Yesterday I did a post about why most people don’t sing in public gatherings very much anymore. This seems to have struck a chord (sorry), and it led me to think about another form of once popular and common artistic expression which is… social partner dancing.
Now again, full disclosure here, my entire social life revolves around social dancing. I do both West Coast swing and hustle, I can do an adequate nightclub two step, and I can lead a cha-cha in an emergency. I don’t have a whole lot of regrets in my life, but one of the biggest regrets I have is that I did not take up partner dancing earlier in my life. I’m a fairly articulate fellow, but I’m not sure I could ever describe to a non-dancer just how much fun this stuff is.
Anyway, since I often look at the arts in a macro perspective, there’s an element of partner dance history that has always intrigued me.
Social partner dancing has been a part of American history from the beginning. Whether you’re talking about waltz or square dancing, this has always involved being in direct physical contact with another human being, usually of the opposite sex. Throughout the 20s, 30s, and 40s, it was extremely common for people of all ages to go to dances where people (sometimes strangers) danced together. In public. Undulating in rhythmic sync. In each other’s arms. The older folks danced foxtrots, and the younger kids did various forms of swing, including jitterbugging, which is half dance and half acrobatics.
Then at some point in the late 1950s, a bizarre line was crossed. Instead of partner dancing, where men and women were in direct physical contact with each other on the dance floor, we suddenly found ourselves doing dances in which there was no more touching, you merely danced in the general vicinity of your partner. The most obvious of these is the twist, but you baby boomers out there will also remember a whole panoply of these “vicinity” dances, including the Frug, The Swim, The Monkey, The Dog, The Watusi, and The Jerk. To this day, if you go to a “dance,” since the guys don’t know how to lead, everyone just sort of “boogeys in place” (as we call it). Now granted, if they play a slow song you can embrace your partner and do what I call the “Frankenstein Two-Step,” but you are only allowed to do this dance with your significant other (and no one else).
This is where that little voice in the back of my head goes, “hey–this doesn’t add up.” The reason I say that is, the big message of the rock ‘n roll era was that we were somehow “breaking out” into more open expressions of sexuality. We were supposed to be gaining more freedom. The very phrase “rock ‘n roll” is in fact a euphemism for sex (because you rock… and then you roll… and then you rock some more). So how did all of this “sex music” lead to people touching each other less? What gives?
One possible answer:
One of the things I love about the “dance community” is that it is severely structured in terms of permissions and protocols. Why would I like structure and rules and strict limitations? Simple. Because it creates a sense of safety, and that sense of safety gives me freedom to do things that I cannot do in unstructured environments. At a dance event, I can go up to any woman in the room, even if I have never met her before, ask her to dance, and proceed to hold her in my arms three seconds later. Being a heterosexual man, I have to tell you, I like this system a lot. (Apparently, the women like it a lot too.) I find it to be wonderfully efficient, especially when compared to the average singles bar. The reason it works so well and so efficiently is that there are so many rules creating mutual safety. A fairly high degree of personal vulnerability is exposed to the open air in that environment, and this obligates everyone involved to be very mindful of that, and observe certain rules of courtesy.
When I find myself at non-dance party where I’m the only person who knows how to partner dance, or if I see a non-dancer accidentally walking into a dance event, I am reminded of the lonely limbo I used to live in. You can see the non-dancers sitting there in absolute terror, terribly curious, yet scared to death to come in physical contact with another human being. I find this to be sad, and indicative of a backlog of traumatic personal isolation that is not good for primates.
For all of the supposed freedom we have to blatantly express one’s sexuality via modern popular music, in actual application, this is more fantasy than reality. Our current system, if you can call it that, lacks the structure and boundaries that are necessary in dealing with our fellow creatures. In removing structure and rules in the name of greater personal freedom, this has resulted, I think, in less freedom, at least in terms of just how much of our true selves we are willing to share in relatively public forums. It’s great for one or two stars here and there, but the majority are relegated to sitting and watching. I find this to be decidedly unAmerican.
© Justin Locke
