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Suggestions for Correct Dancing

by Sandi & Dan Finch


Do not wiggle the shoulders. Do not shake the hips. Do not twist the body. Do not flounce the elbows. Do not pump the arms. Do not hop—glide instead.

Have you heard anything like that recently? Perhaps the advice is as good today as it was at the turn of the century (that means the beginning of the last century). Those were the first entries on the Castle House Suggestions for Correct Dancing, a list of common dance mistakes that Vernon & Irene Castle hoped to correct in the early 1900s.

Ballroom Dance Magazine in its September 1960 issue, dates the modern ballroom era from the era of the Castles. “Previously,” the article read, “dancing had been the stilted pastime of the rich, or a roughneck pursuit of the saloon-goers. Just before World War I, the artistry and charm of the Castles set a whole world to dancing.”

Vernon & Irene CastleTheir rise to become household names is portrayed in The Story of Vernon & Irene Castle, a 1939 movie starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. It more or less accurately shows how, as newcomers, the Castles were to perform in Paris for one show—which closed almost immediately—but were hired to dance an exhibition in a Paris night club, where they set Europe on fire with their rendition of popular American ragtime dances, such as the Turkey Trot and the Grizzly Bear. When they returned to New York in 1912, they were in demand for shows, Broadway productions, and movies, and opened their own dance studio, called Castle House. On Broadway, their 1914 show Watch Your Step included Irving Berlin’s first score and was used by the Castles to refine and popularize the foxtrot, a new dance that evolved from Harry Fox’s vaudeville routine. The photo shows them dancing a no-hands tango from their 1914 bestseller Modern Dancing.

The Castle House rules included some rather out-of-date instruction: “Stand far enough away from each other to allow free movement of the body in order to dance gracefully and comfortably.”

And one of the most ironic instructions: “Drop the Turkey Trot, the Grizzly Bear, the Bunny Hug, etc. These dances are ugly, ungraceful, and out of fashion.“ But those are what made the Castles the sensation they became.

(Vernon, who had been a pilot for the British Royal Flying Corps in World War I, died in a plane crash on a flight training base in Texas in 1918. Irene appeared solo in a few silent films after that but mostly retired from dancing and became an animal rights activist. She died in 1969.)



From a club newsletter, August, 2014, and reprinted in the Dixie Round Dance Council (DRDC) Newsletter, May 2017.


dingbat




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