There are thousands of young women who have no opportunities for prolonged and exhilarating exercise except in ballrooms. In the majority of cases, unfortunately, Fashion, the handmaid of Ugliness and Disease, frustrates the advantages which would result from dancing by prescribing for ballrooms not only the smallest shoes, but the tightest corsets and the lowest dresses, which render it impossible or imprudent to breathe fresh air, without which exercise is of no hygienic value, and may even be injurious. But what are such trifling sacrifices as Health, Beauty, and Grace compared to the glorious consciousness of being fashionable!
DANCING AND COURTSHIP
The ballroom is Cupid’s camping ground, not only because it facilitates the acquisition of that grace by which he is so easily enamoured, but because it affords such excellent opportunities for Courtship and Sexual Selection. And this applies not only to the era of modern Romantic Love, but, from its most primitive manifestations in the animal world, dancing, like song, has been connected with love and courtship.
Darwin devotes several pages to a description of the love-antics and dances of birds. Some of them, as the black African weaver, perform their love-antics on the wing, “gliding through the air with quivering wings, which make a rapid whirring sound like a child’s rattle;” others remain on the ground, like the English white-throat, which “flutters with a fitful and fantastic motion;” or the English bustard, who “throws himself into indescribably odd attitudes whilst courting the female;” and a third class, the famous Bower-birds, perform their love-antics in bowers specially constructed and adorned with leaves, shells, and feathers. These are the earliest ballrooms known in natural history; and it is quite proper to call them so, for, as Darwin remarks, they “are built on the ground for the sole purpose of courtship, for their nests are formed in trees.”
Passing on to primitive man, we again find him inferior to animals in not knowing that the sole proper function of dancing is in the service of Love, courtship, and grace. Savages have three classes of dance, two being performed by the men alone, the third by men and women. First come the war-dances, in which the grotesquely-painted warriors brandish their spears and utter unearthly howls, to excite themselves for an approaching contest. Second, the Hunter’s Dances, in which the game is impersonated by some of the men and chased about, which leads to many comic scenes; though there is a serious undercurrent of superstition, for they believe that such dances—a sort of saltatorial prayer—bring on good luck in the subsequent real chase. Third, the dance of Love, practised e.g. by the Brazilian Indians, with whom “men and women dance a rude courting dance, advancing in lines with a kind of primitive polka step” (Tylor.) That there is as little refinement and idealism in the savage’s dances as in his love-affairs in general is self-evident.
The civilised nations of antiquity, as we have seen, had no prolonged Courtship, and therefore no Romantic Love. Since young men and women were not allowed to meet freely, dancing was of course not esteemed as a high social accomplishment. It was therefore commonly relegated to a special class of women (or slaves), such as the Bayaderes of India and the Greek flute girls. Notwithstanding that even the Greek gods are sometimes represented as dancing, yet this art came to be considered a sign of effeminacy in men who indulged in it; and as for the Romans, their view is indicated in Cicero’s anathema: “No man who is sober dances, unless he is out of his mind, either when alone or in decent society, for dancing is the companion of wanton conviviality, dissoluteness, and luxury.”
In ancient Egypt, too, the upper classes were not allowed to learn dancing. And herein, as in so many things in which women are concerned, the modern Oriental is the direct descendant of the ancients. “In the eyes of the Chinese,” says M. Letourneau, “dancing is a ridiculous amusement by which a man compromises his dignity.”
Plato appears to have been the first who recognised the importance of dancing as affording opportunities for Courtship and pre-matrimonial acquaintance. But his advice remained unheeded by his countrymen. A view regarding dancing similar to Plato’s was announced by an uncommonly liberal theologian of the sixteenth century in the words, as quoted by Scherr, that “Dancing had been originally arranged and permitted with the respectable purpose of teaching manners to the young in the presence of many people, and enabling young men and maidens to form honest attachments. For in the dance it was easy to observe and note the habits and peculiarities of the young.”
Thus we see that, with the exception of the savage’s war-dances and hunting pantomimes, the art of dancing has at all times and everywhere been born of love; even the ancient religious dances having commonly been but a veil concealing other purposes, as among the Greeks. But all ceremonial dancing, like ceremonial kissing, has been from the beginning doomed to be absorbed and annihilated by the all-engrossing modern passion of Romantic Love.
True, as a miser mistakes the means for the end and loves gold for its own sake, so we sometimes see girls dance alone—possibly with a vaguely coy intention of giving the men to understand that they can get along without them. But their heart is not in it, and they never do it when there are men enough to go round. As for the men, they are too open and frank ever to veil their sentiments. They never dance except with a woman.