Browse content similar to Len Goodman's Dancing Feet: The British Ballroom Story. Check below for episodes and series from the same categories and more!
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This is the story of how millions of Britons | 0:00:06 | 0:00:09 | |
lost themselves in the world of ballroom | 0:00:09 | 0:00:11 | |
and found their dancing feet. | 0:00:11 | 0:00:13 | |
It's 1932, at the Cafe De Paris, London, and the joint is jumping! | 0:00:14 | 0:00:20 | |
# Happy Feet I've got those Happy Feet! | 0:00:20 | 0:00:23 | |
# Give them a low-down beat | 0:00:23 | 0:00:25 | |
# And they begin dancing... # | 0:00:25 | 0:00:30 | |
It's the golden era of dancing, | 0:00:30 | 0:00:32 | |
the time between the two World Wars, when Britain went ballroom barmy. | 0:00:32 | 0:00:36 | |
Millions went dancing, where graceful movement was everything. | 0:00:41 | 0:00:45 | |
But it was also edgy and radical, | 0:00:45 | 0:00:48 | |
a world of real sexual tension, | 0:00:48 | 0:00:52 | |
as we grappled with the Waltz, the Tango, | 0:00:52 | 0:00:55 | |
and each other. | 0:00:55 | 0:00:56 | |
Ballroom dancing was the country's favourite pastime, | 0:01:01 | 0:01:05 | |
when we learnt the steps and polished the moves. | 0:01:05 | 0:01:09 | |
What was it about ballroom that we all enjoyed so much? | 0:01:12 | 0:01:15 | |
And why did we turn our backs on what I consider to be | 0:01:15 | 0:01:18 | |
the greatest dance form of them all? | 0:01:18 | 0:01:20 | |
'This is the Tower Ballroom, in Blackpool, | 0:01:39 | 0:01:41 | |
'a sacred place for any dancer. | 0:01:41 | 0:01:43 | |
'It's the grandest and most beautiful ballroom in Britain. | 0:01:43 | 0:01:47 | |
'I've judged Strictly Come Dancing here | 0:01:47 | 0:01:49 | |
'and I've also glided across its hallowed floor many, many times.' | 0:01:49 | 0:01:53 | |
You know, as soon as you walk into this place, | 0:01:53 | 0:01:56 | |
there's somehow a fantastic atmosphere about it. | 0:01:56 | 0:01:59 | |
And, standing here on this floor, | 0:01:59 | 0:02:02 | |
you know, you can't help but think as a dancer, | 0:02:02 | 0:02:04 | |
how many people have danced here? | 0:02:04 | 0:02:07 | |
How many great dances, how many love affairs have begun, | 0:02:07 | 0:02:10 | |
when boy meets girl, on this dance floor? | 0:02:10 | 0:02:13 | |
It is just the most iconic dance hall of all. | 0:02:13 | 0:02:18 | |
It is just fantastic. | 0:02:18 | 0:02:20 | |
When I started in ballroom, | 0:02:26 | 0:02:27 | |
a night of Foxtrot or Tango was still the biggest thrill | 0:02:27 | 0:02:30 | |
you could get for five bob. | 0:02:30 | 0:02:32 | |
It was an amazing time - dancing was even on the telly. | 0:02:32 | 0:02:36 | |
But the old hands said I'd missed its greatest era, | 0:02:36 | 0:02:39 | |
when ballroom was truly magical. | 0:02:39 | 0:02:42 | |
At the Tower Ballroom these days, | 0:02:47 | 0:02:49 | |
it's a much more sedate affair. | 0:02:49 | 0:02:52 | |
'For me, ballroom was an escape route, | 0:02:53 | 0:02:57 | |
'from manual labour to a world of glamour. | 0:02:57 | 0:03:00 | |
'But I do have a confession.' | 0:03:00 | 0:03:02 | |
Now, I've always loved ballroom, | 0:03:02 | 0:03:04 | |
but when I first started, it wasn't just for the dancing. | 0:03:04 | 0:03:08 | |
'Dance teachers used to tell me | 0:03:10 | 0:03:12 | |
'that ballroom would be great for my posture and my self confidence. | 0:03:12 | 0:03:15 | |
'Well, I don't know about that,' | 0:03:15 | 0:03:17 | |
but I tell you, my strike rate with the girls went right up. | 0:03:17 | 0:03:21 | |
'And I wasn't alone - the dance hall was a chance to hold someone close, | 0:03:22 | 0:03:26 | |
'in a perfectly innocent setting.' | 0:03:26 | 0:03:29 | |
I love all this. | 0:03:29 | 0:03:30 | |
But, you know, my favourite was the "Excuse Me". | 0:03:30 | 0:03:33 | |
When you could go up to some chap, tap him on the shoulder | 0:03:33 | 0:03:37 | |
and dance with his partner. | 0:03:37 | 0:03:38 | |
Now, if your luck was in, | 0:03:38 | 0:03:40 | |
when the music finished, you got a kiss on the cheek. | 0:03:40 | 0:03:43 | |
Oh, when I was a young man... | 0:03:43 | 0:03:45 | |
Oh, joy of joys! | 0:03:45 | 0:03:47 | |
What I would imagine is, when you were growing up as a teenager, | 0:03:48 | 0:03:51 | |
there wasn't that many opportunities to meet boys as there is now. | 0:03:51 | 0:03:55 | |
So, I suppose the ballroom was the place to do it. | 0:03:55 | 0:03:58 | |
-It was, it was. And lots of "Excuse Me's". -Yeah. | 0:03:58 | 0:04:01 | |
-And we used to have fun doing that. -Yeah. | 0:04:01 | 0:04:03 | |
SHE LAUGHS | 0:04:03 | 0:04:04 | |
You know, if we got our eye on somebody... Right! "Excuse me!" | 0:04:04 | 0:04:08 | |
Because we used to turn it round to a Ladies' Excuse Me | 0:04:08 | 0:04:11 | |
-as well as a Man's Excuse Me. -Of course, yes. -So it was brill. | 0:04:11 | 0:04:14 | |
So if there was some young chap you fancied having a dance with, | 0:04:14 | 0:04:17 | |
-you'd be out there. -Absolutely! Go for it, girl! | 0:04:17 | 0:04:19 | |
THEY LAUGH | 0:04:19 | 0:04:20 | |
It was brill! | 0:04:20 | 0:04:21 | |
The music was very romantic. | 0:04:22 | 0:04:25 | |
The lighting, the atmosphere, all lent itself to romance. | 0:04:25 | 0:04:30 | |
It's hard to appreciate | 0:04:30 | 0:04:32 | |
the emotional appeal | 0:04:32 | 0:04:34 | |
of a dance orchestra | 0:04:34 | 0:04:37 | |
playing romantic tunes | 0:04:37 | 0:04:39 | |
whilst you're holding somebody | 0:04:39 | 0:04:42 | |
in your arms and dancing together. | 0:04:42 | 0:04:44 | |
It was a great meeting place, | 0:04:46 | 0:04:48 | |
because, I think, the happiness, | 0:04:48 | 0:04:52 | |
the music and the open space, | 0:04:52 | 0:04:55 | |
the bright lights and the open space | 0:04:55 | 0:04:58 | |
were conducive to people meeting under happy circumstances | 0:04:58 | 0:05:03 | |
and I call it escapism and I think that's what it was. | 0:05:03 | 0:05:07 | |
'One of my oldest dancing pals is Lyndon Wainwright | 0:05:08 | 0:05:11 | |
'and when ballroom was booming, he was in the thick of it.' | 0:05:11 | 0:05:16 | |
There you are, it's Saturday night. | 0:05:16 | 0:05:18 | |
-You've got your best gear on. -Yes. -Right? Out you go, it's lovely. | 0:05:18 | 0:05:22 | |
What was the feeling like as you walked into those ballrooms? | 0:05:22 | 0:05:26 | |
-Oh, they were opulent... -Yeah. | 0:05:26 | 0:05:29 | |
..by comparison with your home surroundings. | 0:05:29 | 0:05:31 | |
There was the gilt paint and the subdued lighting, and... | 0:05:31 | 0:05:37 | |
-tables like this with fancy cloths on. -Right, yeah. | 0:05:37 | 0:05:41 | |
No expense was spared in making this place look and feel fantastic. | 0:05:41 | 0:05:47 | |
That's right. And they were all the same. | 0:05:47 | 0:05:50 | |
Looks all innocent now, | 0:05:56 | 0:05:58 | |
but, once upon a time, dancing was a hotbed of hormones and romance. | 0:05:58 | 0:06:03 | |
And don't forget - most of our parents met in a ballroom. | 0:06:03 | 0:06:07 | |
SCREAMING | 0:06:14 | 0:06:16 | |
# Hello, everybody There's music in the air | 0:06:18 | 0:06:22 | |
# Hello, everybody You'll find it everywhere | 0:06:22 | 0:06:26 | |
# So just dance away your troubles | 0:06:26 | 0:06:28 | |
# And your cares Will fade like bubbles | 0:06:28 | 0:06:30 | |
# Hello! Hello, everybody! # | 0:06:30 | 0:06:33 | |
We might get our thrills in other ways now, | 0:06:36 | 0:06:39 | |
but there was a time when ballroom was imbued | 0:06:39 | 0:06:41 | |
with more than a whiff of revolution, | 0:06:41 | 0:06:44 | |
helping to collapse social boundaries | 0:06:44 | 0:06:46 | |
and giving people like me a chance to dance. | 0:06:46 | 0:06:50 | |
There's much more to the story of British ballroom | 0:06:50 | 0:06:53 | |
than gentle tea dances, or even Strictly. | 0:06:53 | 0:06:56 | |
It's about cracks in the class system, sexual intrigue | 0:06:56 | 0:07:00 | |
and about a time when Britain found its feet on the dance floor. | 0:07:00 | 0:07:04 | |
Modern ballroom's story begins at end of the 19th century. | 0:07:12 | 0:07:16 | |
In those days, it was the privileged few, | 0:07:16 | 0:07:18 | |
the aristocrats, the rich and royalty, | 0:07:18 | 0:07:21 | |
who were tripping the light fantastic in grand locations. | 0:07:21 | 0:07:24 | |
Frankly, the working classes didn't get much of a look-in. | 0:07:24 | 0:07:28 | |
You've got private dances, county balls, society balls | 0:07:29 | 0:07:34 | |
by property-owning aristocrats in the country, | 0:07:34 | 0:07:37 | |
but also in London, the Portman Rooms, the Savoy and Ritz Hotels. | 0:07:37 | 0:07:42 | |
They were the centres for the season, | 0:07:42 | 0:07:45 | |
the fashionable upper classes and their balls. | 0:07:45 | 0:07:49 | |
There were a wide range of venues | 0:07:49 | 0:07:52 | |
that the upper classes could dance in before the First World War. | 0:07:52 | 0:07:56 | |
'It may have been the preserve of the well-to-do, | 0:07:56 | 0:07:59 | |
'but ballroom was in the grip of its first craze.' | 0:07:59 | 0:08:03 | |
And one dance ruled. | 0:08:03 | 0:08:05 | |
It was the simplest one of the lot - | 0:08:05 | 0:08:07 | |
and it remains the most popular dance of all - | 0:08:07 | 0:08:10 | |
the Waltz. | 0:08:10 | 0:08:12 | |
The Waltz is the bedrock of so many of the dances that we do today, | 0:08:24 | 0:08:28 | |
but when the first European version of the Waltz | 0:08:28 | 0:08:31 | |
arrived in Regency Britain, there was a moral backlash. | 0:08:31 | 0:08:35 | |
A cutting from The Times shows | 0:08:36 | 0:08:38 | |
just how much the Waltz got pulses racing. | 0:08:38 | 0:08:42 | |
It's hard to believe, but one of their correspondents called it | 0:08:42 | 0:08:45 | |
"an obscene display". | 0:08:45 | 0:08:47 | |
And with that kind of press, the Viennese Waltz could only catch on! | 0:08:52 | 0:08:56 | |
But why was everyone getting so flustered? | 0:08:56 | 0:08:58 | |
And how did we end up with the slow Waltz | 0:08:58 | 0:09:01 | |
that we're so familiar with now? | 0:09:01 | 0:09:02 | |
'Well, that's something professional dancer Erin Boag | 0:09:02 | 0:09:05 | |
'is going to help me demonstrate, | 0:09:05 | 0:09:08 | |
'along with musicologist Derek Scott.' | 0:09:08 | 0:09:10 | |
You know, the thing I found when I danced the Viennese Waltz, | 0:09:22 | 0:09:25 | |
it's the most exhausting of all of them. | 0:09:25 | 0:09:27 | |
-Very exhausting. -Isn't it? -Yeah, very fast, that's why. | 0:09:27 | 0:09:30 | |
People think the Quickstep is the one that we all got tired with, | 0:09:30 | 0:09:32 | |
not for me, it was always the Viennese Waltz, | 0:09:32 | 0:09:35 | |
-because it was so, so repetitive. -Round and round and round. -Yeah. | 0:09:35 | 0:09:39 | |
So, how long would people have danced that for in one go, | 0:09:39 | 0:09:43 | |
back in the day? | 0:09:43 | 0:09:44 | |
At first, these waltzes lasted around six minutes | 0:09:45 | 0:09:49 | |
and then, they grew to be about nine minutes long. | 0:09:49 | 0:09:52 | |
And then, there were warnings if they were ten minutes long, | 0:09:52 | 0:09:55 | |
people would collapse with dizziness and exhaustion. | 0:09:55 | 0:09:58 | |
So, really, the longest ones are nine minutes. | 0:09:58 | 0:10:02 | |
But you got a complete rest once you'd done that. | 0:10:02 | 0:10:05 | |
I think you'd need one after nine minutes. | 0:10:05 | 0:10:07 | |
And, I guess, the Viennese Waltz, originally, | 0:10:07 | 0:10:10 | |
was in Austria and southern Germany. | 0:10:10 | 0:10:13 | |
And was it more for the sort of aristocrats and the country houses, | 0:10:13 | 0:10:16 | |
or was it a dance that everyone did? | 0:10:16 | 0:10:18 | |
That fast one really developed | 0:10:18 | 0:10:20 | |
because of the aristocratic ballrooms, | 0:10:20 | 0:10:22 | |
and then the big, expensive ballrooms | 0:10:22 | 0:10:26 | |
for the wealthy merchants of Vienna. | 0:10:26 | 0:10:28 | |
It developed out of folk dances, the Dreyer, the Laendler. | 0:10:28 | 0:10:33 | |
These were much slower - an example of Laendler rhythm would be this. | 0:10:33 | 0:10:37 | |
Yeah. | 0:10:41 | 0:10:43 | |
-And it went one-two-hop! One-two... -Yeah. | 0:10:43 | 0:10:46 | |
-This was danced outside on the grass, people wore boots. -Right. | 0:10:46 | 0:10:50 | |
The ballrooms called for something more refined, you see. | 0:10:50 | 0:10:54 | |
For the aristocracy, parquet flooring was introduced | 0:10:54 | 0:10:58 | |
so that you could do these gliding steps, | 0:10:58 | 0:11:00 | |
which you couldn't do on grass. | 0:11:00 | 0:11:02 | |
-And when you listen to it, it does glide along, doesn't it? -Yes. | 0:11:02 | 0:11:05 | |
I think that's one of the keys to the Viennese Waltz | 0:11:05 | 0:11:08 | |
is you get that lovely gliding movement. | 0:11:08 | 0:11:10 | |
OK, let me just show you something, Derek, it might surprise you. | 0:11:10 | 0:11:13 | |
There are five points of contact in the hold. | 0:11:13 | 0:11:16 | |
This is one - gentleman's left hand in lady's right. | 0:11:16 | 0:11:20 | |
Now, I'm going to use a handkerchief to go onto the lady's back, | 0:11:20 | 0:11:24 | |
because that's what they used to do back in the day. | 0:11:24 | 0:11:27 | |
Cos the guys all had dirty hands, working-class people. | 0:11:27 | 0:11:29 | |
Oh, no, we can't do that. | 0:11:29 | 0:11:30 | |
So there's contact two. | 0:11:30 | 0:11:33 | |
Now, the lady's upper arm goes on the gentleman's lower, that's three. | 0:11:33 | 0:11:36 | |
Here's four. And all of this was quite fine, | 0:11:36 | 0:11:39 | |
but because of the circling motion of the Viennese Waltz, | 0:11:39 | 0:11:43 | |
if you were too far apart, you couldn't rotate enough. | 0:11:43 | 0:11:46 | |
So, you had to get up close and personal. | 0:11:46 | 0:11:51 | |
And THAT was when the shock horror came in. | 0:11:51 | 0:11:53 | |
Hmmm. | 0:11:53 | 0:11:55 | |
So here we go, we're going to have a little go, a little bit of Viennese Waltz. | 0:11:55 | 0:11:58 | |
We'll do lovely natural turns and see what happens. | 0:11:58 | 0:12:01 | |
-Beautiful. -What a team. | 0:12:19 | 0:12:20 | |
You, me | 0:12:20 | 0:12:23 | |
and the music. | 0:12:23 | 0:12:25 | |
'Ladies and Gentlemen,' | 0:12:25 | 0:12:26 | |
now, I will show you the dance of the season - | 0:12:26 | 0:12:29 | |
the Waltz, step by step. | 0:12:29 | 0:12:33 | |
Just watch my feet. | 0:12:33 | 0:12:34 | |
The Waltz was simplicity itself, | 0:12:36 | 0:12:38 | |
but the Viennese version was still too fast | 0:12:38 | 0:12:41 | |
and a slower Waltz was developed for British tastes | 0:12:41 | 0:12:44 | |
that allowed everyone to have a go. | 0:12:44 | 0:12:47 | |
People, particularly in working-class dance halls, | 0:12:48 | 0:12:51 | |
were drinking as well as doing the fast Waltz | 0:12:51 | 0:12:53 | |
and this was adding to the problems of giddiness | 0:12:53 | 0:12:56 | |
and falling over on the ballroom floor. | 0:12:56 | 0:12:59 | |
So, there was a necessity to try and slow it down, | 0:12:59 | 0:13:03 | |
but the other thing that happens in the 1890s | 0:13:03 | 0:13:06 | |
is that you have the birth of this really big popular song industry - | 0:13:06 | 0:13:10 | |
Tin Pan Alley, in New York. | 0:13:10 | 0:13:12 | |
And, of course, they want to write Waltz songs. | 0:13:12 | 0:13:15 | |
Well, you can't get many words into a Viennese Waltz, it's so fast. | 0:13:15 | 0:13:19 | |
So they slow it down for songs like My Wild Irish Rose, | 0:13:19 | 0:13:23 | |
-After the Ball is Over, that sort of thing. -Right. | 0:13:23 | 0:13:26 | |
So, shall we give it a go at the English Waltz, or the slow Waltz. | 0:13:26 | 0:13:29 | |
OK. | 0:13:29 | 0:13:30 | |
'The slow Waltz lent itself to old-fashioned qualities, | 0:13:42 | 0:13:45 | |
'where a man lead, but offered deference to his partner. | 0:13:45 | 0:13:49 | |
'But with its close physical contact, | 0:13:49 | 0:13:51 | |
'there was still a little hint of danger.' | 0:13:51 | 0:13:55 | |
HE CHUCKLES | 0:14:05 | 0:14:06 | |
The slow Waltz was catching on. | 0:14:08 | 0:14:10 | |
Soon, everyone would have the opportunity to join in. | 0:14:10 | 0:14:15 | |
Shopkeepers, librarians, even welders like me could do it. | 0:14:15 | 0:14:20 | |
By the end of the Edwardian era, | 0:14:20 | 0:14:22 | |
the Waltz was slowly working its way | 0:14:22 | 0:14:24 | |
through the social strata of Britain. | 0:14:24 | 0:14:27 | |
'But heads were being turned by new dances from America. | 0:14:28 | 0:14:31 | |
'And leading the charge was a Norfolk man | 0:14:31 | 0:14:34 | |
'who'd originally trained to be an engineer.' | 0:14:34 | 0:14:37 | |
He was one half of the most vibrant dance duo on the planet. | 0:14:37 | 0:14:41 | |
Along with his American wife, Irene, | 0:14:41 | 0:14:44 | |
Vernon Castle turned the world of dance on its head. | 0:14:44 | 0:14:48 | |
Everyone wanted a piece of what the Castles could offer. | 0:14:49 | 0:14:52 | |
They were international trend-setters, | 0:14:52 | 0:14:55 | |
exotic and flamboyant. | 0:14:55 | 0:14:57 | |
Irene was a fashion icon - | 0:14:57 | 0:14:59 | |
with her trademarked bobbed hair and short skirts. | 0:14:59 | 0:15:02 | |
The couple worked with an orchestra of black musicians. | 0:15:02 | 0:15:06 | |
Vernon and Irene had met in the States in 1910 | 0:15:06 | 0:15:10 | |
and found success in Paris and London, | 0:15:10 | 0:15:12 | |
wowing audiences with the latest American dance crazes. | 0:15:12 | 0:15:17 | |
By 1914, they were a Broadway sensation in New York, | 0:15:17 | 0:15:21 | |
becoming ballroom's first superstars. | 0:15:21 | 0:15:24 | |
And here's what made the Castles so exciting. | 0:15:24 | 0:15:29 | |
They were completely blurring social and racial boundaries. | 0:15:29 | 0:15:34 | |
They took the best of Afro-American music, jazz, ragtime, | 0:15:34 | 0:15:39 | |
and turned it into new dances. | 0:15:39 | 0:15:41 | |
And one spread across the globe like a virus. | 0:15:41 | 0:15:46 | |
The Foxtrot was all elegance and sophistication | 0:15:50 | 0:15:53 | |
with long gliding movement across the dance floor. | 0:15:53 | 0:15:57 | |
Its inventor was an American dancer, Harry Fox, hence its name. | 0:15:57 | 0:16:02 | |
But the Castles claimed they'd seen the moves | 0:16:02 | 0:16:04 | |
being danced by black Americans long before it caught on elsewhere. | 0:16:04 | 0:16:08 | |
Syncopated dance music coming from America, | 0:16:08 | 0:16:11 | |
this is where America takes over from Europe. | 0:16:11 | 0:16:15 | |
Now, there had been these syncopated ragtime tunes around for a while. | 0:16:15 | 0:16:20 | |
A well-known one is The Entertainer, Scott Joplin. | 0:16:20 | 0:16:23 | |
You know, that de-de-de-dah, you just are ahead of the beat there. | 0:16:28 | 0:16:33 | |
But this had very little effect on Britain. | 0:16:33 | 0:16:36 | |
In fact, it was only when there was a big revue in London in late 1912, | 0:16:36 | 0:16:41 | |
Hullo, Ragtime!, that people responded to these dances | 0:16:41 | 0:16:45 | |
and just as with the Waltz, there was moral outrage. | 0:16:45 | 0:16:49 | |
People wanted to ban the song Itchycoo | 0:16:49 | 0:16:52 | |
because they didn't understand what this might mean, you know. | 0:16:52 | 0:16:55 | |
Yeah, I understand it. | 0:16:55 | 0:16:57 | |
Well, I've had an itchycoo on occasions, I must say. | 0:16:57 | 0:16:59 | |
But I do understand that. | 0:16:59 | 0:17:01 | |
But as much as I can appreciate that that Scott Joplin number | 0:17:01 | 0:17:05 | |
could be translated into a Foxtrot, | 0:17:05 | 0:17:07 | |
the dance is actually very smooth now, it's much more flowing. | 0:17:07 | 0:17:11 | |
They smoothed it out, Irene and Vernon Castle. | 0:17:11 | 0:17:15 | |
Interestingly, you know, of course, one is English and one is American. | 0:17:15 | 0:17:19 | |
They premier the Foxtrot in 1914, in New York, | 0:17:19 | 0:17:23 | |
and, by the time the War is over, this dance becomes THE dance, | 0:17:23 | 0:17:29 | |
as you say, that everyone wants to be able to do. | 0:17:29 | 0:17:32 | |
The slow Foxtrot is undoubtedly the backbone to all ballroom dancing | 0:17:35 | 0:17:41 | |
and it makes a very pleasant change to the Quickstep. | 0:17:41 | 0:17:45 | |
Quick, quick | 0:17:46 | 0:17:48 | |
and slow, slow, slow. | 0:17:48 | 0:17:52 | |
In the Foxtrot that we dance today, | 0:17:52 | 0:17:54 | |
-you do get moments when you get six quicks on the spin. -You do, yeah. | 0:17:54 | 0:17:58 | |
I'll give you an example of a step called The Weave | 0:17:58 | 0:18:02 | |
and we get six quicks. | 0:18:02 | 0:18:03 | |
One, two, three, four, five, six | 0:18:03 | 0:18:06 | |
and then we go back into the slows | 0:18:06 | 0:18:08 | |
and the gliding. | 0:18:08 | 0:18:10 | |
And I think that's what's part of the charm of the Foxtrot | 0:18:10 | 0:18:13 | |
is that you do get these moments where it's just gliding along | 0:18:13 | 0:18:17 | |
and then, you break into these faster moments. | 0:18:17 | 0:18:20 | |
It's lovely. | 0:18:20 | 0:18:21 | |
The tragedy is that Vernon Castle would never see | 0:18:23 | 0:18:26 | |
just how popular the Foxtrot would become. | 0:18:26 | 0:18:28 | |
During World War One he joined the Royal Flying Corps, | 0:18:28 | 0:18:31 | |
serving over the western front | 0:18:31 | 0:18:33 | |
and winning the Croix de Guerre for bravery. | 0:18:33 | 0:18:36 | |
But in 1918, whilst training American pilots, | 0:18:36 | 0:18:39 | |
his plane crash-landed in Texas. | 0:18:39 | 0:18:42 | |
Within days, Vernon Castle was dead. | 0:18:42 | 0:18:45 | |
He was just 30 years old. | 0:18:45 | 0:18:47 | |
After four years of war, | 0:18:54 | 0:18:56 | |
there was no way that Britain was going to stay the same. | 0:18:56 | 0:18:59 | |
There was a relaxation in the class system and more social mobility. | 0:19:00 | 0:19:05 | |
Empowered by their wartime work, | 0:19:07 | 0:19:09 | |
women were loath to return to menial domestic duties. | 0:19:09 | 0:19:12 | |
With more time on their hands and paid holidays, | 0:19:12 | 0:19:15 | |
the workers wanted to dance in grand places too. | 0:19:15 | 0:19:19 | |
There was a gap in the market | 0:19:19 | 0:19:21 | |
and, before long, every town had a Palais De Danse. | 0:19:21 | 0:19:25 | |
Entrepreneurs moved in, building many of the ballrooms | 0:19:26 | 0:19:29 | |
that would later dominate the high street. | 0:19:29 | 0:19:32 | |
And soon, there were plenty of locations | 0:19:32 | 0:19:34 | |
ready to give the pub a run for its money. | 0:19:34 | 0:19:39 | |
Ballroom was changing and, for the working classes, | 0:19:39 | 0:19:42 | |
it was an immersion into a glitzy new world. | 0:19:42 | 0:19:45 | |
The great attraction of the dance hall was the atmosphere, | 0:19:48 | 0:19:52 | |
which was, in many senses, incredibly glamorous. | 0:19:52 | 0:19:56 | |
# 'Twas in a cafe When the lights were low... # | 0:19:56 | 0:20:00 | |
And many of the dance halls did their best | 0:20:00 | 0:20:03 | |
to compete with one another | 0:20:03 | 0:20:05 | |
in terms of lavishness and provide all sorts of facilities. | 0:20:05 | 0:20:10 | |
# Oh, it was many, many years ago | 0:20:10 | 0:20:13 | |
# But still the memory sets My heart aglow... # | 0:20:13 | 0:20:16 | |
At the Palais De Danse, Nottingham, in the centre of the dance floor | 0:20:16 | 0:20:20 | |
was a fountain that could rise to 20 feet | 0:20:20 | 0:20:23 | |
and was illuminated by constantly changing coloured lights. | 0:20:23 | 0:20:27 | |
Some of the dance halls were also themed, | 0:20:27 | 0:20:30 | |
so at Tony's Ballroom, in Birmingham, for example, | 0:20:30 | 0:20:34 | |
there was a Middle Eastern theme. | 0:20:34 | 0:20:36 | |
The dance hall was made out to be a Mosque with prayer mats hanging | 0:20:36 | 0:20:40 | |
and the lounges were given equally exotic names. | 0:20:40 | 0:20:43 | |
The Baghdad and The Alcazar Lounge. | 0:20:43 | 0:20:45 | |
So this atmosphere of glamour was really important | 0:20:45 | 0:20:49 | |
to the appeal of the dance halls. | 0:20:49 | 0:20:52 | |
The ballrooms may have looked the part, | 0:20:55 | 0:20:57 | |
but with almost three quarters of a million men dead in the Great War, | 0:20:57 | 0:21:01 | |
would there be enough people to fill them? | 0:21:01 | 0:21:04 | |
After the War, the political establishment and the press | 0:21:04 | 0:21:09 | |
were almost panicking about the loss of young British men. | 0:21:09 | 0:21:14 | |
And many of them thought, "These women, we've now got a surplus." | 0:21:16 | 0:21:20 | |
The Daily Mail called them "our surplus girls". | 0:21:20 | 0:21:23 | |
And they said, "Where are the husbands going to be?" | 0:21:23 | 0:21:26 | |
Well, in the event, there wasn't a problem, | 0:21:26 | 0:21:28 | |
because, actually, the marriage rate picked up quite sharply | 0:21:28 | 0:21:32 | |
in the '20s and '30s. | 0:21:32 | 0:21:35 | |
Dancing, dance halls, fitted brilliantly into this, | 0:21:35 | 0:21:41 | |
what was seen initially as a problem of marriage, | 0:21:41 | 0:21:44 | |
because we now know from later surveys | 0:21:44 | 0:21:47 | |
that a high proportion of the people who married in the inter-war period | 0:21:47 | 0:21:52 | |
-first met their eventual partners at a dance hall. -Right. | 0:21:52 | 0:21:56 | |
So, in that sense, in the long run, | 0:21:56 | 0:21:59 | |
dances served what respectable society | 0:21:59 | 0:22:02 | |
thought was an admirable purpose. | 0:22:02 | 0:22:04 | |
# Smile, darn ya, smile! | 0:22:04 | 0:22:07 | |
# You know this old world Is a great world, after all... # | 0:22:07 | 0:22:12 | |
Britain started to enjoy itself. | 0:22:12 | 0:22:15 | |
And in the seaside resorts, | 0:22:15 | 0:22:17 | |
holiday-makers poured in with their best clothes in their suitcases | 0:22:17 | 0:22:21 | |
and pounds in their pockets and headed off to the ballroom. | 0:22:21 | 0:22:25 | |
# ..Time for you and joy To get acquainted... # | 0:22:25 | 0:22:29 | |
There's been dancing in Blackpool | 0:22:29 | 0:22:31 | |
for almost as long as there's been sand on the beach. | 0:22:31 | 0:22:34 | |
And since day one, the Tower Ballroom has attracted dancers | 0:22:34 | 0:22:38 | |
like iron filings to a magnet. | 0:22:38 | 0:22:41 | |
'Blackpool's famous Tower, all five hundred feet of it, | 0:22:41 | 0:22:44 | |
'is the high-spot of Lancashire's favourite pleasure ground. | 0:22:44 | 0:22:47 | |
'Let's get a new slant on the holiday scene. | 0:22:47 | 0:22:50 | |
'Yes, you feel you're really on top of the world. | 0:23:02 | 0:23:05 | |
'How can you be down in the dumps | 0:23:05 | 0:23:06 | |
'when your heart's up in the clouds | 0:23:06 | 0:23:08 | |
'and you can throw away cares to the four winds?' | 0:23:08 | 0:23:11 | |
HE CHUCKLES | 0:23:15 | 0:23:17 | |
"Nice to see you - to see you...nice!" | 0:23:17 | 0:23:20 | |
HE CHUCKLES | 0:23:20 | 0:23:21 | |
Do you know, what gets me is the thought of people, | 0:23:23 | 0:23:27 | |
you know, Lancashire lasses and lads coming here for their week's holiday | 0:23:27 | 0:23:31 | |
and coming up here and seeing this. | 0:23:31 | 0:23:34 | |
I just can't imagine it, it is truly fabulous. | 0:23:34 | 0:23:39 | |
Right from the start, Blackpool's known how to party. | 0:23:39 | 0:23:42 | |
Back then, the resort had huge ballrooms | 0:23:42 | 0:23:46 | |
and thousands of people used to come dancing. | 0:23:46 | 0:23:49 | |
It's no wonder this place became the spiritual home of ballroom. | 0:23:49 | 0:23:52 | |
# They're all coming From near and far | 0:23:52 | 0:23:56 | |
# To learn the steps And here they are | 0:23:56 | 0:23:59 | |
# Eee by Gum, it's champion! | 0:23:59 | 0:24:01 | |
# Here's the Blackpool Walk. # | 0:24:01 | 0:24:04 | |
HE CHUCKLES | 0:24:10 | 0:24:12 | |
It was a new and exciting time - | 0:24:21 | 0:24:23 | |
the 1920s was the equivalent of punk and new wave. | 0:24:23 | 0:24:27 | |
And after the horrors of war and the Western Front, | 0:24:27 | 0:24:30 | |
people wanted to get out and let their hair down. | 0:24:30 | 0:24:32 | |
And dancing became completely radical. | 0:24:32 | 0:24:35 | |
# We're all alone | 0:24:35 | 0:24:37 | |
# No chaperone can get our number | 0:24:37 | 0:24:39 | |
# The world's in slumber | 0:24:39 | 0:24:42 | |
# Let's misbehave! # | 0:24:42 | 0:24:44 | |
As millions were swept off their feet, | 0:24:44 | 0:24:46 | |
moral panic once again hit the nation. | 0:24:46 | 0:24:49 | |
# ..Let's be outrageous Let's misbehave! # | 0:24:49 | 0:24:54 | |
By comparison with the Edwardian dances, | 0:24:54 | 0:24:57 | |
1920s dances seemed a bit less, well, less sedate, | 0:24:57 | 0:25:02 | |
less disciplined, less orderly. | 0:25:02 | 0:25:05 | |
A bit more suggestive, a bit more erotic, frankly, to many people. | 0:25:05 | 0:25:10 | |
# ..Let's misbehave! # | 0:25:10 | 0:25:12 | |
Stories abounded of flappers and bright young things | 0:25:16 | 0:25:20 | |
hooked on cocaine, so they could dance all night. | 0:25:20 | 0:25:23 | |
Nightclubs sprang up all over London, | 0:25:23 | 0:25:26 | |
it seemed that the very social foundations of Britain | 0:25:26 | 0:25:29 | |
were being undermined. | 0:25:29 | 0:25:31 | |
The dance halls were swinging to the sound of the latest music | 0:25:31 | 0:25:35 | |
brought here by touring dance bands from the States. | 0:25:35 | 0:25:38 | |
To some ears, the sound of jazz just wasn't very British. | 0:25:38 | 0:25:42 | |
# ..Let's misbehave! # | 0:25:42 | 0:25:44 | |
There's a moral reaction against the nightclub scene | 0:25:44 | 0:25:48 | |
with which jazz is so inextricably linked. | 0:25:48 | 0:25:51 | |
# ..Let's misbehave! # | 0:25:51 | 0:25:53 | |
Nightclubs were particularly keen on employing | 0:25:53 | 0:25:57 | |
a handful of black musicians to add a sense of exoticism | 0:25:57 | 0:26:02 | |
and authenticity to their music. | 0:26:02 | 0:26:05 | |
And these nightclubs were considered to be incredibly seedy. | 0:26:05 | 0:26:09 | |
They were an indication of a new declining moral standard in Britain | 0:26:09 | 0:26:13 | |
after the First World War. | 0:26:13 | 0:26:15 | |
You've got battalions of bishops and clergymen | 0:26:19 | 0:26:23 | |
and newspaper editors who are lining up to condemn the new dances, | 0:26:23 | 0:26:27 | |
because they viewed it as part of a general moral decline. | 0:26:27 | 0:26:33 | |
Even the politicians were having a go. | 0:26:33 | 0:26:36 | |
The Home Secretary of the time decided swift action was needed. | 0:26:36 | 0:26:41 | |
In the mid 1920s, police raids on nightclubs began. | 0:26:41 | 0:26:45 | |
It was all fertile ground for the headline-writers. | 0:26:45 | 0:26:49 | |
And the dance that was getting all the editorial columns | 0:26:49 | 0:26:51 | |
hot and bothered - | 0:26:51 | 0:26:53 | |
it was the Charleston. | 0:26:53 | 0:26:54 | |
# Charleston! Charleston! | 0:26:54 | 0:26:57 | |
# Made in Carolina | 0:26:57 | 0:26:59 | |
# Some dance, some prance... # | 0:26:59 | 0:27:00 | |
The dance burnt like a bright flame in London in the early 1920s, | 0:27:00 | 0:27:05 | |
but, for some provincial tastes, the Charleston was simply too much. | 0:27:05 | 0:27:11 | |
From Bridlington to Nuneaton, | 0:27:11 | 0:27:13 | |
the good burghers of Britain were saying enough is enough. | 0:27:13 | 0:27:16 | |
# But the Charleston The new Charleston | 0:27:16 | 0:27:19 | |
# That dance is surely a comer! | 0:27:19 | 0:27:21 | |
# Sometime, you'll dance it One time... # | 0:27:21 | 0:27:24 | |
But there'd be no stopping the Charleston. | 0:27:24 | 0:27:26 | |
Nightclub-owner and Dance Teacher Santos Casani's daring routine | 0:27:26 | 0:27:30 | |
on top of a London taxi showed | 0:27:30 | 0:27:33 | |
that this dance wasn't going to respect traditional boundaries. | 0:27:33 | 0:27:37 | |
One of the things that I find fascinating | 0:27:43 | 0:27:47 | |
is whichever new dance came along, there was a sense of outrage | 0:27:47 | 0:27:52 | |
from certain areas of the society that this was a scandal. | 0:27:52 | 0:27:56 | |
It is absolutely true. | 0:27:56 | 0:27:58 | |
A new dance is always viewed with the highest suspicion. | 0:27:58 | 0:28:03 | |
It doesn't matter what it is. | 0:28:03 | 0:28:05 | |
We've seen that the Waltz was viewed as morally suspect. | 0:28:05 | 0:28:09 | |
But as soon as we move onto the syncopated dances, | 0:28:09 | 0:28:13 | |
they, too, come under the scrutiny. | 0:28:13 | 0:28:16 | |
The combination of new music and dances gave journalists a field day. | 0:28:18 | 0:28:24 | |
For some, jazz was a low-type of primitive music | 0:28:27 | 0:28:30 | |
that was the essence of vulgarity, | 0:28:30 | 0:28:32 | |
while others complained of crude gyrations. | 0:28:32 | 0:28:36 | |
For a small minority of critics, | 0:28:36 | 0:28:38 | |
the black American origins of the new dances was of major concern. | 0:28:38 | 0:28:44 | |
And what you find is a lot of the early jazz and dance critics | 0:28:44 | 0:28:48 | |
seem to be obsessed with tracing back the origins of the new dances | 0:28:48 | 0:28:52 | |
and the new music to the jungle, as they put it. | 0:28:52 | 0:28:55 | |
In the Daily Mail, the Charleston was condemned | 0:28:57 | 0:29:01 | |
as being "reminiscent only of negro orgies". | 0:29:01 | 0:29:05 | |
-Really? -Yes, to some extent, this is the old story | 0:29:05 | 0:29:08 | |
that moral standards are always defined | 0:29:08 | 0:29:11 | |
by middle-aged, middle-class men | 0:29:11 | 0:29:14 | |
who get worried about what young people or women are actually doing. | 0:29:14 | 0:29:19 | |
Despite the scandal, | 0:29:21 | 0:29:22 | |
ballroom continued to find a growing audience. | 0:29:22 | 0:29:25 | |
For most people, it was harmless fun in places that became a second home. | 0:29:25 | 0:29:30 | |
# Love is good for anything That ails you | 0:29:30 | 0:29:33 | |
# Baby, there is nothing Love can't do... # | 0:29:35 | 0:29:38 | |
When I was growing up, I loved the freedom that dancing gave me, | 0:29:38 | 0:29:43 | |
and I let it all hang out here, | 0:29:43 | 0:29:45 | |
at The Rivoli, in South London. | 0:29:45 | 0:29:47 | |
HE CHUCKLES | 0:29:52 | 0:29:53 | |
Oh, yes. Thank you. | 0:29:55 | 0:29:57 | |
HE CHUCKLES | 0:29:57 | 0:29:58 | |
This is the place, I tell you. | 0:29:58 | 0:30:00 | |
I've been coming here since I was 16, | 0:30:00 | 0:30:05 | |
so we're talking over 50 years ago. | 0:30:05 | 0:30:07 | |
I used to first come doing a bit of jive - it was like a jiving place. | 0:30:07 | 0:30:12 | |
Used to try and get hold of a nice bit of crumpet | 0:30:12 | 0:30:15 | |
and go through there and have a cup of coffee or a cup of tea. | 0:30:15 | 0:30:18 | |
But latterly, it was one of my regular places for ballroom dancing. | 0:30:18 | 0:30:23 | |
There used to be a little circuit that we used to do - | 0:30:23 | 0:30:27 | |
one night it'd be the Hammersmith Palais, | 0:30:27 | 0:30:29 | |
then, the Tottenham Royal, Orchid Purley, the Lyceum in The Strand | 0:30:29 | 0:30:35 | |
and the Rivoli Ballroom. | 0:30:35 | 0:30:36 | |
So, it was just every night we used go out dancing, and it was great. | 0:30:36 | 0:30:42 | |
And this place, when you look at it, it's not changed. | 0:30:42 | 0:30:45 | |
Nothing has changed. | 0:30:45 | 0:30:48 | |
It's still the same, | 0:30:48 | 0:30:50 | |
and I used to just love the look of the whole place. | 0:30:50 | 0:30:53 | |
It made you want to dance, because it's from an era, somehow, | 0:30:53 | 0:30:57 | |
where you feel you want to do ballroom dancing. | 0:30:57 | 0:31:00 | |
It's just fabulous. | 0:31:00 | 0:31:02 | |
Oh, I can see me now... | 0:31:03 | 0:31:05 | |
young, fit, | 0:31:05 | 0:31:08 | |
hair dark as a raven's wing. | 0:31:08 | 0:31:10 | |
Walk in. "Oh, good evening." | 0:31:12 | 0:31:14 | |
# The echo of a song You used to sing... # | 0:31:15 | 0:31:20 | |
Oh, you're taller than I thought. | 0:31:20 | 0:31:23 | |
Oh, yes, you move so well... | 0:31:23 | 0:31:26 | |
HE CHUCKLES | 0:31:26 | 0:31:28 | |
# ..Was one long summer's day While you were there... # | 0:31:28 | 0:31:31 | |
But the more I got into ballroom, | 0:31:31 | 0:31:33 | |
the more I realised it was driven by a set of rules. | 0:31:33 | 0:31:36 | |
And much of this was down to one man. | 0:31:36 | 0:31:40 | |
Look what we've got here. | 0:31:40 | 0:31:41 | |
It's the doyen of strict tempo dancing. | 0:31:41 | 0:31:45 | |
Victor Silvester And His Orchestra. Here we go. | 0:31:45 | 0:31:48 | |
Oh! | 0:31:48 | 0:31:49 | |
MUSIC: "You're Dancing On My Heart" | 0:31:56 | 0:31:58 | |
This was Victor Silvester's theme song | 0:31:58 | 0:32:01 | |
and prior to it just starting, he would say his iconic words. | 0:32:01 | 0:32:06 | |
And here they are - | 0:32:06 | 0:32:08 | |
"Slow, slow, quick, quick, slow." | 0:32:08 | 0:32:11 | |
Victor Silvester was a World Ballroom Champion | 0:32:16 | 0:32:19 | |
for whom the rules meant everything. | 0:32:19 | 0:32:22 | |
And what he was witnessing on the dance floor appalled him. | 0:32:22 | 0:32:25 | |
It seemed that everyone was doing their own thing | 0:32:25 | 0:32:29 | |
and that dancing was going to the dogs. | 0:32:29 | 0:32:33 | |
And, in 1920, 200 dance teachers gathered in London | 0:32:33 | 0:32:37 | |
to work out what their next step would be. | 0:32:37 | 0:32:40 | |
It was now a time for action. | 0:32:40 | 0:32:43 | |
The dance profession decided that there needed to be some kind of order | 0:32:43 | 0:32:49 | |
in response to this new seeming chaos or "artistic bolshevism", | 0:32:49 | 0:32:53 | |
as one dance teacher put it. | 0:32:53 | 0:32:55 | |
Over several years, strict rules governing ballroom were introduced. | 0:32:57 | 0:33:01 | |
There'd be a musical solution, too. | 0:33:01 | 0:33:04 | |
Later, as a bandleader, | 0:33:04 | 0:33:05 | |
Victor brought in the discipline of strict tempo - | 0:33:05 | 0:33:08 | |
clear criteria which even dictated | 0:33:08 | 0:33:11 | |
how many bars per minute there should be. | 0:33:11 | 0:33:14 | |
Victor Silvester came along and he was the man | 0:33:14 | 0:33:18 | |
that tamed it all and brought in strict tempo. | 0:33:18 | 0:33:21 | |
And it was consistent. | 0:33:21 | 0:33:24 | |
If it was consistent, | 0:33:24 | 0:33:26 | |
then the dancer could dance to it. | 0:33:26 | 0:33:30 | |
Victor Silvester grooms the music | 0:33:30 | 0:33:33 | |
to be able to be used | 0:33:33 | 0:33:36 | |
and I mean used - used to dance by everybody that felt like dancing. | 0:33:36 | 0:33:42 | |
He had to bring regularity into it | 0:33:42 | 0:33:45 | |
because your dancing today would not exist | 0:33:45 | 0:33:49 | |
if it weren't for Victor Silvester. | 0:33:49 | 0:33:51 | |
'And now for a demonstration of dancing, | 0:33:51 | 0:33:53 | |
'arranged by those famous exponents from the Empress Rooms, Kensington, | 0:33:53 | 0:33:56 | |
'Phyllis Haylor, former World Champion, and Charles Scrimshaw.' | 0:33:56 | 0:33:59 | |
With the music and dance now sorted, | 0:33:59 | 0:34:02 | |
there'd be a syllabus for dance teachers. | 0:34:02 | 0:34:04 | |
The English style of ballroom was born. | 0:34:04 | 0:34:08 | |
'But for your special benefit, | 0:34:08 | 0:34:09 | |
'they're pretending they're just ordinary folk, | 0:34:09 | 0:34:11 | |
'making just ordinary mistakes like this wrong position of the arm.' | 0:34:11 | 0:34:15 | |
There was an emphasis on gracefulness and a decorum, | 0:34:15 | 0:34:20 | |
so the wild, jerking movements of the new dances were tamed. | 0:34:20 | 0:34:25 | |
You must use your heels when you go forward, Teddy. | 0:34:25 | 0:34:28 | |
Slide your foot forward on the heel. | 0:34:28 | 0:34:29 | |
And Freda, don't turn your toes like that, keep them in. | 0:34:29 | 0:34:33 | |
Keep your feet quite straight. | 0:34:33 | 0:34:35 | |
Will you try that now? | 0:34:35 | 0:34:36 | |
This was an attempt clearly | 0:34:36 | 0:34:38 | |
to remove all suggestions of impropriety | 0:34:38 | 0:34:41 | |
and sort of uncontrolled primitiveness. | 0:34:41 | 0:34:44 | |
'Two of the party have just come back from America, | 0:34:44 | 0:34:46 | |
'so here's a swing step, hot from Harlem. | 0:34:46 | 0:34:48 | |
'But it's rather too hot for English ballroom, | 0:34:48 | 0:34:51 | |
'so let's try a swing step that's a little quieter. | 0:34:51 | 0:34:53 | |
'Good.' | 0:34:53 | 0:34:54 | |
That looks rather nice, shall we all try it? | 0:34:56 | 0:34:58 | |
Strict tempo was hugely popular, | 0:35:01 | 0:35:03 | |
but some musicians felt it made the sound clinical and predictable. | 0:35:03 | 0:35:08 | |
Others, such as singer Barbara Jay, | 0:35:08 | 0:35:10 | |
who performed in the dance halls of the '50s, | 0:35:10 | 0:35:13 | |
welcomed the discipline. | 0:35:13 | 0:35:15 | |
It made me sing in time. | 0:35:15 | 0:35:17 | |
It was very good and we used to sing what we call 'on the beat'. | 0:35:17 | 0:35:23 | |
We never used to pull a song around like people do now. | 0:35:23 | 0:35:26 | |
Used to sing accordingly to the arrangement and in tempo, | 0:35:26 | 0:35:31 | |
because that was the tempo for the dancers. | 0:35:31 | 0:35:33 | |
And if the tempo wasn't right, | 0:35:33 | 0:35:36 | |
I assure you the dancers used to come up | 0:35:36 | 0:35:38 | |
and complain bitterly to the bandleader. | 0:35:38 | 0:35:40 | |
"That Foxtrot was too fast..." and "That Waltz was too slow." | 0:35:40 | 0:35:45 | |
So he used to get that. | 0:35:45 | 0:35:47 | |
I find it rather dull, really, you know, | 0:35:48 | 0:35:51 | |
I think, in the main, it's pretty dull, | 0:35:51 | 0:35:53 | |
because the priority is not the music any more. | 0:35:53 | 0:35:55 | |
The priority is the tempo. | 0:35:55 | 0:35:57 | |
It's not played badly, it's played beautifully, often, | 0:35:57 | 0:36:00 | |
and, indeed, sung sometimes. | 0:36:00 | 0:36:02 | |
But often the vocalists are, | 0:36:02 | 0:36:04 | |
in fact, abandoned on strict tempo dance music, often instrumental. | 0:36:04 | 0:36:07 | |
And when we've played for dances | 0:36:07 | 0:36:09 | |
with sort of very dyed-in-the-wool dancers, | 0:36:09 | 0:36:12 | |
they sometimes say, "Oh, we wish you didn't have any vocals." | 0:36:12 | 0:36:15 | |
They don't like the vocals, | 0:36:15 | 0:36:17 | |
they just want the music to be played | 0:36:17 | 0:36:19 | |
at exactly the right tempo, so that they can whoosh around | 0:36:19 | 0:36:21 | |
doing the slow Foxtrot or the Quickstep at the right tempo. | 0:36:21 | 0:36:25 | |
75 million records, Victor Silvester sold. | 0:36:31 | 0:36:35 | |
-Really? -You know. | 0:36:35 | 0:36:37 | |
As you say, all in strict dance tempo, | 0:36:37 | 0:36:40 | |
and immediately recognisable. | 0:36:40 | 0:36:42 | |
You hear them on the radio, you know that's Victor Silvester. | 0:36:42 | 0:36:45 | |
But, you know, you wouldn't want to listen to that now, would you? | 0:36:45 | 0:36:48 | |
You know, it served its purpose and he was clearly, | 0:36:48 | 0:36:53 | |
you know, he was the man, but to musicians, it's a terrible sound. | 0:36:53 | 0:36:56 | |
The English style had restrained some of the excesses | 0:37:07 | 0:37:10 | |
that had crept into ballroom, | 0:37:10 | 0:37:12 | |
but could it cope with the most sensual dance of the lot? | 0:37:12 | 0:37:16 | |
The Tango. | 0:37:16 | 0:37:18 | |
It was hot, it was spicy, it was passionate. | 0:37:18 | 0:37:22 | |
The big question was, could European sensibility adjust itself | 0:37:22 | 0:37:27 | |
to this Gaucho-driven dance of passion? | 0:37:27 | 0:37:31 | |
Oh, I've gone all hot under the collar. | 0:37:31 | 0:37:33 | |
# One starry night | 0:37:36 | 0:37:38 | |
# In an old southern town... # | 0:37:38 | 0:37:40 | |
The Tango had its roots in the street music of Argentina. | 0:37:40 | 0:37:45 | |
# ..Though with the dawn... # | 0:37:45 | 0:37:47 | |
A more sedate version swept across Europe, | 0:37:47 | 0:37:50 | |
but it still incurred the wrath of the Catholic church. | 0:37:50 | 0:37:53 | |
Later, in the '30s, a little zest was added, | 0:37:53 | 0:37:57 | |
giving the dance a new flavour. | 0:37:57 | 0:37:59 | |
# ..Whispering I'll come back some day. # | 0:37:59 | 0:38:01 | |
When the dance first became popular it was quite a smooth dance, | 0:38:01 | 0:38:06 | |
it didn't have all this staccato and sharpness about it. | 0:38:06 | 0:38:09 | |
Just before the War, a German came along, called Freddie Camp, | 0:38:09 | 0:38:15 | |
who danced here in Blackpool | 0:38:15 | 0:38:17 | |
and brought this sharp, staccato flavour to it | 0:38:17 | 0:38:21 | |
and the place went mad. | 0:38:21 | 0:38:24 | |
I can understand why, because, you know, | 0:38:24 | 0:38:27 | |
if you think of a famous Tango like La Cumpanista, you know. | 0:38:27 | 0:38:31 | |
Those spiky chords. | 0:38:35 | 0:38:37 | |
So, you get a step like The Link, | 0:38:37 | 0:38:39 | |
which is only two steps, but it shows now... | 0:38:39 | 0:38:43 | |
Now, prior to Freddie Camp, you'd get a sort of smoothness about it. | 0:38:43 | 0:38:47 | |
Suddenly, here comes Freddie, full of vim and vigour, and he'll go... | 0:38:47 | 0:38:51 | |
Whoopa! And the whole thing became much sharper and crisper. | 0:38:51 | 0:38:56 | |
And... Shumba! | 0:38:56 | 0:38:58 | |
HE HUMS | 0:38:58 | 0:39:00 | |
'Freddie Camp changed the Tango for ever. | 0:39:11 | 0:39:15 | |
'After decades of toning dances down for British tastes, | 0:39:15 | 0:39:19 | |
'here were the Brits, with a bit help from a German, | 0:39:19 | 0:39:23 | |
'putting the oomph back into ballroom.' | 0:39:23 | 0:39:25 | |
Whoopa! | 0:39:25 | 0:39:27 | |
# Adios muchachos Companeros de mi vida... # | 0:39:27 | 0:39:30 | |
The other characteristic of the Tango | 0:39:30 | 0:39:32 | |
is that we dance it with slightly flexed knees, | 0:39:32 | 0:39:34 | |
there's no rise and fall whatsoever. | 0:39:34 | 0:39:36 | |
And the story goes that they used to wear these leather chaps | 0:39:36 | 0:39:40 | |
and when they were on the horse all day, this leather used to get stiff. | 0:39:40 | 0:39:43 | |
And when they got off their horse, | 0:39:43 | 0:39:45 | |
their legs were slightly bent because of these leather chaps. | 0:39:45 | 0:39:49 | |
They used to smell, you know, and deodorant wasn't around. | 0:39:49 | 0:39:52 | |
So the ladies then put a rose in their mouth | 0:39:52 | 0:39:54 | |
and turned their head to the left. | 0:39:54 | 0:39:56 | |
Which, of course, would have been slightly perfumed | 0:39:56 | 0:39:59 | |
away from the bad smell. | 0:39:59 | 0:40:01 | |
# Everybody dance! | 0:40:04 | 0:40:06 | |
# Why don't you try to Foxtrot Your troubles away? # | 0:40:06 | 0:40:11 | |
With the core dances now making up the English style, | 0:40:11 | 0:40:15 | |
the Waltz, Foxtrot, Quickstep and Tango, | 0:40:15 | 0:40:17 | |
Britain was ready to export its take on dancing all over the globe. | 0:40:17 | 0:40:23 | |
And with the rules now in place, | 0:40:23 | 0:40:25 | |
everyone wanted to learn how to dance properly. | 0:40:25 | 0:40:29 | |
# ..But if you're bashful Let the music say it for you | 0:40:29 | 0:40:33 | |
# Dance... # | 0:40:33 | 0:40:35 | |
But how to spread the message became a major challenge | 0:40:35 | 0:40:38 | |
for Britain's new ballroom establishment. | 0:40:38 | 0:40:41 | |
# ..Up on your toes... # | 0:40:41 | 0:40:42 | |
By the 1930s, | 0:40:42 | 0:40:44 | |
ballroom competitions were all the rage for the committed dancer. | 0:40:44 | 0:40:47 | |
But keeping the rest of the population in line was no easy task. | 0:40:47 | 0:40:52 | |
# ..Dance, dance, dance, dance! # | 0:40:52 | 0:40:54 | |
If you were struggling, | 0:40:54 | 0:40:56 | |
there was always an army of attendants on hand to help out. | 0:40:56 | 0:40:59 | |
They would be penned off in a corner of the dance hall | 0:40:59 | 0:41:03 | |
and you could hire them for one or two dances | 0:41:03 | 0:41:06 | |
or often for the whole evening. | 0:41:06 | 0:41:10 | |
These dancing partners inevitably attracted suspicion | 0:41:10 | 0:41:13 | |
and the rumours were rife | 0:41:13 | 0:41:15 | |
that they were offering more than just a dancing partnership. | 0:41:15 | 0:41:21 | |
'Teaching people to dance has always been a challenge | 0:41:22 | 0:41:25 | |
'and, back in ballroom's heyday, | 0:41:25 | 0:41:27 | |
'dance schools were in the front-line of the battle | 0:41:27 | 0:41:30 | |
'to get people to move properly. | 0:41:30 | 0:41:32 | |
'The rules were in place, they just needed to be enforced.' | 0:41:32 | 0:41:36 | |
Cha-cha-cha... | 0:41:36 | 0:41:38 | |
'And in every dance class across the country, | 0:41:38 | 0:41:41 | |
'no step was spared in making sure they were performed correctly.' | 0:41:41 | 0:41:46 | |
Last one... | 0:41:46 | 0:41:49 | |
'So, it's time to set a 1930s challenge | 0:41:49 | 0:41:52 | |
'for these youngsters in a dance school near Garstang, in Lancashire.' | 0:41:52 | 0:41:57 | |
Excellent, well done. | 0:41:57 | 0:41:58 | |
That's not a seven, I'll tell you. | 0:41:58 | 0:42:00 | |
That's a ten from Len, well done! | 0:42:00 | 0:42:02 | |
THEY LAUGH | 0:42:02 | 0:42:03 | |
Thank you. | 0:42:03 | 0:42:04 | |
Right foot, everybody, ready, go. | 0:42:04 | 0:42:07 | |
One, two, three, cha-cha-cha. | 0:42:07 | 0:42:11 | |
Now, this may seem comical to us now, | 0:42:11 | 0:42:14 | |
but back in the '20s and '30s, | 0:42:14 | 0:42:16 | |
this instruction manual was cutting edge. | 0:42:16 | 0:42:19 | |
And it was produced by the Maestro himself - Victor Silvester. | 0:42:19 | 0:42:24 | |
He showed the steps for every dance, | 0:42:24 | 0:42:26 | |
from The Charleston right through to the slow Foxtrot, | 0:42:26 | 0:42:29 | |
and everything in between. | 0:42:29 | 0:42:31 | |
Now, the question is - | 0:42:31 | 0:42:32 | |
can these young people follow the master's footsteps? | 0:42:32 | 0:42:36 | |
Thank you very much. | 0:42:39 | 0:42:41 | |
-Who's the boy ? -Me. | 0:42:41 | 0:42:42 | |
The reverse turn. | 0:42:42 | 0:42:44 | |
Left, right, left. | 0:42:44 | 0:42:46 | |
No, no. | 0:42:46 | 0:42:49 | |
One, two, three. | 0:42:49 | 0:42:52 | |
Thank God I wasn't born in the '20s or '30s, | 0:42:52 | 0:42:54 | |
because I'd have a terrible job with this. | 0:42:54 | 0:42:56 | |
Cutting edge? I'd cut me throat. | 0:42:56 | 0:42:59 | |
One, two, three, four, five. | 0:43:01 | 0:43:04 | |
A little bit big in the step, wasn't it? | 0:43:04 | 0:43:07 | |
Arrampah! Yump-bum-bum! | 0:43:07 | 0:43:10 | |
Step three is step forward and across, | 0:43:10 | 0:43:14 | |
slightly to right with left foot. | 0:43:14 | 0:43:17 | |
I've got to work this out. | 0:43:17 | 0:43:18 | |
Step forward with the left foot, turning to the left. | 0:43:18 | 0:43:21 | |
I've done that. | 0:43:21 | 0:43:22 | |
One, two, three, four, five. | 0:43:22 | 0:43:27 | |
I always like a man with epaulettes. | 0:43:28 | 0:43:31 | |
All of you now, I want you all to try it. | 0:43:31 | 0:43:34 | |
Come up here, we're all going to do it. Six steps. | 0:43:34 | 0:43:38 | |
Tango! Ready. | 0:43:38 | 0:43:41 | |
And a-ra-tah-tah! | 0:43:41 | 0:43:43 | |
A-ra-tah! | 0:43:43 | 0:43:45 | |
What Victor Silvester had done is created order. | 0:43:49 | 0:43:52 | |
He's given precise steps and a technique that people could follow. | 0:43:52 | 0:43:57 | |
But, in doing so, I think the common man had lost the feel for dancing. | 0:43:57 | 0:44:03 | |
It was almost as though you had to learn a regimented routine | 0:44:03 | 0:44:07 | |
which, for me, isn't what dancing's all about. | 0:44:07 | 0:44:10 | |
Britain may have been bitten by the dance bug, | 0:44:18 | 0:44:21 | |
but ballroom was in a state of flux. | 0:44:21 | 0:44:24 | |
It's summed up by this place, the fabulous Cafe De Paris, | 0:44:24 | 0:44:27 | |
in London's West End. | 0:44:27 | 0:44:29 | |
'By the mid '30s, ballroom, | 0:44:37 | 0:44:39 | |
'the dance that the masses had taken to their hearts, | 0:44:39 | 0:44:41 | |
'appeared to be divided.' | 0:44:41 | 0:44:43 | |
While the working classes packed out huge dance halls, | 0:44:43 | 0:44:46 | |
and had a right old knees-up, | 0:44:46 | 0:44:49 | |
the well-to-do tucked into their lobster in surroundings like this | 0:44:49 | 0:44:54 | |
and danced the night away. | 0:44:54 | 0:44:56 | |
Smart hotels and restaurants latched on to the idea | 0:45:02 | 0:45:05 | |
that diners would pay a premium for high-end surroundings | 0:45:05 | 0:45:09 | |
and quality music from the nation's best dance bands. | 0:45:09 | 0:45:12 | |
Geraldo, Henry Hall, Bert Ambrose. | 0:45:16 | 0:45:19 | |
They all became household names. | 0:45:19 | 0:45:21 | |
But there were hundreds more belting out the tunes. | 0:45:21 | 0:45:25 | |
They seemed to create a sort of magic atmosphere, | 0:45:25 | 0:45:27 | |
the records from the '30s, of elegance, | 0:45:27 | 0:45:30 | |
and it's something different. It's got a very particular style to it. | 0:45:30 | 0:45:34 | |
The marvellous atmosphere that it creates straight away | 0:45:34 | 0:45:37 | |
and, of course, it had to create an atmosphere straight away. | 0:45:37 | 0:45:39 | |
People needed to hear a few bars of music | 0:45:39 | 0:45:41 | |
and they needed to be whisked onto the dance floor. | 0:45:41 | 0:45:44 | |
# Shall we dance Or keep on moping | 0:45:44 | 0:45:48 | |
# Shall we dance and walk on air? # | 0:45:48 | 0:45:52 | |
But it very quickly became so much more than that. | 0:45:52 | 0:45:55 | |
It became clever music, with wonderful arrangements | 0:45:55 | 0:45:57 | |
and the very best musicians playing in the bands at the time. | 0:45:57 | 0:46:00 | |
The most fantastic jazz solos, | 0:46:00 | 0:46:02 | |
the most fantastic smooth, elegant sounds all mixed together | 0:46:02 | 0:46:05 | |
into a sort of British dance band sound. | 0:46:05 | 0:46:08 | |
Every hotel, every restaurant, | 0:46:08 | 0:46:11 | |
as well as the ballrooms, needed musicians. | 0:46:11 | 0:46:14 | |
It was a field day for musicians. | 0:46:14 | 0:46:17 | |
# ..Dance whenever you can! # | 0:46:17 | 0:46:22 | |
That would have been the time to be a musician. | 0:46:22 | 0:46:25 | |
Because, apart from anything else, it was fun. | 0:46:25 | 0:46:27 | |
They were well paid, well looked after, | 0:46:27 | 0:46:30 | |
and they were playing music that was fun to play. | 0:46:30 | 0:46:33 | |
And, in a way, the music is sort of leading the dance, isn't it? | 0:46:33 | 0:46:38 | |
There's something being generated on the band stand | 0:46:38 | 0:46:43 | |
that people want to dance to. | 0:46:43 | 0:46:45 | |
Live music is absolutely brilliant! | 0:46:54 | 0:46:57 | |
I mean, once an orchestra plays, it just gets in your blood. | 0:46:57 | 0:47:02 | |
'The National Programme from London.' | 0:47:02 | 0:47:04 | |
Now, you're going to hear the first performance | 0:47:04 | 0:47:06 | |
of the new BBC Dance Orchestra, directed by Henry Hall. | 0:47:06 | 0:47:09 | |
# It's just the time For dancing... # | 0:47:10 | 0:47:13 | |
Soon, every living room was echoing to the sound of ballroom. | 0:47:13 | 0:47:17 | |
The bands had huge followings. | 0:47:17 | 0:47:20 | |
Jack Hilton, for example, in 1929, | 0:47:20 | 0:47:23 | |
he travelled over 63,000 miles on tour, | 0:47:23 | 0:47:26 | |
he gave over 700 performances | 0:47:26 | 0:47:29 | |
and his records sold at the rate of about seven per minute, | 0:47:29 | 0:47:33 | |
so he's hugely successful. | 0:47:33 | 0:47:35 | |
Roy Fox led one of the most popular bands of the '30s. | 0:47:37 | 0:47:41 | |
Mary Lee was just out of school when she won a competition | 0:47:41 | 0:47:45 | |
and joined them as a singer. | 0:47:45 | 0:47:47 | |
There was about 20, 25 musicians and Roy Fox, | 0:47:47 | 0:47:51 | |
immaculately dressed in beautiful tails, | 0:47:51 | 0:47:56 | |
all playing gorgeous music, you know. | 0:47:56 | 0:47:58 | |
I thought to myself, "I've died and gone to heaven." | 0:47:58 | 0:48:01 | |
# Cos it's been so long | 0:48:01 | 0:48:05 | |
# Since I held you tight | 0:48:05 | 0:48:07 | |
# When we said goodnight | 0:48:07 | 0:48:09 | |
# It's been so long | 0:48:09 | 0:48:11 | |
# Honey, can't you see What you've done to me... # | 0:48:11 | 0:48:15 | |
It was really brilliant. And these boys knew what they were doing. | 0:48:15 | 0:48:18 | |
You went on and you knew you were working | 0:48:18 | 0:48:21 | |
for the best musicians in the world. | 0:48:21 | 0:48:24 | |
And you couldn't else but be good. | 0:48:24 | 0:48:26 | |
It was a happy, happy time. | 0:48:26 | 0:48:28 | |
# ..It was so nice... # | 0:48:28 | 0:48:31 | |
For three golden years, Mary fitted right in with the boys in the band. | 0:48:31 | 0:48:35 | |
They were lovely, but then, I think I was terribly lucky, | 0:48:35 | 0:48:40 | |
because the band boys could be, you know, rough and ready | 0:48:40 | 0:48:44 | |
and, you know, I won't go any further. | 0:48:44 | 0:48:47 | |
But I remember Roy Fox telling them, | 0:48:47 | 0:48:50 | |
he said, "Now, she's just turned 14. | 0:48:50 | 0:48:52 | |
"I don't want any swearing, | 0:48:52 | 0:48:53 | |
"I don't want any untoward gags or what have you. | 0:48:53 | 0:48:57 | |
"Leave her be. | 0:48:57 | 0:48:58 | |
"Let her grow up alongside you and don't tell her any mucky jokes. | 0:48:58 | 0:49:03 | |
"Please don't." | 0:49:03 | 0:49:04 | |
And that's the way we went along. | 0:49:04 | 0:49:06 | |
Mary was paid the princely sum of £5 a week | 0:49:06 | 0:49:10 | |
and with the boys, she played the dance halls | 0:49:10 | 0:49:13 | |
and the swanky West End restaurants, | 0:49:13 | 0:49:15 | |
rubbing shoulders with society's smart set. | 0:49:15 | 0:49:18 | |
It was nice people. | 0:49:18 | 0:49:20 | |
People who had what we would say roughly, a bob or two. | 0:49:20 | 0:49:24 | |
And the ladies were nicely dressed. | 0:49:24 | 0:49:27 | |
We used to sit on the band stand and the boys would pick out | 0:49:27 | 0:49:30 | |
who were the nicest-looking lasses, and all that. | 0:49:30 | 0:49:33 | |
Who had the nicest legs and all that. | 0:49:33 | 0:49:35 | |
We had all that kind of fun. | 0:49:35 | 0:49:36 | |
But, oh, I used to, I used to, oh, die to get down and dance with them | 0:49:36 | 0:49:40 | |
but I couldn't, I wasn't allowed to. | 0:49:40 | 0:49:43 | |
While the dinner dance scene thrived, over in the dance halls, | 0:49:49 | 0:49:52 | |
people were tiring of the rules - | 0:49:52 | 0:49:55 | |
they wanted to experiment. | 0:49:55 | 0:49:56 | |
'And now, we're taking you over to The Locarno, Streatham, | 0:49:56 | 0:49:59 | |
'to learn something of the latest dances. | 0:49:59 | 0:50:01 | |
'Here's one you can all dance and it's sweeping the country. | 0:50:01 | 0:50:04 | |
'The Palais Glide.' | 0:50:04 | 0:50:06 | |
Having a partner was no longer as important | 0:50:06 | 0:50:09 | |
and novelty dances became popular. | 0:50:09 | 0:50:12 | |
'What better than the Palais Glide for making everyone pally? | 0:50:12 | 0:50:15 | |
'Where The Palais Glide originated, we don't know. | 0:50:15 | 0:50:18 | |
'Some say the Midlands, but its popularity is tremendous.' | 0:50:18 | 0:50:21 | |
It wasn't so much revolution as a curious form of evolution. | 0:50:21 | 0:50:26 | |
It was ballroom, | 0:50:26 | 0:50:28 | |
but for those who'd worked hard to establish the rules, | 0:50:28 | 0:50:31 | |
well, it just didn't feel right. | 0:50:31 | 0:50:33 | |
# It's your blooming birthday | 0:50:33 | 0:50:35 | |
# Let's wake up all the town | 0:50:35 | 0:50:37 | |
# So knees-up, knees-up Don't get the breeze-up | 0:50:37 | 0:50:39 | |
# Knees-up, Mother Brown. # | 0:50:39 | 0:50:41 | |
And just when it seemed that the masses were becoming frustrated | 0:50:41 | 0:50:45 | |
with traditional ballroom, | 0:50:45 | 0:50:47 | |
the darkest of times gave it a new lease of life. | 0:50:47 | 0:50:50 | |
During the Second World War, dancing was incredibly popular. | 0:50:50 | 0:50:54 | |
# Dance hall doll Dancing around the floor... # | 0:50:54 | 0:50:57 | |
And it performed a very important function on the home front. | 0:50:57 | 0:51:01 | |
The Government soon realised | 0:51:01 | 0:51:03 | |
just how important dancing was for morale. | 0:51:03 | 0:51:06 | |
'Carry your gas mask, because you'll never know | 0:51:06 | 0:51:08 | |
'where you'll need it. | 0:51:08 | 0:51:09 | |
'Now, at the dance hall in Streatham, | 0:51:09 | 0:51:11 | |
'they grab their partners for the preliminary race, | 0:51:11 | 0:51:13 | |
'and it's on with the gas mask and the dance.' | 0:51:13 | 0:51:16 | |
With the Luftwaffe doing their best to bomb Britain into submission, | 0:51:16 | 0:51:21 | |
people turned to ballroom, in all its forms | 0:51:21 | 0:51:24 | |
and lived every moment as though it were their last. | 0:51:24 | 0:51:27 | |
Home Intelligence reports of the blitzed areas, for example, | 0:51:27 | 0:51:32 | |
found that, in those cities where dancing and dance halls remained open | 0:51:32 | 0:51:38 | |
and continued going during the Blitz, | 0:51:38 | 0:51:40 | |
such as Liverpool and Portsmouth, | 0:51:40 | 0:51:43 | |
morale was much higher than in those areas | 0:51:43 | 0:51:46 | |
where nightlife ground to a halt. | 0:51:46 | 0:51:49 | |
And so, it recommended that dance halls were made repair priorities | 0:51:49 | 0:51:54 | |
and were kept open in the aftermath of the Blitz. | 0:51:54 | 0:51:57 | |
As American GIs hit our shores, | 0:52:00 | 0:52:03 | |
dancing once again became a passport to a meeting with the opposite sex. | 0:52:03 | 0:52:08 | |
'Fraternisation was the order of the day | 0:52:08 | 0:52:10 | |
'and it certainly looks as if everything was going | 0:52:10 | 0:52:12 | |
'according to plan.' | 0:52:12 | 0:52:13 | |
And along with their nylon stockings and fat wallets, | 0:52:15 | 0:52:18 | |
the Yanks brought new music and dances like the jive. | 0:52:18 | 0:52:22 | |
Once again, American influence took ballroom in a whole new direction. | 0:52:22 | 0:52:26 | |
The feel-good factor continued after the War, | 0:52:30 | 0:52:32 | |
but, within a decade, attitudes were changing. | 0:52:32 | 0:52:35 | |
Ballroom was no longer cutting edge. | 0:52:35 | 0:52:38 | |
A new generation voted with their feet. | 0:52:38 | 0:52:41 | |
Dance band music of the '30s, however much we love it, | 0:52:41 | 0:52:44 | |
we have to admit it evokes | 0:52:44 | 0:52:46 | |
the upper crust of society and high society. | 0:52:46 | 0:52:49 | |
It evokes money, wealth, a richness. | 0:52:49 | 0:52:52 | |
And after the War, this just wasn't what people wanted any more, | 0:52:52 | 0:52:55 | |
they wanted a more democratic world. | 0:52:55 | 0:52:57 | |
As a teenager during the war, | 0:52:59 | 0:53:01 | |
Tommy Whittle played saxophone in Lew Stone's Band. | 0:53:01 | 0:53:06 | |
It was style of music soon to go out of fashion. | 0:53:06 | 0:53:10 | |
I think it was skiffle came in, first of all. | 0:53:10 | 0:53:13 | |
You know, a ridiculous sort of music, in my opinion. | 0:53:13 | 0:53:18 | |
And yet, it became terribly popular. | 0:53:18 | 0:53:20 | |
What can you do? | 0:53:22 | 0:53:23 | |
# I dim all the lights | 0:53:27 | 0:53:29 | |
# And I sink in my chair... # | 0:53:29 | 0:53:31 | |
Tommy's wife, Barbara Jay, | 0:53:31 | 0:53:33 | |
played with some of the big bands of the '50s | 0:53:33 | 0:53:36 | |
and saw the golden age of ballroom slowly slipping away. | 0:53:36 | 0:53:40 | |
# ..Fade away in the blue | 0:53:40 | 0:53:42 | |
# And I'm deep in a dream of you. # | 0:53:42 | 0:53:48 | |
They were looking at the new generation coming up, you see. | 0:53:48 | 0:53:52 | |
And they didn't want the dancing that their mothers and fathers went to. | 0:53:52 | 0:53:56 | |
They wanted to have their own kind of music | 0:53:56 | 0:53:59 | |
and this is where the music changed. | 0:53:59 | 0:54:01 | |
There were not so many big bands, there were small groups. | 0:54:01 | 0:54:05 | |
That kind of dancing faded away. | 0:54:05 | 0:54:08 | |
The simplicity of the close hold in the Waltz | 0:54:12 | 0:54:15 | |
and the passion of the Tango | 0:54:15 | 0:54:16 | |
were lost on a new generation who didn't have to be coy any more. | 0:54:16 | 0:54:20 | |
The sexuality of dancing was now there for everyone to see. | 0:54:20 | 0:54:25 | |
With its long list of rules, ballroom appeared to be out of step. | 0:54:29 | 0:54:33 | |
It gained a reputation as being old-fashioned. | 0:54:33 | 0:54:36 | |
Something that old people did. | 0:54:36 | 0:54:38 | |
It was for fuddy-duddies. | 0:54:38 | 0:54:39 | |
In those days, the rock and roll appealed to a different generation, | 0:54:41 | 0:54:46 | |
a more gentle generation at that time liked ballroom dancing. | 0:54:46 | 0:54:51 | |
Dancing went underground a bit. | 0:54:51 | 0:54:53 | |
And it went into the dancing schools, | 0:54:53 | 0:54:56 | |
instead of being in the public halls, | 0:54:56 | 0:54:59 | |
it went into the dancing schools. | 0:54:59 | 0:55:01 | |
Then, television arrived, and that completely changed everything. | 0:55:03 | 0:55:08 | |
People were not going out to dance halls any more, | 0:55:08 | 0:55:10 | |
they were sitting at home watching 'the new box', they called it. | 0:55:10 | 0:55:13 | |
The television. | 0:55:13 | 0:55:15 | |
'This is BBC Television.' | 0:55:16 | 0:55:18 | |
And Victor Silvester, the man who'd brought strict tempo to ballroom, | 0:55:18 | 0:55:22 | |
also appeared out of step with the new dances and crazes. | 0:55:22 | 0:55:26 | |
Well, I don't think that anybody could call the Twist an elegant dance. | 0:55:26 | 0:55:31 | |
What, then, is its attraction? | 0:55:31 | 0:55:34 | |
The answer is rhythm. | 0:55:34 | 0:55:36 | |
Feet six to eight inches apart and twist to the left, | 0:55:36 | 0:55:41 | |
to the right, to the left, to the right, to the left, | 0:55:41 | 0:55:44 | |
to the right, to the left, to the right. | 0:55:44 | 0:55:48 | |
Right! Twist, two, three, four... | 0:55:48 | 0:55:51 | |
I first fell into ballroom almost by accident. | 0:56:05 | 0:56:09 | |
If it hadn't had been for an ex-girlfriend who invited me along, | 0:56:09 | 0:56:13 | |
I might never have stepped into a world which has captivated me | 0:56:13 | 0:56:16 | |
for the best part of 50 years. | 0:56:16 | 0:56:19 | |
When I first put on my dancing shoes, | 0:56:19 | 0:56:21 | |
ballroom was still popular, but the peak had passed. | 0:56:21 | 0:56:25 | |
It seemed good to me then, so the golden age must have been brilliant. | 0:56:25 | 0:56:29 | |
There was something innocent and warm about ballroom dancing. | 0:56:33 | 0:56:38 | |
That sense of belonging that it gave you, | 0:56:38 | 0:56:41 | |
as well as a degree of self-expression. | 0:56:41 | 0:56:44 | |
It's a loss of something more than just ballroom dancing. | 0:56:44 | 0:56:48 | |
They're packed onto the floor, | 0:56:48 | 0:56:49 | |
because they've all got a common interest. | 0:56:49 | 0:56:52 | |
They all want to listen to the music, | 0:56:52 | 0:56:54 | |
they all want to dance with the best-looking girl in the room. | 0:56:54 | 0:56:58 | |
But the very heart of dancing years ago was to go out and meet people. | 0:56:58 | 0:57:03 | |
It was lovely. | 0:57:05 | 0:57:07 | |
It was lovely. You were hearing good music and, with a wee bit of luck, | 0:57:07 | 0:57:10 | |
you got a wee cuddle and a kiss on the way home. | 0:57:10 | 0:57:12 | |
You know, it was nice. | 0:57:12 | 0:57:14 | |
Ballroom's decline was a slow drift away. | 0:57:20 | 0:57:23 | |
# The sweetest music This side of heaven... # | 0:57:23 | 0:57:29 | |
No-one really noticed as each year the dance halls closed, | 0:57:29 | 0:57:33 | |
only to re-open as bingo halls or nightclubs. | 0:57:33 | 0:57:37 | |
It's hard to imagine that ballroom dancing could ever have been thought of as scandalous, | 0:57:42 | 0:57:48 | |
especially when you see the sort of dancing that's done today. | 0:57:48 | 0:57:52 | |
And yet, it was. | 0:57:52 | 0:57:54 | |
But, for me, there was a romance about ballroom dancing. | 0:57:54 | 0:57:58 | |
There was an innocence. | 0:57:58 | 0:58:00 | |
Boy meets girl, a little bit of flirtation on the ballroom. | 0:58:00 | 0:58:04 | |
And people who still do it, that's what they're tapping into - | 0:58:04 | 0:58:08 | |
this feeling of a romance. | 0:58:08 | 0:58:10 | |
And for me, there's nothing like it | 0:58:10 | 0:58:13 | |
and, if you've not tried it, you don't know what you're missing. | 0:58:13 | 0:58:16 | |
Erin, come on! | 0:58:16 | 0:58:19 | |
# I'm saving the last Waltz for you | 0:58:19 | 0:58:26 | |
# In your arms I'm just longing to be | 0:58:26 | 0:58:33 | |
# Please don't forsake me | 0:58:33 | 0:58:35 | |
# Just let your arms take me | 0:58:35 | 0:58:39 | |
# I'm saving the last Waltz For you. # | 0:58:39 | 0:58:45 | |
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd | 0:58:57 | 0:59:00 |