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to turn) was still a remarkably transgressive style – not the last time that would go hand Perfect10 in hand with social change. The folk required a hold so that the ladies could lift their skirts out of the dirt while their partners guided them safely around a raucous floor – and The Viennese also initiate intimate contact. Although the ballroom version In this month’s instalment of our series was rather more sanitised, in every sense, it still involved a chronicling the history of the standard ten certain amount of contact and the dances, Marianka Swain takes the oldest shocking sight of the occasional style, the Viennese waltz, for a spin gentleman’s foot disappearing briefly beneath his partner’s gown. Naturally, the rise of this f there exists a form of explains the World dangerous style did not go “ music that is a direct Federation’s Heidi Goetz. “They unchallenged. In 1797, German Iexpression of sensuality, involved a large number of critic Salomo Jakob Wolf it is the Viennese waltz,” wrote participants who adhered to strict published a vitriolic pamphlet Austrian music scholar Max rules in order to create patterns entitled Proof that Waltzing Graf in 1922. To contemporary on the floor, so there was little is the Main Source of dancers, this might seem a room for individuality or interaction Weakness of the Body and peculiar characterisation of between just two dancers – ie Mind of our Generation, arguably the most conservative between a man and a woman.” which sold out twice, and form of ballroom, yet the Viennese In keeping with its reputation the dance was even close waltz is no stranger to controversy. as a low, scandalous form of to being the cause of The origins of its scandalous movement, the Viennese waltz death by duel, as recorded in reputation lie in the fact that it grew out of rural Austrian folk The Times on July 22, 1812: broke with dancing tradition: its dances such as the Ländler, which “Monday morning a duel took participants had to be physically were danced in fast 3/4 time and place between General Thornton conjoined (although initially just involved much energetic skipping, and Mr Theodore Hook. After hand to hand, rather than hip to jumping and continuous whirling, exchanging one shot each, the hip, as we dance it today) and as well as occasional yodelling affair was amicably settled. independent of everyone else, and stamping of hobnail boots. It originated in a silly dispute creating a private sphere in Both the more uncouth on the subject of the dance which members of the opposite elements and the hobnail called the waltz, the General sex could interact and perhaps boots were excised when having praised it in high terms, even share unguarded feelings; this high-voltage (and and the Author having bitterly as musicologist Curt Sachs puts highly charged) reprobated it as leading to the it, waltz called for “exaltation, most licentious consequences.” surrender and the extinction was adopted by of the world round about”. the upper classes and espite such condemnation, “It’s important to remember that brought into the ballrooms Dthe waltz gained many the dominant forms prior to the of Austria in the late 18th Spinning around: Domenico high-profile defendants, such Soale and Gioia Cerasoli Photograph © Ron Self Viennese were sequence dances,” century, but the waltz (meaning as Goethe, who recounted ➤

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his magical experience in The Sorrows of Young Werther in 1774: “Never have I moved so lightly. I was no longer a human being. To hold the most adorable creature in one’s arms and fly around with her like the wind, so that everything around us fades away…” The waltz also gained enormous popular support, thus to accommodate the growing number of waltzers several grand dance halls were opened in Vienna, such as the Zum Sperl in 1807 and the Apollo in 1808. Nevertheless, despite taking Europe by storm, the waltz was initially prohibited at the Prussian court of Wilhelm II and also in England. An editorial in The Times records the shock at the Prince Regent’s grand ball in 1816 when “the indecent foreign dance the waltz” was introduced: “It is quite sufficient to cast one’s eyes on the voluptuous intertwining of The Johann Strauss Dancers dance in period-style the limbs and close compressor costume and are touring the UK with their Viennese on the bodies in their dance, to Ball until February 19 (www.raymondgubbay.co.uk) see that it is indeed far removed from the modest reserve which dancing it in public in the 1830s the Viennese waltz. He and his waltz when it was brought into the they revolve around the room. has hitherto been considered music, as “overflowing with longing, and it remained a popular style wife, Margit, won the German ballroom was 56 bars a minute. There are no steps forward distinctive of English females. desire and tenderness”, but given throughout the 19th century, Championship in 1950 and were Strauss, senior, preferred 72 bars or back, no relief; it is all a “So long as this obscene display a more sophisticated gloss in the both in high society and in spotted by influential ballroom to the minute. On the continent continuous whirl of pleasure was confined to prostitutes and mid 19th century by Josef Lanner competition circles, culminating technician Alex Moore, who a tempo of 60–66 was gradually for those who can take it. The adulteresses, we did not think and Johann Strauss the elder. in contests such as the 1918 invited them to London the adopted and today this is still waltz is the loveliest blossom it deserving of notice; but now Contemporary music critic Eduard Viennese Dance Derby. following year, so that they could considered the most suitable and of our ballroom, perhaps that it is attempted to be forced Hanslick wrote: “You cannot However, on the outbreak of teach it to the British dance is laid down for championship the most satisfactory dance on the respectable classes of imagine the wild enthusiasm World War I, anything Germanic profession. On April 15, 1951, as events… A characteristic of the ever achieved by man.” society, we feel it a duty to warn that these two men created in went out of vogue in many Ballroom Dancing Times reports, modern version of the dance is an For those with the stamina to every parent against exposing his Vienna. Newspapers went into countries, and the slow waltz “Sixty teachers and professional absence of variations. It contains survive this whirling dervish, his daughter to so fatal a contagion.” raptures over each new waltz, and became more prevalent. It was dancers profited tremendously six figures: right turn, left turn, words certainly ring true today, Yet this ruling from the innumerable articles appeared only after World War II that the under the Krebs’ tuition, forward change to right and left, although perhaps we should take establishment did nothing to deter about Lanner and Strauss.” Viennese waltz, kept alive in its several of them succeeding in right and left spins (fleckerl).” the advice of the great 19th- European waltz mania, nor the place of origin, became a popular a correct construction of the American educator Dr Lloyd century French dancing master growing number of musicians s the insidious waltz international form once again. ‘fleckerl’ for the first time.” Shaw perfectly summarised the Cellarius: “The valser should composing and playing waltz A continued to spread, Lord Paul Krebs, a German dancer, Krebs himself writes in a later dance’s long-lasting appeal in take care never to relinquish his music. Max Graf described these Palmerston of England finally gave played an important role in edition of Ballroom Dancing 1949: “In , the lady until he feels that she has

Illustration © Simon Oliver new melodies, which drew on folk it the royal stamp of approval by developing the technique of Times: “The original tempo of the dancers turn continually while entirely recovered herself.” l

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