl in
the Mediterranean world is certainly
older than Islam. Precursors can be
found in Egyptian tomb paintings from
the days of the pharaohs. The dancers
of Cadiz, a Roman colony on the Iberian
peninsula in the first century A.D., were
noted for a vigorous dance in which
they sank down "with quivering thighs
to the floor." In A.D. 527 a former danc-
ing girl married the Emperor
Justinian
and became Empress Theodora, co-ruler
of the Eastern Roman Empire. Dancing
girls were a fixture of Persian courts
before and after the arrival of Islam; and
when Muslims from central Asia estab-
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tVhenMuslims
from
central Asia
e snblished the Mughal Empir e in
northem India, tlwy brought with
tlwm a taste
for
dancing g1rk. This
Mugholminiattne of 1588 (ri1h)
shou.,s a dancing glrl entertnining a
prince.
Opposite top: \X/hile he was in
North Africa, Delacroix was eager
to see ahmem, that cloistered part
of aMwlim house in which the
women lived. Through connections
in Algiers,lw was
firully
to get
his rpish, and one of his traueling
c omp aniorc r ep or te d his dcli ghte d
response: "It's beautiful! It is as
if in the time of Homer!" Two
years later, he pointed
lVomen
of
Algiers ( 1 834), basing the work
on notes and sketches
from
his
natels. About tlv picture, he wrotz,
"This is woman u I mfurstand
her, not tlnown into the life of the
world, but withdrawn at its heart,
as its most secret, delicious and"
mouing
fulfilhnent."
Opposite bottom: Fragment of
abanqueting scene of c.1420 e.c.
showing dnrcing girls,
from
the
Tomb of Nakht,Thebes, Egypt.
The guests to the left, obseruing the
dance, are wearing perfume cones
on top of their wigs.
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n7
The West has been
f
aschated by N orth
African andMidllE Eastem dancing g1rls.
This Bedouin d.ancer
,
rcmed Rabah, was
brought
from
North Africa to Nice to play
a role in Rex Ingran's
lilm
The Garden of
Allah; rf uhe stuAio's publicity unit is to be
belieued, she actually sought a diuorce when
her husband refused to permit her to appecn
in uty more picttnes. The 1927 moc,)ie
starred Alice Terrl utd.Iuut Petroq.,ich.
lished the Mughal Empire in northern
India, they brought with them a taste for
dancing girls that later gave rise to the
dance style known as kathak. Although
orthodox Islam frowns on the public
display of the female body that is the
dancing girl's stock in trade, the tradi-
tion has flourished in North Africa,
where nineteenth-century Europeans
found relief from their own sociery's
moral austerities in what the French
referred to as "la danse du ventqe" and
Americans called the "abdomen dance"
or the "stomach dance" before settling
on the "belly dance." Perhaps inevitably,
'l7esterners
unfamiliar with the dance
focused their attention on the perform-
ers'pelvic movements, although in
North Africa the mark of a good dancer
is how she moves her shoulders, and the
dance is seen as sensually evocative
rather than provocative.
Through accounts of travelers like
Gustave Flaubert, North Africa became
fixed in the l7estern mind as a realm
of exotic voluptuousness, populated by
dancers who aroused men's desire with
undulating bodies and then satisfied
that desire with those same bodies. On
a trip up the Nile in 1850, Flaubert's
imagination was inflamed by a dancer
who called herself Kutchuk Hanem,
which is Tirrklsh for "little princess."
Flaubert characterized her in a letter to
a friend as "a very celebrated courtesan
. . . a regal-looking creature, large breast.
ed, fleshy, with slit nostrils, enormous
eyes and magnificent knees." An Amer-
ican
journalist who was entertained by
the same dancer described her perfor-
mance as "a curious and wonderful
gymnastic" in which every limb was
animated with "the soul of passion. . . .
Her hands were raised, clapping the cas-
tanets, and she slowly turned upon
herself, her right leg the pivot, mar-
velously convulsing all the muscles of
her body . . . in time to the music. . . .
Kutchuk fell upon her knees and writh'
ed, with body, arms and head upon the
floor, still in measure. . . ."
Reports such as these paved the way
for the importation into Europe and the
United States of "exotic" dancers from
North Africa and the Middle East in
the late nineteenth century. The most
popular attractions at the 1893 \forld's
Columbian Exposition in Chicago were
dancers from Algeria, Syria, Egypt, and
Palestine. lUhile most of these shows
were actually quite chaste according
to present-day American standards, the
belly dancers gave rise to a new genre
that became a staple of burlesque; the
prototype was a near-nude entertainer
who danced at Coney Island under the
name "Little Egypt."
In Arabic, the danse du uentre is
known as "raks al-baladi" ("dance of the
people") or " ral<s-al-Misrl" ("Egyptian
dance"); the Egyptians themselves call
it "raks al-sharqui"
("dance
ofthe East").
(lt is possible that the English term
"belly dance" came from a misunder-
standing of the word "bqlaAi.") In its
Middle Eastern homeland the dance is
not considered lascivious per se-
although for pious Muslims any woman
who exposes her body before strangers
in public has placed herselfoutside the
bounds of respectable society. Some
ofthe dancers in the biggest hotels and
nightclubs are actually Europeans or
Americans. Moroccan women who
perform for male audiences typically
come from socially marginal groups or
118
"Exotic" dancers like Little Eglpt were big
affractiotts at ConeJ Island sideshows in
the yems after the 1893 World's Colwnbian
Exposition in Chicago, which
feaaned
troupes of dancers
from
theMiddle East
anlNorth Africa.
communities in which dance is consid-
ered an acceptable route out ofpoverty.
Their dances, usually improvised solos,
mingle smooth pelvic undulations,
hip shimmying, and fast, syncopated
footwork with jumps and percusive
stamping.
In recent years, the desire to dance
has also found expression in the
\Testern-style discos that have opened
in some North African cities. Here,
men and women dance as couples to
l07estern.style
music in a manner that
would not be out of place in the dance
clubs of New York, London, or Paris.
The young couples typically arrive
together; it is still rare for a man or a
woman to go to a disco alone and dance
with a total stranger. As in Polynesia,
pressure for change in relations between
the sexes has come largely from educat-
ed women; according to Fatima
Mernissi, author of BeyondtheVeil, one
third ofall university-level teachers and
scholars in Arab countries, including
the Gulf states, are women. For many of
these women, dance has become a sym-
bol of personal liberation; a woman who
dances (even in the traditional manner)
at a mixed gathering like a wedding
or a large party is declaring her opposi-
tion to age-old constraints on social
interaction.
Elsewhere in Morocco, these con-
straints remain in effect.
Just
a hundred
miles from the urban discos (and from
the Mediterranean beaches where
sunbathers in bikinis display their tans),
women in traditional communities veil
their faces, girls are married at the age
of twelve or thirteen, and the idea of
couples dancing in public l7estern.style
is still unacceptable.
119
I
n the
lVest,
couple dancing has not
I only reflected society's changing atti-
tudes toward relations between the
sexes, it has sometimes foreshadowed
them.
107hen
European men and women
first began dancing as couples at social
gatherings in the late Middle Ages, the
primary social unit was still the extend.
ed-as opposed to the nuclear-family.
Several generations lived under one roof
or in closely adloining dwellings; mar-
riages were typically arranged to bring
benefits (economic
and social) to both
families; children were treated as assets
in the larger family enterprise.
As we saw in previous chapters,
Christianity's attitude toward the pri-
mary biological unit-the male-female
couple-had been ambivalent from the
120
days of the early church. The Virgin
Mary, as the mother of Christ, was avail.
able as a model of behavior for Christian
women; but the example of Eve, who
brought sin and death into the world by
succumbing to temptation, weighed
heavily on the minds of Christian
thinkers. The perpetuation of Christian
communities obviously required closely
knit families with many children; but
the early church fathers were worried
about the effect of unrestrained sexuali-
ty, especially female sexuality, on those
same communities. The position articu.
lated by Paul-abstinence is best for the
soul but it is better to marry than to
burn with uncontrollable desire-point-
ed to the compromise eventually
adopted by the
\il7estern
church in the
late Middle Ages: those who wished to
pursue a life devoted to Christ
(as priest,
monk, or nun) were enjoined to choose
celibacy; everyone else could reproduce
within the bonds of holy matrimony.
It might seem paradoxical that a
civilization that excluded both dance
and sexuality from its central mysteries
should come to emphasize the male-
female couple in its social dance. But
one ofthe factors behind the new atti-
tude toward the dancing couple in the
late Middle Ages was precisely the
European tendency to divide daily life
into two separate realms-the sacred
and the secular. \7hile liturgical dance
came under close scrutiny from the
church hierarchy, dance on unCoos.
crated ground was relatively free to
express nonreligious concerns; it was
these concerns that later contributed to
the emergence of the nuclear family as
the focus of \Testern society.
The new attitude toward women
and dance, which surfaced sometime in
the twelfth or thirteenth century, was
strongly influenced by the Crusades.
For one thing, great numbers of men
left their homes to fight the Muslim
enemy in the Holy Land or Spain; in
many cases the women they left behind
had to learn, out of necessity, to manage
affairs that had formerly been thought
of as men's business. As a result, Euro-
pean women gained new status in the
secular life of their communities, despite
the fact that legally they remained the
wards of their fathers and husbands.
When the Crusaders returned to
their homes, they brought back with
them a respect bordering on envy for the
wealth and sophistication of Islamic civ-
ilization-a civilization that had in fact
borrowed and preserved much of the
\7est's own heritage of Greek and
Roman thought. What made the great-
est impact on European ideas ofgender,
however, was Islam's attitude toward
women, as expressed in its songs and
poetry. Because they were seen as irre-
sistibly attractive, all women---+xcept
for the slave-dancer-singer-courtesan-
had to be hidden away from the view
of non-kinsmen. Inevitably, seclusion
heightened their appeal, which a school
of Arabic poetry arose to celebrate.
The poems addressed by distant admir-
ers to the women of another man's
harem extolled a love that was consid-
ered "pure" because it could never be
satisfied in the flesh.
l07hen
a similar conceit of "pure"
love was adopted by the troubadours
ofsouthern France, the walls ofthe
harem were replaced by the more
abstract barriers of female "virtue."
In the troubadours'hymru to the
beloved, the already married object of
the poet's affection always preserves her
virtue, her most precious possession,
intact; her body may belong to her hus.
band but her soul is free to soar with her
lover's. Whether or not this distinction
was observed in real life-where
flesh-and-blood courtiers wooed the
flesh-and-blood wives of absent lords-
the conceit of courtly love encouraged a
new way of looking at the role of women
in Christendom. The beloved was in no
way subordinate to her lover. She was
seen as a highly esreemed individual in
her own right, worthy of being pursued,
worthy of being adored by men of the
highest social rank, worthy of assuming
a new role as partner to a man on the
dance floors of Europe.
In many parts of the world-includ-
ing Polynesia, North Africa, and the
Middle East-public dancing that
focused on a physically linked couple
would have been unthinkable, a viola-
tion of communal propriety. But the
group dances of the European country-
side had long included passages in
which a man and a woman came to-
gether briefly for a few steps or turns;
these may have provided models for the
couple dancing that drew increasing
attention in
l07estern
Europe toward the
end of the Middle Ages. Inevitably,
attempts were made to ban couple danc-
ing; inevitably, the bans were ignored.
In providing an arena for a man and a
woman to stand out from the crowd,
late medieval social dance anticipated
(and possibly contributed to) the
empowerment of the individual that
Two Peasants Dancing, woodcutby
AlbrechtDiner, 1514.
Opposite : Pieter Bruegllel's
r07edding
Dance (1566) putrals couple darcingin a
distinctly moralistic rnonner, reflecting widc -
spreod concems tlwt dw prartice lBd to the
sin of lust. I* effec* on three of dw men
in tlv
foregrourd
(orce
bowdlcrizedbut
restored in this century) where tlw dn cinc
is wildcst are pmticularly euident. The Mde,
wearing a wreath on lwr uncouered head md
ablack goum, is dancingwith on oldcr mnn,
perhapslwr
fother.
I il"1-
121
marked the era that historians call the
Renaissance.The early Renaissance in
Italy saw a reevaluation of the role of the
individual in society. Renewed interest
in Greek and Roman history-prompt-
ed in part by a rediscovery of many
works of classical literature-found one
expression in the courtly entertainments
known asballi. These spectacles are
thought to have evolved from the stately
processions, jousting tournaments, and
interludes of song and declaimed poetry
that enlivened medieval courts. The
balk featured costumed courtiers who
acted out allegorical themes from Greek
and Roman mythology, such as
Jason
and the Golden Fleece
(performed
at the wedding of the duke of Milan
in 1489).
Before long, to play a role in such
a spectacle was the ambition of every
courtier, not
just
in Italy but in France
and England as well. Success at court
had always entailed mastery of three
skills: riding, fencing, and "fair" speech.
To instruct the nobility in the new and
increasingly complicated dances-and
in the proper ways of talking and walk-
ing required to make a mark among the
well-bred-a new profession of dancing
master sprang up. Some of the earliest
dancing masters were
Jewish;
there had
long been a need for dancing instructors
in
Jewish
communities because of the
Talmudic dictum enjoining
Jews
to
dance at weddings. It was during the
fifteenth century that the first European
dance manuals began to appear and the
foundations of classical ballet were laid.
At this time, there was no clear distinc-
tion between "social" and "theatrical"
dance.
The early dancing masters were high-
122
ly educated men, versed in the newly
revived classical learning and respons-
ible for the intellectual and social as
well as the physical proficiency of their
pupils. They not only taught dance and
deportment, they composed dances
for court entertainments and often the
music as well. As authorities on eti-
quette they were sought after by mem-
bers of the lesser aristocracy, the gentry,
and the middle class who wanted to
gain entry to the best houses and cut a
presentable figure there. As early as
1533 laws were passed in London to
control the proliferation of dancing
schools. In a 1588 dance manual called
O rchsographie, Thoinot Arbeau
(an anagram forJehan Thbourot, a
Catholic priest) instructed readers
who wished to make a good impression
in the best ballrooms:
"Spit and blow your nose sparingly. . .
use a fair white handkerchief. . . . Be
suitably and neatly dressed, your hose
well secured and your shoes clean. . . .
And if you desire to marry you must
realize that a mistress is won by the
good temper and grace displayed by
dancing. . . . And there is more to it
than this, for dancing is practiced to
reveal whether lovers are in good health
and sound of limb, after which they
are permitted to kiss their mistresses in
order that they may touch and savor one
another, thus to ascertain ifthey are
shapely or emit an unpleasant odor as
of bad meat."
\7e have already seen how the rise
of powerful women like Catherine de
M6dicis went hand in hand with the
spread of the new kind of dancing
through lTestern Europe. \7e have seen
how the minuet came to represent on
the dance floors ofVersailles the hierar-
chical ideals of pre-Revolutionary
Europe. \7e have also seen how strongly
some religious leaders opposed dancing
in general and dancing between men
and women in particular. After the
Reformation, many Protestants came to
see ballroom dancing
("Mixt or Promis-
cuous dancing," as Increase Mather
called it) as inherently sinful, an inven-
tion of the Devil. It is hardly surprising
that the Protestant missionaries who set
out to convert the "heathens," in the
wake of European colonial expansion
in the eighteenth and nineteenth cen-
turies, showed little sympathy for the
dance they found embedded in the local
cultures. There are still places in the
American Bible Belt where local ordi-
nances discourage mixed dancing,
especially by young people. But rules
and perceptions vary: When teenagers
began dancing to rock-and-roll music in
the 1950s, the gyrations ofthe stand-
alone dancers were denounced as "lewd"
by some Protestant preachers who had
never expressed opposition to the con.
ventional "touch dancing" of the day.
Most people today learn social danc-
ing through observation or through
informal demonstrations by relatives
and friends; this means that the social
values embodied in the dances are often
passed along without being made explic-
it. By contrast, when parents send young
children to a dance school to learn ball-
room dancing, the instruction typically
includes lessons in how men and women
of a particular social class should behave
in each other's company. At some
schools, like the thirty-five-year,old
lTalter Schalk School of Dance in New
Canaan, Connecticut, great attention is
paid to what earlier generations referred
to as etiquette. Ten-year-old boys wear
suits and ties, ten-year-old girls wear
dresses and white gloves; the boys ask
the girls to dance
(never vice versa); the
boys always lead, the girls always follow.
But however important these particulars
have been in the development of couple
dancing in the West, they clearly do not
define its essence.
The one unbreakable rule ofcouple
dancing is that the partners must move
interdependently, as a unit. In the early
years ofthe nineteenth century, when
the waltz first became popular, men
and women fitted their movemenrs ro
one another in a public display of mutual
confidence and teamwork. No one led
because no one had to; the steps fol-
lowed a predeterrnined pattern, the
dancers always turned in a predeter-
mined direction (clockwise) while
circling around the floor with all the
other couples in a predetermined direc-
tion (counterclockwise).
Once the
dancers had mastered the steps and
Court balls tn the eighteenth century
featured
dances with precise sequences of steps whose
proper performcmce retluired prior instructiort
and rehearsal under the eys of a danctng
master . This engraving b1 FranEois Nicolns
Martinet shows a costume ball held durmg
the Camiual season atVersailles m 1763.
The dancers, in rustic attire, perfolm a ntar-
pole d,once, one of those European cl{sri)}}r-\
whose roots go back to the pre-Chri.irian cr.r.
rl
..
ti
, ti'
:ft
i
I
'I
rll
irl
l'll
t:
llj
:l
llr
:l
i'li
ff
r.t
4.
.i.
I
f.
.f
It
t
:f'
*
t
i
I
it
ta
tr
.J'
Jr'
lit
..!l't'
. nt
i:
b.
A
;t'
t23
In this late-seventeenth-cenuuy engraving (ri1ht)
,
a dancing
master wears a sword utd is playing a pochette
,
a small uiolin.
Discipline and training, not spontnneity, were the prerequisites of
ballroom dancing in the ecaly nineteenth centwy . The doncers
(bebw)
are execunng the "tlwee
forward
md bark" secaon of the
pantnelle
figwe
of a quadrille, in an English etching of the 1820s.
LZ4
I oLm Playford's The English Dancing
Master: or, Plaine and easie rules for the
Dancing of Country Dances, with the
tunes to each dance of 1651 was publish-
ed dwing the Contmonwealth, the period
of Oliuer Cromwell's strict Pwinn rule of
England. TIw
frontispiece
(above),
howeuer,
was quirc blunt about the advmmges of
being abb to dance: Cupid himself pesides
oaer the dnncing school.
Vhile peoplc of all ages nl<c doncing
lessoru, instruction in dancinghas been con-
sidered especially important
for
yoLmg men
and women whose parents wat them to
acquire the skills they need to succeed in
society. Gearge Cruilcshank's The Dancing
Lesson o/ 1835 (left) shows a dancing
master play@his pochette as aboJ mtd gtrl
dance the mirutet, ud off to the side onother
girl stmlls in abox to improve her tumout.
\
-l
\t"
t75
The Americcn illuswator
J.C.
Leyenfucker's
famous
adqtertisement of 1913
for
Anow
Shirts prouided a perfect image of the ideal
dancing couple of Ewopean and American
society: the mrm is commm.ding ond strong,
the woman demunely responsive to his will.
Opposite: Fred Asnire andGinger Rogers:
together, and. apmt, anA together again, in a
sequence
from
the
film
Top Hat (1935).
learned to synchronize their movements
with everyone else on the floor, the
waltz was a very egalitarian dance.
But since fewer and fewer men had
the leisure or inclination to take lessons
from a dancing instructor, by midcentu'
ry it had become necessary to simplify
the steps; at the same time each waltzing
couple was set free to move and turn as
they wished without reference to the rest
of the dancers. With the new freedom,
however, came new problems: How were
the partners to synchronize their move-
ments with each other? How were they
to decide when to turn and in what
direction? How was each couple to avoid
bumping into other couples? Fortunate-
ly, there was a simple solution to all
these problems: One partner had to
lead the other. The leading partner was
responsible for steering a safe course
around the ballroom, and the other part-
ner had to follow the leader. The leading
role, it goes without saying, fell to the man.
The late-nineteenth-century waltz
revealed a lot about the society that
engendered it. The man was in
charge-but if he tried to dominate
without taking his partner's reactions
into account, he could cause an awk-
ward stumble and so cut a foolish figure
before his peers. If, on the other hand,
he and his partner performed as a well-
knit team, they would not only look
good but could pay more attention to
the business of romance, which was
likely to be the motive that had drawn
them to the ballroom in the first place.
The romantic ideal of ballroom dancing
is beautifully expressed in the dancing
sequences in Fred Astaire movies, where
the choreographed steps appear to flow
spontaneously not from the flashing legs
of Astaire and his partner but from their
lovers' hearts-so perfectly attuned that
they seem to be beating as one.
The need for continuous communica-
tion between the partners is built into
the very structure ofcouple dancing.
But the rule that the man must always
lead is not; as in all dance, the role of
the genders in a waltz or a Lindy or a
fox-trot is determined by the culture. If
they wished, the partners could conceiv-
ably take turns leading or flip a coin
before each dance to see who leads.
\fhen, at the beginning ofthe 1960s,
couples around the world separated and
began dancing as individuals to rock-
and-roll music, they were choosing a
third option that spoke directly to the
social issues of the time: if no one leads,
no one has to follow.
tz6