SOCIAL DANCING OF TO-DAY
THE INSPIRATION
The present vogue of dancing is sometimes characterised as a fad. As a matter of fact, it is no more than the resumption of a normal exercise. It is not extraordinary that people should wish to dance every day. It was extraordinary that there should have been a period of sixty years in which people did not wish to dance every day. Occidental history recalls few periods when the dance, natural as speech and exalting as music, underwent such neglect as it suffered during the latter half of the nineteenth century. Self-expression was in bad taste. A phantasm of misinterpreted respectability standardised conduct. The resulting caution of movement sterilised the dance, and sterility all but killed it.
As that which might conveniently be called the Renaissance of Individuality began to be felt, within the past few years, the endless iteration of one step in each dance became inadequate to interpret feelings. People learned that their own ideas were worth at least a trial; forms fell automatically. But, no one being at hand to show how dancing might be made an expression, people turned to other recreations.
Then came the Russian ballet. It showed that dancing, more completely perhaps than any other action within mortal scope, is a means of expression of every emotion humanity may feel. It showed, too, how incon-
1
