20th CENTURY DANCE

Close to the end of the 19th century, ballroom dancing in England was inclined to stagnate, possibly because of the absence of any new developments, though the Waltz maintained its supremacy, followed closely by the Lancers.
       In the meantime, across the Atlantic, European settlers in the New World had not only brought  along and introduced the Waltz and other dances, but also developed their own, The Two Step and the Barn Dance. 
       The young dancers, constricted by the slow Rotary Waltz from Europe, developed and danced a variant -- the Boston Waltz -- to much faster-tempo music. 
       At the same period, the Tango started to make its appearance, sometime in 1907,  when Frenchman Monsieur Camille de Rhynal, who later became a well-known dancer, composer, writer and organizer of dancing competitions, bought the Tango to the stage. 

The TANGO
       Originally danced by the lower class in the neighborhoods of Buenos Aires as the baile con corté, the dance was renamed and shorn of its objectionable features. The Tango popularity lasted until 1914, when the Foxtrot started to creep in. 
       When World War I broke out, the Tango and the Boston Waltz were completely forgotten. More popular then were the One-Step and the Rag. But the Foxtrot was the rage of the ballroom. 

The FOXTROT
       At one of the vaudeville stage shows very popular at the time, Harry  Fox danced a  sequence of a dance which until then was developed and danced only by a community of  black people in New York. 
       A direct offspring of the One-Step and the Rag, the Foxtrot was a go-as-you- please dance with no definite routine of steps. 
       So simple was the Foxtrot rhythm and step pattern that most of the younger men (on leave from the war) who did not have the time to learn the intricacies of the other dances took to it immediately. The fascinating lilt of the Foxtrot tunes and the informal nature of the steps appealed to them so much that in a few months the Foxtrot swept all other dances, except the Rag, off the ballroom floor. 
       With the end of the war came faster tempo music, and soon the Quick-time Foxtrot became a hit with dancers. 
      By 1922, the Tango and the Waltz had been making periodic comebacks. The One-Step and the Foxtrot were at their zenith. And because of their popularity, only those four dances were included in the World Championship that year. 

THE CHARLESTON
       In 1925, the Charleston was the craze, following its introduction by the famous Midnight Follies. In England, the dance was also so popular that an enormous “Charleston Ball” was organized where people danced varying styles. Since the dance was so ‘wild’ and many dancers received physical injuries, the slogan ‘P.C.Q.’ (Please Charleston Quietly) was popularized. 
       People soon tired of the wild version of the Charleston by 1928 when leading professional dancers evolved a rather smooth  rhythmical dance with open chasses and a subtle knee action applying the rhythm. 
       The new dance, a combination of  the Quick-time Foxtrot and the Charleston  was christened the Quickstep. 
       Nineteen twenty eight was a year of freak dances, none of which made any serious headway -- the Black Bottom, the  Yale Blues, the Heebie Jeebies. 
       Many new variations of purely transient interest were also introduced into  both the Foxtrot and the Quickstep. 

1930 TO THE PRESENT
       For at least a decade, the Waltz, the Foxtrot, the Quickstep and the  Tango were generally recognized as the four standard dances. 
       Yet it was also a time of controversy, which saw the division of the dancing world into two factions -- the casual, social occasion dancers, and the ‘competition’ dancers who frequented the larger dance halls. That decade in England saw the systematization of competition dancing under official organizations which finally resulted in the formation of the organization now known as The British Council of Ballroom Dancing. The organization initiated the codification of the steps, dance techniques and rules for the ballroom dance competitions. 
       The 1930s brought a series of Party or ‘Romping’ dances, starting in 1937 when the musical Me and My Girl featured the Lambeth Walk. This was followed by other fun dances which called for prescribed actions rather than progress around the dance floor. 
       The delightfully light-hearted dance, the Samba, also arrived from South America. Its popularity was boosted by some immensely attractive music and its lively rhythm. 
       Swing music, not the dance, was by then at its height had already given birth to such dances as the Jitterbug. But the dance was not quite immediately accepted in Europe as it was in its  country of origin. The Jitterbug had wild and uncontrolled movements and compulsive Boogie-Woogie music, and was thought to be too abandoned and dangerous for public dancing, so that most ballrooms in Europe  discarded it altogether. 
       Professional dancers, seeing that it could not be kept down, set about taming it, and soon was modified and named Jive. 
       The era of Pop music really began with Rock ‘n’ Roll and the early Rock groups which were featured with films and on records in the 1940s and 1950s. During this period, the Latin dances with African rhythmic origin -- the Rumba, and later the Mambo -- were introduced, but due to a lack of good music pieces and the comparative difficulty of social dancers to dance to the slow tempo (at the height of a high energy era), these dances did  not gain much ground. 
       The 1960s opened with Chubby Checker’s “Let’s Twist Again” and The Twist. The dance brought with it a new idea: that dancers need not have partners, and girls did not have to wait to be asked to dance. Everyone could join in. 
       It was also at this time that the Cha  Cha Cha (derived from the Mambo), with its sophisticated, easily counted rhythm was popularized. 
       The Hustle  in all its forms (New York, Latin, Tango, Street, Get Up Get Down, California) was danced by practically all American dancers who cared to be noticed. 
       From The Twist was born other no-partner dances as Beat and Disco dancing, with no formal step patterns and the ultimate free-for-all of the 20th century. Other dances popularized then were the Salsa Valiente and New Porter Salsa,  the revived Two-Step, and many others fleeting fame. 
       In the US, dancing continued to prosper, and whatever was popularized there, was also almost immediately gobbled up by the dancers in the Philippines.