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Dancing to the music of time 20 December 2001 Back in the 1950s there was a comic song (sung by Joyce Grenfell - but she's another story) about an ballroom dancing class where women had to dance together because there were not enough men. The line which sticks in my memory is 'Stately as two galleons they sailed across the floor', referring to a pair of stout Victorian grandmothers, holding each other at arms' length as their prominent bosoms collided. I was reminded of the song the other night in a club south of the Thames, as I watched two shaven-headed shirtless men with matching pink overblown pectorals. Both had reached the stage of top-heavy muscle development that made me wonder how they kept their balance. I suspected that if either fell, he would not be able regain his equilibrium unaided. They were not arm in arm, but their top halves were so close that their nipples almost touched, while their feet stomped the floor far enough apart to let at least one short-statured person strut his or her stuff between them. Which brought to mind the stately galleons. Which is where we came in. I'm curious to know where dancing is going to go next and how long it is going to take to get there. For centuries - if period films are a reliable guide - dance was a dozen or so foppish men in tights offering a limp wrist to an equal number of women in floor length dresses and exposed cleavages. Couples pranced to and fro, stylishly twirled and separated to face new partners. While separated most of the time by at least two arms' length, every so often they would sweep together to allow a quick whispered 'My liege, the carriage awaits', before pulling back to a decorous distance. The whole gave the appearance of a puppet show, with a skilful master pulling his charges this way and that, gracefully but, one suspects, against their wishes. The nineteenth century brought the waltz where couples could actually hold each other. The proximity, the permission to touch and hold a member of the opposite sex was an obvious attraction to the youth of the period, and a scandal to their parents. To be able to put your arm around a woman's waist, to hold and squeeze her hand, to stare for long moments into her eyes and at her mouth, not to mention to feel her breasts against your chest and, if you were bold enough to let her feel your erection against her belly, was a thrill that few heterosexual men would forego. Meanwhile men of the Uranian persuasion (to use the briefly fashionable word of the period) imitated their more numerous brothers and cousins in hideaways and dives that flourished out of sight of the law. It well into the second half of the twentieth century before men could dance together openly and actually in most North American cities. In Buenos Aires, meanwhile in the early 1900s, tango emerged in the working class bars. There were relatively few women, which meant that men often had to double up - although that was no doubt an attraction for some of the men present. Tango was one of the first dances to interrupt the smooth flow of the waltz and its cousins, but couples still held onto each other. In the mid 1920s, the Charleston, which kept partners apart, was a temporary aberration, but by the 1940s and 50s, with the jitterbug and rock and roll, couples held on to each other for less and less time, while the jerky movements represented the triumph of energy over style. The 1960s saw perhaps the ugliest of all dances: the twist. Film footage of this phenomenon in its heyday shows men and women grinning at each other as they continually lower themselves onto and raise themselves off invisible twirling dildoes. By the early 1970s the twist had gone, to be replaced first by Saturday Night Fever, with its strutting across the floor, then by the Dance That Has No Name. The DTHNN basically consists of shaking different parts of the body in approximately the same rhythm as the music. We will cast a shroud over the fan dancing of the early 1980s - skinny gay men in denim shorts and on the precursor of E hiding themselves behind gigantic white ostrich feather fans. And, while we are at it, we will shut our ears to the whistle-blowing and tambourines that interfered with the melting of McArthur Park and made it difficult for others to Ring My Bell. Theoretically, anyone is expert at the DTHNN. In reality, most of us are not very good at it. A few pathetic souls have a style similar to Elaine in Seinfeld. Most of the time I have the sense to dance where people are too involved in their drugs and themselves to notice how bad a dancer I am. The elegant flow of dance died more than half a century ago. The puppet master has returned. Only now he suffers a kind of palsy. He jerks the strings and our bodies sway and swerve in every direction. Dance has moved from being a formalised expression of respect or affection for your partner to a self-indulgent release of inhibitions. In mediaeval times men expressed their desire for their partner through their eyes; in the nineteenth century they expressed it through physical contact, through making her one with our movements. It was important to be dance well, not to step her feet, to have her flow with us. Today, our dancing expresses none of these things, only the wish to release energy. I want to dance; you can stand near me if you want. But it is not important that we bond, only that I express my need. Occasionally you see a flash of mutual commitment, as two dancers sway ever closer, matching movements and rhythm, groin to groin more often than cheek to cheek. But such moves are difficult and few practice them. It seems therefore we are doomed for the foreseeable future to dance, not as couples, not as potential lovers, but as individuals unable to let others into our personal space and unable to enter our the space of our beloved or intended. We dance together, but the wall remains. It is elsewhere - the cinema, the bar, the bedroom, that the wall comes down. Back to Opinion |
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