Dancing?

By John Cheung, Manoa:

We all know what dancing is. Do we? Well, we know that plenty people out there are dancing. Maybe 100 thousand people in Hawaii, dancing Hawaiian, and other island dances, Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese, Porto Rican and the rest of the ethnic groups, that is a lot of dancers. The entire civilized world had gone through a period of several centuries in which Ballroom dancing developed. And by the end of the last century, "Ballroom" on this island evolved into several separate divisions.

"Social dancers believe that it is never too late

to be what you might have been."

The first fairly well established group with little organization,of course, were the Social dances developed from wherever they could get them. Most came from the mainland US after WWI. And in Hawaii danced with some differences in Kauai or the Big Island. Does anyone remember the "Double Blues?" Wow, that was a nice one. After WWII swing dancing became more standardized, and they had some Waltz, Foxtrot, Rumba and Samba. It was almost completely taken over by American Style of dance in the Sixties by three dance clubs that exist to this day. The dancers became known as Ballroom Dancers.

"Waikiki" by Amy Hanaialii

The term did not accurate describe the dance scene, however. They did not dance in ballrooms. They danced in school cafeterias, malls, parks, district parks and community centers. And another very important place, Night Clubs. The Night Club group. usually very good street dancers, developed as an offshoot division in which they felt different and preferred to separate themselves from "Ballroom Dancing." They were mainly resentful of the intrusion of the well organized plan of developing ballroom dancers. The night clubs had much more freedom to dance and were very susceptible to fads. Disco for instance.

"A Song For You" by Jimmy Borges 

Then in the Seventies came the International type of dance, with much more strict rules which where necessary to provide fair judging. Their purpose was more into competition, and of course exhibitions in which they excelled. They developed a superior attitude, strict discipline and the fact that they usually required Ballrooms to dance. One year after the opening of the Palladium, they seized the name Ballroom dancers and excluded anyone else out of their kuleana. And on this island the term "Junk Dancer" and "Ala Wai Dancer" emerged and applied to all the others.

Then in this century, a larger group than the "bodadem" put together is evolving, the Social Dancer. We should all try to understand that we are still a work in process of defining ourselves. We are uniting to make sure the separation stands without apologies to anyone.