[Untitled]

The epilogue reflects on popular dance in the post-war years. After the war, going to the palais remained as popular as ever, but the dances performed within the dance halls continued their long evolution. Following on some of the individualised and independent movements introduced by the jitterbug, modern ballroom dancing slowly began to give way to new dances which could be performed without a partner, or which better accompanied rock n’ roll and later disco. Owing to their particular focus on ballroom dance, the dance profession began the modern dance era with arguably more cultural influence than the dance hall industry, but those positions had clearly undergone a switch by the 1950s. Ballroom dancing eventually became a niche professional art form, while many of the 1920s dance halls continued to operate for decades after their establishment, even as they faced new challenges of their own.

The ‘infernal jitterbug’ and the transformation of popular dance

This chapter provides a case study of the jitterbug, an American import which became the great dance sensation of the Second World War. Questions about Americananisation took on a new valence in wartime, owing to the physical presence in Britain of large numbers of American GIs. The dance profession and dance hall industry thus shifted tactics with respect to American culture, choosing to embrace the jitterbug – in a toned down Anglicised form. However, as part of ongoing negotiations with producers, the dancing public expressed greater interest in the ‘authentic’, American jitterbug than the Anglicised versions presented to them by the profession and industry, in ways that reflected contemporary deliberations over racial difference. As a dance, the jitterbug also heralded a critical shift away from modern ballroom dancing as the nation’s favoured style.

Dancing democracy in wartime Britain

This chapter explores the representation and experience of popular dance during the Second World War. It demonstrates that dancing provided a potent means for producers and consumers alike to express and embody many of the ideals associated with the ‘people’s war’, such as cheerful endurance, grace under fire, and social and imperial unity. Dancing also became synonymous and expressive of democracy, and differentiated Britain from its enemies. At the same time, commercial producers – but especially the dance hall industry – re-packaged patriotism as a way of staying in business, utilising war-themed promotions and causes to attract patrons, or advertising their ballrooms as bomb shelters.

Who makes new dances? The dance profession and the evolution of style

This chapter describes the standardisation of the English style of ballroom dance and the professionalisation of the dance community, showing that these processes were inextricably connected. The catalyst to the dance profession’s consolidation was a series of conferences convened in the 1920s by prominent teachers who sought to standardise the steps of new ballroom dances arriving in Britain from the United States and continental Europe. From these events emerged the rudimentary English style, which the profession then passed on to the dancing public via dancing schools, exhibition dancing, dance competitions and print culture. However, the chapter argues that the success – and even the steps and figures – of a dance were not determined entirely by this top-down process. Not only did a significant segment of the dancing public eschew instruction, and remain largely oblivious to professional activities, but the two groups were not always aligned in their dancing preferences. The result was that questions about which dances would be danced in Britain, how they would be performed, and what the gradually evolving national style would look like, were continually negotiated between producers and consumers of popular dance.

Dancing mad! The modernisation of popular dance

This chapter traces the early development of modern ballroom dancing in Britain, from its origins in the ragtime era prior to the First World War through the dance craze that came with the peace. It provides a history for the major dances that would predominate in Britain from the 1920s through the 1950s, particularly the so-called ‘standard four’ – the foxtrot, the modern waltz, the tango, and the one-step. The chapter also examines the social and cultural response to the new dances in Britain – particularly their perceived modernity – which was celebrated by some, but condemned by others. It explores controversies that surrounded popular dance, and the active defence mounted by its proponents, who touted dancing’s value for the cultivation of good health and beauty, among numerous other advantages.

Doing the Lambeth Walk: novelty dances and the commodification of the nation

This chapter uses as a case study a series of novelty dances produced by the Mecca dance hall chain starting in 1938: the Lambeth Walk, the Chestnut Tree, the Park Parade, the Handsome Territorial, and Knees Up, Mother Brown. These were deliberately simply sequence dances, which Mecca director C.L. Heimann hoped would bring more patrons into his company’s dance halls, particularly those who were untutored in ballroom dancing. While the marketing campaign for the dances stressed their ease and accessibility, another major focus was on the dances’ British origin and character, and the nation was explicitly commodified to sell the new dances. The first Mecca novelty dance, the Lambeth Walk, was a staggering success, both at home and abroad, and was embraced by the dancing public for its connections to British culture. However, the chapter shows that the other four Mecca novelty dances which followed the Lambeth Walk met with a mixed response, and argues that their success or failure was largely owing to their quality as dances rather than their national origins.

The dance evil: gender, sexuality and the representation of popular dance

This chapter explores how the social perception and cultural representation of dancing – especially its chief enthusiasts, professionals, and the public venues where it took place – were shaped by contemporary anxieties about gender, class, and sexuality. It examines the controversies that surrounded the ‘dancing girl’ (also called the flapper or modern woman), as well as the male ‘lounge lizard’ or ‘dancing dandy’, within the context of the gender upheavals that occurred during and immediately after the First World War. The chapter also considers the negative assumptions about particular public dancing spaces, as well as the paid dance partners who were employed within them, showing that these were underpinned by class prejudice and anxieties about crime and sexual immorality. However, the chapter argues that social concerns about dancing were strongly contested from the very start of the modern dance era, and that this leisure form became progressively more respectable and integrated into the national culture as professionalisation and commercialisation processes progressed throughout the interwar years.

Introduction

The introduction presents the book’s arguments and historiographical interventions, outlines its structure, and provides an explanation of the study’s periodisation. The years between the end of the First World War and the early 1950s saw what was known as ‘modern ballroom dancing’ rise and fall as Britain’s foremost popular style, and witnessed the professionalisation and commercialisation of popular dance. The introductory chapter also provides definitions for the book’s framing concepts and key terms. It defines ‘commercial nationalism’ as the process through which national identity was commodified by the ballroom dance profession and dance hall industry, producing an explicitly ‘national’ dancing style, which was in turn accepted, rejected, or transformed by the dancing public. This dialectical relationship between the producers and consumers of dance also accounts for why the book employs the term ‘popular dance’, rather than ‘social dance’. The ‘popular’ references theoretical frameworks from cultural studies and the history of popular culture, to encapsulate the mechanisms of the culture industry that surrounded dancing.

At the palais: the dance hall industry and the standardisation of experience

This chapter examines the evolution of the dance hall industry – one of the major cultural producers that shaped the commercialisation and experience of popular dance in Britain during the interwar and wartime periods. The new purpose-built dancing spaces that began to emerge after the war were affordable to Britons of almost every class, and many adopted a standard layout and format, providing an increasing uniformity of experience throughout the nation. A standard dancing experience was in fact a major objective of figures like Carl L. Heimann, managing director of Mecca, Britain’s largest chain of dance halls. However, despite this commercial might and cultural authority, the chapter shows that patrons entered into ongoing negotiations with the dance hall industry. A great disparity remained in terms of the access to and quality of public dancing spaces for Britons of different regions and classes, but most significantly, the dancing public made important choices as to where, how, and why they consumed dancing. This served to individualise their experience and kept going to the palais from becoming a wholly homogenised experience.

English style: foreign culture, race and the Anglicisation of popular dance

This chapter examines the creation and commodification of national identity within popular dance. The discussion focuses on the efforts of the dance profession to standardise the steps of the English style, and demonstrates that there was far more invested in that process than simply establishing a formal set of steps and figures. Within the context of broader fears about Americanisation, dance professionals sought to transform foreign dances like the foxtrot and tango in a way that made them more suitable to the national character or temperament. This vision of the nation was explicitly articulated in opposition to racialised American and stereotypically Latin others, and emphasised English virtues like reserve and refinement. With its specific syllabus of standard steps and figures, the English style also became a marketable commodity which was sold at home as well as abroad. Yet the chapter shows that the profession’s efforts to craft a national dancing style were greeted with a mixed response from the British dancing public. Instead, they retained a strong interest in foreign dances like the rumba and truckin’, especially as they began to view the English style technique as stagnant and excessively regimented by the 1930s.