We Ballroom Dance?

By Frederick Lum, Village Park

A ballroom dance is a couple dance, not a solo dance. A belly dance is a solo dance because in the culture where it originated a man could dance or a woman could dance, but they could not both dance at the same time even at opposite ends of the same room. A ballroom dance is a couple dance, not a group dance. Group dances are also sometimes called set dances and can be folk dances. Some examples of group dances are line dances, square dances, contra dances and quadrilles and now the new Zumba;

"You can teach dance students a lesson for a day; but if you can teach them to learn by creating curiosity, they will continue the learning process as long as they live"

People who are in charge or who would like to be in charge like group dances because they can teach obedience and subservience. So they have an overwhelming amount of women in proportion. Line dancing in the ballrooms has very little of this. So the results are, we are getting more men into Line Dancing. With men teachers, the results have been more impressive.

In some couple dances the partners do not touch each other, such as rock and roll, twist, disco and flamenco. Because of its cultural heritage (Spain and Portugal had a Middle Eastern culture from approximately 700 A.D. to 1400 A.D.) flamenco has an obvious similarity to belly dancing, but a man and a woman do not do it at the same time.  It has hung over into the famous Paso Doble.

"Music, Music, Music." by Theresa Brewer

Couple dances can be with touching and the man leading the lady with movements of his hand relative to his body, or with movements of his body. The dances based on hand lead are generally categorized as Latin dances, though some are not of Latin American origin.

The word Latin I use here means Hispanic, not Italian. Examples are the various kinds of swing, disco (also called hustle), and dances of Latin origin (Rumba, Cha Cha, Samba, Mambo, Salsa,) and many, many more, which have been mostly or will be forgotten.

Most of the ballroom dances are getting less European in fact. In contrast to the Latin dances, in ballroom dancing, the man leads the lady with movements of his body.

"When I Grow Too Old To Dream" by Nat King Cole

This is true even if the couple is dancing without body contact, since the man's hands and arms should provide a frame rigidly fixed to his body that moves precisely as his body moves. Ballroom dancing seems more like the man and the lady are sharing the same experience together.

The style of dancing known as "American smooth" blurs the distinction between Ballroom and Latin, and includes both Ballroom and Latin figures within the same dance. However, no dance has a patent on moves or steps.

So do we Ballroom Dance? Yes, but what do you mean by "we?"
Fred Lum.

In the last two decades most of the best dancers were coming from the West, then was very slowly moving to the East and now stopped by the Rail Catastrophe. Happy Easter.