The ballroom is Cupid’s camping ground, not only because it facilitates
the acquisition of that grace by which he is so easily enamoured, but
because it affords such excellent opportunities for Courtship and Sexual
Selection. And this applies not only to the era of modern Romantic Love,
but, from its most primitive manifestations in the animal world,
dancing, like song, has been connected with love and courtship.
Darwin devotes several pages to a description of the love-antics and
dances of birds. Some of them, as the black African weaver, perform
their love-antics on the wing, “gliding through the air with quivering
wings, which make a rapid whirring sound like a child’s rattle;” others
remain on the ground, like the English white-throat, which “flutters
with a fitful and fantastic motion;” or the English bustard, who “throws
himself into indescribably odd attitudes whilst courting the female;”
and a third class, the famous Bower-birds, perform their love-antics in
bowers specially constructed and adorned with leaves, shells, and
feathers. These are the earliest _ballrooms_ known in natural history;
and it is quite proper to call them so, for, as Darwin remarks, they
“are built on the ground for the sole purpose of courtship, for their
nests are formed in trees.”
Passing on to primitive man, we again find him inferior to animals in
not knowing that the sole proper function of dancing is in the service
of Love, courtship, and grace. Savages have three classes of dance, two
being performed by the men alone, the third by men and women. First come
the war-dances, in which the grotesquely-painted warriors brandish their
spears and utter unearthly howls, to excite themselves for an
approaching contest. Second, the Hunter’s Dances, in which the game is
impersonated by some of the men and chased about, which leads to many
comic scenes; though there is a serious undercurrent of superstition,
for they believe that such dances—a sort of saltatorial prayer—bring on
good luck in the subsequent real chase. Third, the dance of Love,
practised _e.g._ by the Brazilian Indians, with whom “men and women
dance a rude courting dance, advancing in lines with a kind of primitive
polka step” (Tylor.) That there is as little refinement and idealism in
the savage’s dances as in his love-affairs in general is self-evident.
The civilised nations of antiquity, as we have seen, had no prolonged
Courtship, and therefore no Romantic Love. Since young men and women
were not allowed to meet freely, dancing was of course not esteemed as a
high social accomplishment. It was therefore commonly relegated to a
special class of women (or slaves), such as the Bayaderes of India and
the Greek flute girls. Notwithstanding that even the Greek gods are
sometimes represented as dancing, yet this art came to be considered a
sign of effeminacy in men who indulged in it; and as for the Romans,
their view is indicated in Cicero’s anathema: “No man who is sober
dances, unless he is out of his mind, either when alone or in decent
society, for dancing is the companion of wanton conviviality,
dissoluteness, and luxury.”
In ancient Egypt, too, the upper classes were not allowed to learn
dancing. And herein, as in so many things in which women are concerned,
the modern Oriental is the direct descendant of the ancients. “In the
eyes of the Chinese,” says M. Letourneau, “dancing is a ridiculous
amusement by which a man compromises his dignity.”
Plato appears to have been the first who recognised the importance of
dancing as affording opportunities for Courtship and pre-matrimonial
acquaintance. But his advice remained unheeded by his countrymen. A view
regarding dancing similar to Plato’s was announced by an uncommonly
liberal theologian of the sixteenth century in the words, as quoted by
Scherr, that “Dancing had been originally arranged and permitted with
the respectable purpose of teaching manners to the young in the presence
of many people, and enabling young men and maidens to form honest
attachments. For in the dance it was easy to observe and note the habits
and peculiarities of the young.”
Thus we see that, with the exception of the savage’s war-dances and
hunting pantomimes, the art of dancing has at all times and everywhere
been born of love; even the ancient religious dances having commonly
been but a veil concealing other purposes, as among the Greeks. But all
ceremonial dancing, like ceremonial kissing, has been from the beginning
doomed to be absorbed and annihilated by the all-engrossing modern
passion of Romantic Love.
True, as a miser mistakes the means for the end and loves gold for its
own sake, so we sometimes see girls dance alone—possibly with a vaguely
coy intention of giving the men to understand that they can get along
without them. But their heart is not in it, and they never do it when
there are men enough to go round. As for the men, they are too open and
frank ever to veil their sentiments. They never dance except with a
woman.
To-day our fashion and society papers are eternally complaining of the
fact that the young men—especially the _desirable_ young men—seem to
have lost all interest in dancing. But who is to blame for this?
Certainly not the men. It is _Fashion_ again, and the mothers who
sacrifice the matrimonial prospects of their daughters—as well as their
Health, Beauty, and Individuality—to this hideous fetish. It is the late
hours of the dance, prescribed by Fashion, that are responsible for the
apparent loss of masculine interest in this art. Formerly, when
aristocracy meant laziness and stupidity, the habit of turning night
into day was harmless or even useful, because it helped to rid the world
prematurely of a lot of fools. But to-day the leading men of the
community are also the busiest. Aristocracy implies activity,
intellectual and otherwise. Hence there are few men in the higher ranks
who have not their regular work to do during the day. To ask them after
a day’s hard labour to go to a dance beginning at midnight and ending at
four or five is to ask them to commit suicide. Sensible men do not
believe in slow suicide, hence they avoid dancing-parties as if such
parties were held in small-pox hospitals.
Let society women throw their stupid conservatism to the winds. Let them
arrange balls to begin at eight or nine and end at midnight or one, and
“desirable” men will be only too eager to flock to assemblies which they
now shun. The result will be a sudden and startling diminution in the
number of old maids and bachelors.
It is the _moral duty_ of mothers who have marriageable daughters to
encourage this reform. Maternal love does not merely imply solicitude
for the first twenty years of a daughter’s life, but careful provision
for the remainder of her life, covering twice that period, by enabling
her to meet and choose a husband after her own heart