It is a little while since I’ve added to my short satirical series on boring early dance, so here is another episode. Fear not, we have nearly reached the end and I will, of course, be posting far more serious pieces along the way!

It goes without saying that only historical forms of dance are truly polite and authentic. Traditional and folk dancing share in their authenticity (if not necessarily their politeness), so early dance aficionados may be permitted to indulge in these genres. They may well have originally trained in them. All modern forms of dancing are, by definition, vulgar and must be avoided at all costs. If they are encountered by chance, they must be firmly put in their place – out of sight and out of mind.

What makes modern dancing so vulgar? I was going to craft an essay but a list will do just as well. It may be even better, for it limits verbal contact with these reprehensible styles of movement.

1. Modern dancing is not historical or early. If it dates to later than 1900 A.D.  it cannot be historical. There is some debate about the date when early stops and modernity starts, but that doesn’t matter. Anything modern is vulgar.
2. Modern dance clothes are too tight, too short or too revealing and too often all at once. They do not constrain and mould the body as the costumes of yore, nor do they obscure the beauty of the historical walking synonymous with early dance. The unwarranted display of tights, leotards, short skirts and tight trousers is vulgar – and quite unlike the padded doublets, wrinkled hose and low-necked dresses of the hallowed past.
3. Modern dancers move their bodies in unseemly ways. In particular, in many modern styles, movements of the hips and shoulders are demanded. Arms move freely or are held in ways that contradict the ramrod straight arms (extended in a low ‘V’ shape) of baroque dance or the languidly suspended convex curves of the arms in 15^th-century dance.
4. Modern ballroom dancing affects politeness by concealing the decidedly rude close body contact between the partners behind elaborate frocks. For true politeness and authenticity only the fingertips should touch. The rot began with the waltz, so maybe the date for the beginning of modern dancing should be pushed back to 1800.
5. Ballet requires extremely revealing clothing for practice, never mind performance, and it contorts the body in entirely unseemly ways. It requires steps that are, in fact, impossible for anyone to do (a feature that it shares with modern ballroom and Latin dancing). One simply cannot credit that it has anything to do with the utterly static beauty of 18^th-century dancing which has no discernible steps.

There are other forms of modern social dancing that I will forbear to mention in case I am tainted by association. The sensation seekers who occasionally surface in even the best regulated historical dance circles (and I am acquainted with at least one of those) will know most if not all of them!