Fred and Ginger are dancing Waiting for the Robert E. Lee. Above, they are in Semi-closed Position, lunged to the side.

(click on any thumbnail for a larger view)

A sort of Butterfly

These first three photos are taken from Modern Dancing by Vernon and Irene Castle, originally published in 1914 by The World Syndicate Co., N.Y.

Neither had had much dance training. Vernon was a slapstick comic who had used some eccentric dance steps that showed off his thin and gangling physique. Irene was a hopeful actress. But they married and formed a dance partnership in 1911, at a time when ragtime dances, such as the Turkey Trot, Bunny Hug, Monkey Glide, and worse were joyfully embraced by half the population and condemned as unsightly and immoral by the other half.

The Castles first danced together professionally in Paris in 1912. They exhibited a new American dance, the Grizzly Bear. They danced in supper clubs and in the homes of aristocats and nobility. They popularized the one step, hesitation waltz, Castle Walk (pictured at right), tango, and the foxtrot. Most conspicuously, they eliminated the ragtime wiggles, shakes, arm pumping, and acrobatic dips, and achieved a smooth and stylish elegance that effectively sold these new steps and rhythms, wherever they went. Their professional life extended for only a few years, through the First World War. Vernon died in an airplane accident in 1918. But they were extremely influential in the dramatic growth of ballroom dancing in the United States at that time.

"No one else has ever given exactly that sense of being freely perfect, of moving without effort and without will, in more that accord, in absolute identity with music…. There were no steps, no tricks, no stunts. There was only dancing and it was all that one ever dreamed of flight." —Gilbert Seldes, theater critic