Panic at the disco!

The scandalous new dance craze everyone is talking about...Is it twerking? Flossing? The Lambada? ...

No people, it's the waltz.

It's hard for us to believe in modern times that the Waltz once had everyone from chaperones to the clergy in a tizzy, terrified this new dance craze signalled the end of civilisation.

In its historical context it makes more sense though. Prior to the Waltz, the standard set of Courtly dances were performed with dancers largely side by side, without touch, and only briefly meeting on another's gaze as they moved around one another. A strict heirarchy prevailed regarding which position in the formation dancers were allocated to. Dancing was a group activity performed by the nobility - an opportunity to show off your fine clothes, good health, and your intricate hair do. Holding your dance partner was strictly for folk dancing, in the barn.

By the late 18th century the waltz had moved into the ballrooms of the Hanoverian Court creating excitement, and a worldwide scandal. The waltz was clearly a dance for couples rather than groups, and the close physical contact and prolonged eye contact was as exhilarating to the young as it was scandalous to their parents and clergy. The twirling motion around the ballroom was said to undo good sense and incite lustfulness. Other moral panics were overlaid: a fear of Hanoverian influence in the English Court, and even a fear that the dance embodied the (French) Revolutionary spirit of the times. In 1771 novelist Sophie von La Roche described it as the “shameless, indecent whirling-dance of the Germans” that “…broke all the bounds of good breeding.”

Popularity won out though and by the 19th Century the Waltz was established in the great ballrooms across Europe, and all the greatest composers wrote for the form - Tchaikovsky, Dvorak, Brahms, and Strauss to name a few.

We'll perform some late Romantic era waltzes from Dvorak and Tchaikovsky in our upcoming concert "The Ballroom to the Dance floor" - do try to behave yourselves!