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AH tne Dancing Masters Combine
fo Saye the Sensuous Measure
r. riTlHERE had been an intermission
i during one of the hops" at the
leading hotel of A tlantlc ". City,
that famous eastern summer resort.
' . As the crowd drifted back the or-
chestra began to play -with a luring lilt
and a rhythm so slow that to the younger
ears it seemed funereal the swaying
' numbers "of the old, aid "Beautiful Blue
'Danube." '
The younger set, gymnasts with
their expectations set upon the reeking ex
ercise of the barn ' dance and the breath
less dashes 'of the two-step, smiled at one
another in surprise. But not for, long.
k; ji little space, and one delighted cou
ple after another, among the older men
and women, rose, and swept out upon the
floor in the inimitably graceful, facile cir-
; cles of the old, true waltz, dancing it with
an enjoyment , that indicated tlije ery
'.poetry of delicate,, unaffected grace.
A little longer, and the younger set
were exclaiming: "I fs something new;
lefs try it" .
That was the .way-y-just once, like
some lovely, lost joy that the queenly
waltz returned, for a1 brief, graceful mo-
jncrih, tu in vwn, uuriuugn nuriurtui u
'dancing masters, assembled in Berlin,
- were binding themselves, with solemn
eminence.
HI U, hi lo; hi II. h! lo-
Bel una greht's Immtr
fohlimmer und Rcblimmer.
Hi li. hi lo! hi II. hi lo-
Bel un freht' Immtr o-o-o-ol
Y
ES; that's it the ancient German pivot
waltz music, which has become the
melody properly appertaining to the
latest impudent interloper in the truise
of the waltz the newest fashionable forgery
among the countless frauds on human feet per
petrated since the valtz proved itself the sweet
est measure humanity can tread in the joyous
dance.
It is now the Boston Drop Step,, the only
new thing in. dancing within the last couple of
Tears. It is going to be under the ban, like all
the rest.
For dancing masters,' in choreographic coun
cil assembled, trith seventeen countries repre
sented at Berlin, arrived recently, at a firm re-
iolve. They would combine to save the waltr
THE waltz, which means the waltz as it was
originally waltzed, and not as it has been paro
died, garbled, mangled, distorted, gargoyled and
raiiroaoea into au tne neianous muiupucies of
glides, slides, hops, drop, dips and ratch-as-catch
-ran strugglen-for-life.
Delegates from a dozen lands addnced evi
drnce before the Dancing Masters' Congress to
prove, b7tnd the last despairing doubt, that the
waltz is doomed, unless all loyal devotees of
Terpichre and rftrausi arise in patent leathers
and .eir miht to save it.
Tl-y imagined thy were saving it, chiefly,
frra America; and th7 are both right and
wrocg fttcb. is tomewhat confusing, yet
THE OREGON SUNDAY,
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phatically true.
"Show me any dance program," remarked
Walter II. Wroe, a Philadelphia instructor who
divides his time between teaching the society
maids and matrons in the East and training
fancy dancers for the stage, "and I will point
out what is the most obvious fact about dancing
in the United States todar. The waltz appears
in more frequent repetition than any other dance
number the program specifies.
"Truth is, there is far too much of waltz and
two-step so much that the three-quarter time
measure has suffered harsh transfprmations.
which carry it out of its real sphere as a grace
ful, enjoyable waltz, and leave it masquerading
under the ancient and honorable name, but with
its nature changed as greatly well, as greatly
as the honest flour that goes into bread can be
changed into indigestible pie and cake.
"It is still a waltz, for it is still in the three
step measure. But we have made it into various "
things which are far more gymnastics than they
are waltzing.
"As for the dancing masters restoring the
waltz to popular favor, I wish we could we all
wish we could. But it doesn't lie with us. The
fate of the waltz, the fat of all dance sow
popular or ever popular, lies in the hands of the
leaders of society.
Tot every dancing master of the world to
work exhorting," in a single hall,' for the renais
sance of the waltz, and let Mr. Stuyrrsant Fish
casually remark that she's going to have a galop
in imitation of Texas cowpunchera, or A kimono -saraband
a la geisha, or a Salome caracol with
a dancing master's head as the piece de resist
anceand 111 promise yon the dancing mW
will furnish the bead, and on a silver platter. V
teach what the fashions demand;. the fashion-
JOURNAL, PORTLAND, SUNDAY . HORNING SEPTEMBER . 20. ; I90S ,
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Waltz.
ables lead, the dancing masters follow."
Tet there has arisen,' during the last few
months, a worldide demand world-wide so far
as dancing goes for the preservation of the old-
time waltz; for its return unto. ita own.
" , Ten years ago the set dances vanished into
the limbo that hides still .'the oldest and most
stately of their type, the courtly. minuet Plain
quadrille, , polka quadrille, waltz quadrille, ele
gant polaeca one, with ano ter they fled, with
the real, delightful waltz dancing hurriedly to its
doom in the gasping glide, and the nimble polka
and sociable schottiscbe already in the class that
our mothers talk about. t .
TWO-STEP A WHIRLWIND '
The two-step came in like whirlwind. For
an interval even" thealtz-time - was despised
and rejected . as- something' altogether, out '.of
fashion. But three-quarter time in music and
in the dance is something thst is basically; hu
man; and,humsnity.cn'never free it feet from
that fundamental measure. It is, pre-eminently,-'
tha dance t one. - '
The waltz returned,, but flanged fronvita default of anything better. It adopted the new
delicioos dreaminesa to a sort of lightaibr-ex- kick for its very own, modifying its elephantine
press whirligig, to be used as a"stajle to 11 the - muscularity to'the smooth grace demanded in
already "breathless interval between tbe'grotsque the current reaction against the spinal curva
horvors of the Cakewalk z(d the hopping agilities tores of tbe recently defunct Cakewalk. .
cf the barn dance. . A studious count ef the relative degree
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Any "progjessive" dancing master can teach
the-barn dance but -one" of them will tell you
the story of .its origin or trace its 'disreputable
ancestry. On the second . beat of ' the three
quarter measure the dancers 'throw up the foot
it calls for inn sort of 'discreet 'outward kick
with a sweeping curve to it. A girl, on that kick,
looks as though she'd just been tempted to join
the merry chorus and had begun to practice high
kicking, but changed'her mind in the middle of
the kick. - . . - - .
"There's the waltz for youH American danc
ing masters have said, with one eyeron the three
quarter measure of the music and the other on
the sweeping turn the dancers describe at the
step after the kick. t " "
"Donnerwetter nochemtJ I" ' Tocif erates the
Berlin congress. "Abernitl"
Signifying, that the newly fashionable, Bos
ton Drop of savage America is merely ' another
horror spiled upon the heaped mound' of1 our
crimes.' -; - - -
Society ' gazed surreptitiously .upon tbe '
brawny freedom of the rew waltz as kicked at
Coney Island, and thought that it was good in
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of popularity, attaching to the few dances that ,
furnish our present meager variety would place '
them in this order: First, the various forgeries)
on the waltz chiefly whirlwind gyrations with
the Boston Drop gradually'5 infiltrating down
ward from the social stratum to which it was so
suddenlyruplifted from' its original low level at i
.Coney; second,, the aboriginal two-step, yn
changed in any of its primal savagery,' except ;
that it -is somewhat more ferocious; third, the!
barn dance, always a children's dance until their j
older sisters and brothers stole it from them be-
cause the other playthings of the grown-ups j
seemed for the time made of sawdust; fourth, the '
landers,' danced as a quadrille with a two-step ,
round dance -relieving what little monotony re
mains after everybody has introduced every fig- "
tire anybody ever .'heard of; and fifth,' the Paul
Jones figure from the german, where you two-
step until a signal bids all play ring-around-a-.
rosy up to the "next signal, which makes them
change partners along a chain until each secures
another;partner whose .step is the worst ever,
with more two-step,, more ring-around-a-rosy,
' and .more chain changes until yon get some one
'worse than the worst. .
: That is alL. Gone is the polka; gone the
schottiscbe; gone the swahlike elegance of the
original waltz. ' " -
The dancing master is rushing to tbe rescue.
Society is also-taking note. There is a general
movement to revive and make permanent the de
lightful old waltz of "Beautiful Blue Danube .