Americus times-recorder. [volume] (Americus, Ga.) 1891-current, 1912-04-19
DANCING
IS GETTING
DISGUSTING
REACTION WILL SOON COME
And Public viii Go Back to
DGCeRCy

New York, April 18-If in the midst
of a graceful waltz, one were to see a
couple rise and grip each other, hug
as tightly as the human frame per-
mits and as the law doesn't allow
sway back and forth and occasionally
spin around; and if, a minute later,
another couple rising, they were to
assume the attitude of the Romans
and the Sabines in catch-as-catch-
can wrestle all over the dancing floor;
and if, with the third there came a
demonstration of jiujitsu; and with a
fourth, wild whirligig, and SO on I'M
til the whole scene was one of spas
modic motion-would it be unreason-
able to imagine that the dancers are
lunatics.
The surmise would be wrong. It
would be simply the modern dancing
floor, exhibiting the grizzly bear,
turkey trot, bunny, apache dance and
Carnegie reel, that have been sweep
ing from the western United States
into New York, and then across the
sea to England, France and Germany.
Dancing mad are we. Well it is far
from impossible, There have been
plenty of periods in the history of
humanity, periods regarded as safer
and saner than the one we live in.
when nations became genuine, if tenn
porarily insane about dancing.
Probably the crisis isn't at it's
height; there may be worse to come
Europe, which has been denouncing
the American dance, was the first to
laud the brutalities of the apache riot
ers, purgent of the Paris cutters, Ger
many has been shamed at Berlin's
coarse and vulgar adaptions of every
suggestive dance movement England
has seen one of its distinguished
names Haunted before a monarch in
dancing costumes near to nakedness.
1t is noteworthy that the current
craze for dancing has come at a time
and has run course precisely par
allel to many of the obsessions of the
past.
Only half a dozen years have passed
since, with dancing so dead that host
esses were in despair over the reluc-
lance of young men to earn their sup
pers, the influence of the originality
shown by women like Loie Fuller be-
gan to show itself.
The stage seemed to evoke, more
and more numerously, stars whose
tiptoes flashed them like meteors
across the scenes. Dancing in all it,
phases claimed increasing attention,
and the lowering of moral standards,
so universally rebuked within the last
year, manifested itself in the staging
of dances as professionally voluptuous
as the Salome performances in which
Mary Garden and about three thous-
and other more or less shapely dams
els disported themselves.
The sex interest, for all the decent
foolishness of Paris's new monkey
dance, has dominated the recent in
novations, and it has been the most
gravely reprobated feature of them
-, ;o1o hA; 10 L. Of oil
are significant of the level of nervous
tension at which the modern world
exists. The very morbidness shown
in the posed terrors of the anache
dance are significant of conditions
which sociologists find in our civiliza-
ton.
Fifty years ago, in France saw a
carnival of dancing madness, its mad
dest extravagances committed incarni-
val costumes. Tht other extreme was
to he seen in the riffraff balls, to
which the ragpickers of Paris were in
vited, to inspire by their antics-little
different in character from the apache
excess of to-day-the aristocrats who
looked on. And the aristocrats then,
as now, did little practice on their
own hook, until the figures of the riff
raft dances were we'll enough known
in high society
Nearly all these mild obscessions
were attended by reaction that left the
nations quiet, but somewhat disguised
And their quietudef and disgust were
in proportions to the virulence of the
attack.
Dancing itself has never lost it's
hold on the affections of humanity.
Even when the art has appeared most
dead, it has been enjoyed by its legit-
mate devotees, young men and girls,
as part of the priceless inheritance Of
youth, health and vigor. The old
peasant dances were typical of this
There can be little doubt that the
reaction will manifest itself after a
few more insanities in dancing, per-
haps before there shall be any more
of them. The height of vulgarity and
uncouthness seems to have been at
tanned with the attainment of the