The Devil's Work? Dancing Cheek to Cheek: An Intimate History of Dance

'In this series, Lucy and I are joining forces to uncover

'the British love affair with dancing.

'I'll be putting her through her paces on the dance floor,

'and she'll be giving me a history lesson.'

Lucy, chop chop, a little bit quicker please, time for lunch.

'From the 17th to the 20th century, we'll discover how much

'our favourite dances tell us about the nation's social history.

'From money and morals to sex and snobbery -

'you can find it all on the British dance floor.'

-Twerking, nothing new.

-Yeah.

-It's from the Charleston!

-Yeah.

'We'll visit fancy ballrooms to see how the other half danced

'and factory floors to find out what the rest of us got up to.'

Moira, I think Len's wiggling his hips.

'We'll dress to dance in perfect period style...'

I'm a bit of eye-candy for a lot of the ladies.

'..from the tips of our toes to the tops of our wigs.

'And each episode we'll experience the era's most iconic

'dances for ourselves.'

Back to your partner.

When are we ever going to get together and link arms?

The next, the next bit,

but we've got to get the tension between you here.

'As we learn them for a grand finale

'where we'll be dancing cheek to cheek.'

At the end of the 18th century,

knowing how to dance was a matter of social life or death.

But 150 years before that,

dancing hadn't been held in such high regard.

Some people felt that it was dangerous and depraved,

a social menace to be stamped out.

So what was it that lured so many people onto the ballroom floor?

And how did dancing go from being the work of the devil to high art?

LIVELY ACCORDION MUSIC

Today we Brits think of ourselves as a nation with no natural rhythm.

We're more bad dad dancers than kings of the dance floor,

with a few honourable exceptions, of course.

But in the 17th century, things were very different -

then we had a fearsome reputation for dancing, and foreign visitors

commented that all of us, rich and poor, young and old, loved to dance.

Dancing was absolutely central to our everyday life.

Instead of being a historical curiosity, this would have

been a common sight in villages throughout the country.

Back then we really were a nation of dancers.

# Get on your dancing shoes... #

And the simple reason for dancing's universal appeal was

the promise of romance.

400 years ago, men and women led very separate lives,

so dancing was a rare chance to get to grips with the opposite sex.

With the help of a group of performing arts students,

Len and I are recreating one of the 17th century's raciest dances -

the rather raunchy Cushion Dance.

# This dance it will no longer go

# I pray you, good sir Why say you so?

# Because Jane Sanderson will not come too

# She must come too and she shall come too and she must come

# Whether she will or no... #

Oh!

# Welcome Jane Sanderson, welcome, welcome... #

You may think that the Cushion Dance is really pretty innocent,

but 400 years ago, to some people it did cause a real problem.

The opportunities for nice young ladies

and gentlemen to flirt together, to touch each other, were

so tightly controlled that to more religious and conservative

members of society, the Cushion Dance represented danger.

They saw it as foreplay between unmarried men and women.

And one 17th century critic said that the Cushion Dance

was among the pretty provocatory dances used to

attract their clients by prostitutes.

# Princum Prankum is a fine dance

# And shall we go dance it once again... #

Whatever the killjoys said,

the Cushion Dance remained a firm favourite, and you can see why.

How else could you get your hands on the prettiest girl,

or the handsomest boy in the village?

I've got to get down? Oh, Jesus.

-SHE GASPS

-It's me!

# Welcome, welcome Oh, welcome, dear

# And thank you so much for this dance. #

-Kiss me, kiss me.

-Oh, yeah.

That's it.

THEY LAUGH

You can have one.

A century later, a very different dance - the minuet -

would provide those more at home in the court than the countryside with

exactly the same opportunities for flirtation amid the fancy footwork.

The minuet was the ultimate social test for upper crust Georgians

and it's the dance Len

and I are learning for a performance at our own 18th century ball.

Len was born with his dancing shoes on, but I need all the help I can

get, so I'm making a head start and joining a group of minuet novices

for a lesson with Darren Royston, historical dance teacher at RADA.

So really get that stretch to the leg. Keeping everything up.

Hello.

Hi.

Welcome to your class for the minuet.

Thank you, are you my master?

I'm your dance master, Darren. Nice to meet you, Lucy.

-Very nice to meet you.

-We're wearing quite nice colours to match.

Oh, yeah. This all looks very professional.

Look at this, look at this, they're bendy.

These people are bendy.

The minuet began life at the court of the French king, Louis XIV,

and soon became the height of 18th century fashion on this

side of the Channel.

It's a French dance, so it's the French that have taught us

how to open our legs, so...

here we are with our heels together for the first position, which

becomes the turnout that's going to be used in classical ballet,

when it develops.

So this is the beginning of these positions

that become standardised.

We're now going to look at the basic minuet rhythm.

It's a rhythm of six, but you're going to step only on the first beat

and then three steps on the three, four, five.

So it's going to be, one, two, three, four, five, six.

All we're doing is...

My dancing is usually completely spontaneous and rather wild,

it's not the result of hours of careful practice.

One, two, three, four, five, six and step...

But the minuet isn't a dance you can just make up as you go along.

One, two, try again backwards.

-Oh!

-Step, pause, one, two, three.

The minuet was the 18th century's answer to Strictly Come Dancing,

as couples performed in front of a crowd of critical onlookers -

reputations were made - and lost - on the ballroom floor.

HARPSICORD MUSIC STARTS

Forward.

Backwards.

I'm beginning to see why the Georgians loved and loathed

the minuet in equal measure - it's a fiendishly difficult dance.

She really concentrated,

she really wanted to try and be as precise as possible,

which was great, but I think a dancing master at the time would

really be concerned that what was happening was that things

were really stiffening up,

you know, in the legs and the arms, and she was starting

to become a little bit of a sort of a dancing mannequin rather than

a baroque princess, which is what we're really trying to create.

It's a minor miracle that the minuet did conquer the British

ballroom because 100 years before its heyday, dancing -

particularly with a cushion - divided the nation.

In 1633, one of the staunchest critics of dancing -

the Puritan William Prynne -

published his door-stopper, Histriomastix,

a furious attack on the theatre and on dancing.

Is this a thousand pages of anti-dancing ranting?

It is, it's an almighty assault upon,

particularly upon stage plays, but also branching out into many

other aspects of popular recreations at the time.

And he does have this hysterical driven section on dancing.

He talks here about

"sundry wicked men who have gone dancing down to hell."

I like that. "Dancing down to hell."

If you dance, you're damned. That's that is Prynne's message.

It says here, "It engenders noisome lusts, it occasions dalliance,

"chambering, wantonness, whoredom,

"and adultery, both in the dancers and the spectators."

Yes, so even watching it is likely to lead to kind of,

you know, horrible desires being fulfilled.

So dancing is tremendously dangerous

because of the way it brings men and women together.

There's one particular case which comes to mind,

a couple in 1633 who were accused of having sex against the maypole on

May Day after dancing,

not realising there was a bell hanging on the top of the Maypole.

-No way!

-So as they were, you know, er,

as they were at their business, the bells started ringing...

-They started to ring, did they?

-..ringing rhythmically.

And this of course brought the neighbours back out again,

and that's how they got caught.

But you know, it does kind of rather make the point that,

you know, there were connections between dancing and sex,

and it's a perfect case for a Puritan.

Isn't this fantastically like the Daily Mail

banging on about young people drinking alcopops?

It is. I mean, you see these things coming back again and again -

the dangers of...of youthful exuberance.

And specifically the dangers of youthful exuberance

when connected with dancing.

And at times of particular tension, whether it's, you know,

a socio economic tension or religious tension, it is

very often one of those things which flares up as a concern.

You know, this is dangerous.

I mean, raves in the modern times or rock'n'roll dancing.

It's there throughout...throughout time, I would say.

Prynne's book caused a sensation because it was

read as a thinly veiled attack on King Charles I and his wife,

Henrietta Maria, who was known to enjoy dancing in court masques.

Prynne paid a terrible price for his implicit criticism of the Royals,

he was imprisoned in the Tower

and for good measure, his ears were chopped off, too.

I find this all very interesting

because we're shaping up to the Civil Wars here, aren't we?

And we know that in the Civil War, we get aristocrats on both sides,

we get ordinary people on both sides, and dancing is something that

runs like a fault line throughout the whole of society, isn't it?

From Prynne's point of view, it's a moral issue,

it's a religious issue, it's right against wrong,

it's worldliness against godliness, it's purity against impurity.

And it does run into the Civil War,

and it's one of the many strands that runs into the Civil War.

MUSIC: English Civil War by The Levellers

In the middle of the Civil War, Puritan feeling was

so strong that Parliament banned the maypole, symbol of dirty dancing.

After six years of bloody fighting,

the Parliamentarians defeated the Royalists,

abolished the monarchy and executed King Charles I.

BELL RINGS

The anti-dance lobby were in charge,

but behind closed doors we never lost the urge to dance.

Ironically, it was at the height of Puritan power

that the first English dance manual was published.

If you'd come here to Temple Church at the Inns of Court in 1651

you could have picked up a copy

of John Playford's The English Dancing Master hot off the press.

In his preface, Playford admits that with the Puritans running the

country, it wasn't the ideal moment to be publishing a book on dancing.

As he says, "These times and the nature of it do not agree."

But even in tricky times,

Playford believed that dancing was an essential skill.

He says it's "a commendable and rare quality, fit for young gentlemen,

"making the body active and strong, graceful in deportment,

"and a quality very much beseeming a gentleman."

As it turned out, Playford was a pretty canny businessman

and judged the market just right - his book was a hit,

it remained in print for the next 70 years and went through 17 editions.

Not bad.

Playford's dances were so popular

that they remained a fixture on ballroom floors for decades to come.

Although they're called country dances,

they weren't aimed at your average peasant.

Playford had a more upmarket audience in mind -

the Gentleman of the Inns of Court.

FIDDLE MUSIC PLAYS

And forward now.

-Hello.

-Hello.

-Do join us.

I will.

I'm going to learn one of his dances

with their 21st century equivalents -

a group of young barristers -

in the same spot it might originally have been performed.

Oh! That was lovely.

I'm glad you enjoyed that.

So, what are you actually dancing, what is this dance?

We're working up to doing a dance called Hyde Park.

-Hyde Park.

-Yes.

-Oh!

So, it's from the early edition of Playford's English Dancing Master.

-May I join you, then?

-It would be lovely to have you.

-Oh, I'd love to.

-Yes.

Four ladies and four men.

-So we need to, er, sort...

-Well three men and a boy.

Oh, course.

I don't know if you'd like to dance with the lady next to you?

Yes, it would be my pleasure. Lovely to meet you. Oh.

We've got another couple, I think, there,

and another here and there. So it's a square set

and the head couples will stand one with their backs to the...

I'm going to be a head couple, I think. Rather than a head case.

-And the other head couple facing them.

-Thank you.

And you're on my right.

And put your lady on your right-hand side always.

And the side couples on the side couples.

So that's the square set.

Lovely.

I would suggest you hold hands.

Yes.

You turn slightly out now.

Gentleman, could you offer...? Like Len has, offered your hand.

-Oh, see.

-Palm up.

Always give the girl the upper hand.

That's what they have through life.

Very good, yes. Honour your partners.

MUSIC STARTS

Head couples.

By the time Playford brought his book out,

country dances had been popular for a century.

They were an essential accomplishment for anyone

hoping to make their way in the world.

That's it and...

Now the change.

Pass each other.

And through the arch.

The reverse.

Hold on, I'll go round here.

And honour.

MUSIC STOPS

Oh, blimey!

And these people that are learning the dance are barristers,

is that the sort of people that would have wanted to learn to dance?

Oh, definitely, they would have been the gentlemen from various

landed families from all the shires of England, and coming to London

meant that they could take lessons with the best dancing masters,

as well as going to good riding schools and fencing schools.

-There was a sort of a status symbol...

-Definitely, yeah.

..if you could dance well, or if you knew lots of dances.

Oh, yes, yes.

How popular were these Playford dances?

They started as an English vernacular form,

that's what I would call them, for all society -

they're not folk dances, they are for everybody.

-And then the French began visiting England...

-Oh!

..to collect this English country dance

because they had nothing like it in France at the time.

So they took the English version back to France

and then began to develop their own forms of it.

That spread it all over Europe, and then with emigration

from England, it went to America, to Australia, New Zealand, even to the

Caribbean. All over the world, there are traces of the country dance.

Whether it's the waltz, or the tango or the cha-cha-cha,

we're used to our favourite dances being exotic, foreign imports.

But Playford's dances were different.

These dances are a home-grown success story which we've

forgotten all about, because the irony is that today they're

much better known abroad than they are here in Britain.

When Playford's book first appeared, Puritan disapproval had kept

dancing hidden from public view, but in 1660, the monarchy was

restored and a golden age of dancing dawned.

In 1661, Londoners celebrated the coronation of their new king,

Charles II, and one of things they did was to erect,

on this spot, a massive maypole - 40 metres high.

It was to replace the one that had been cut down by the Puritans,

17 years before.

I think that Charles II - notorious philanderer -

would have been rather pleased at the sight of this enormous pole

rising once again, as he came past here on his coronation procession

from the Tower to Westminster Abbey.

And this new Strand maypole was richly gilded

and it had on it the royal coat of arms. The message was that

Charles was giving old English traditions - like dancing

round the maypole - his royal seal of approval.

MUSIC: Fashion by David Bowie

At Charles's new court, dancing took centre stage,

and the King was the peacock of the ballroom,

strutting his stuff in the latest French fashions.

# Fashion

# Turn to the left

# Fashion

# Turn to the right... #

At Gamba, they've been making shoes for royalty

and show business for over a century, and they've made me

a pair of dancing shoes fit for a 17th century king.

-Oh, ha, ha.

-Hi there.

-Ah, is this...?

-This is, yeah.

-These the shoes?

-Yeah.

'Charles was six foot two,

'but that didn't stop him sporting killer heels.

'This was a king who understood the importance of dressing to impress.'

Oh, no, look at that! Red heels.

Now, Helen, ignore this part, obviously.

What do you think?

What do you think?

Fantastic, it is definitely Charles II personified. Perfect!

And you can see here, Charles II is sitting here in all

his manliness, in his richness really showing off how his power,

his masculinity, and sitting really wide legged and really kind of...

-Yeah.

-..pumping it. But really very high heels.

Yeah, and was that the fashion to have a different coloured

heel or was it always red?

Well the red heel comes from the court of Louis XIV.

Around 1670, he ordered all the courtiers to wear red heels

as an identifier that you were part of his circle.

Were they made in those days to a similar...

in a similar way or were they different?

Well, Len, at the time, they wouldn't have had the shank.

A shank is a metal band in the sole that distributes the weight.

So when you have a heel like that and you haven't got the shank,

you can't really put all the weight on the heel.

-Oh, right.

-So you have to...

-Yeah.

-..move...

-Pitch forward.

-Yeah, yeah.

Because otherwise they would collapse, so the heel would just...

-Oh!

-..go backwards.

-So they were all mincing around, more-or-less...

-Yeah.

-..on the balls of their feet?

-Yeah.

-You're sort of...

-You had to.

-You're sort of mincing along a little bit.

-Yes.

-Yeah.

-Exactly.

And I guess they were ideal for dancing the minuet or whatever...

-Absolutely.

-Yes.

-Because you had to move...

-Yes.

-..much more on toes.

-Yes.

-On the balls of your feet.

-I must say, just wearing them here,

there is a sort of a grace and an elegance about them.

Yes. Exactly, you stand differently.

-And you stand somehow. Yeah, exactly.

-Yeah.

Your posture, I think they should resurrect this style.

-Get rid of the trainers.

-Yes.

-And let's get into these.

Absolutely.

I can't get over admiring my calf.

Yes, well, that's also, because the heel, as we know,

makes your leg look longer and the calf much rounder,

-which was a really attractive feature...

-Yes.

..in men at the time.

If, back then, your calves weren't very well developed,

was there, you know, was there a way of disguising that?

You could always improve on nature and you could, you know,

stuff a little bit of wadding down your socks or stockings.

And give that rounded desirable effect.

I would probably have to do a bit of wadding or

something in my cod-piece - to round it off nicely.

SHE LAUGHS

During his time in exile, Charles had stayed at the French court,

where he'd taken inspiration from his cousin,

the dance-mad King Louis XIV.

Louis had elevated dancing to a high art,

and his most accomplished courtiers weren't just expected to master the

correct steps, but to convey their deepest emotions through dance.

Ricardo, is it right that as courtier there are some things

I can't express to you

if we meet on the stairs or in a corridor,

but I can express them when we're dancing?

Absolutely, they were so crushed by all these rules of etiquette -

how to hold your arm, how to bow deeply if the person you're bowing to

-is much higher in hierarchy, etc.

-Hm.

With dancing, they could let the hair down because you not only

could express yourself a bit more, you were expected to.

So how am I, as a 17th century courtier, going to express

my passions? What kind of passions can I show?

Well, you just said exactly the wonderful word, according to the

Carte des Emotions, were passions.

Dancing is nothing if you just consider the steps,

you have to express yourself with the eyes, face, gestures

and convey your passions to the others.

For instance, if you talk about the courante,

in one single step, I have at least two emotions,

in one single step and that's one bar line.

The courante step, you raise majestically

but you slide as if sighing.

So this would be, for instance, Louis XIV saying,

"I have the power, but I'm just about to fall in love."

-Oh!

-"Cupid is my master."

What about something tragic and passionate and maybe melancholy?

OK, sarabande is the dance for you. It's pretty intimate.

That is the moment to show-off

your most inner deep secret passions and emotions.

-They're going to reveal my true soul to them now?

-Oh, yes.

What stories should I be thinking about to get

myself in character here?

The dance we're going to be doing is the Entre Dauphin.

The story is Orpheus going to Hell, trying to rescue Eurydice,

so the lyrics say...

Dieux des enfers. Helas! Voyez ma peine.

"God of Hell, please see my suffering,

"the one that I love remains chained by you."

So we need to be channelling Orpheus?

You're going to use your best rhetoric translated into dancing

and beg for Eurydice back, and you have to be pretty convincing.

And sink, raise, two, three.

Sigh, two, three.

Oh!

And three steps, dissemination.

-Hah!

-Hesitation.

-No, no, no.

Two and three.

Oh, yes.

One, two, three...

VIOLIN MUSIC STARTS And sigh, two and three.

One, two, three, steps.

One, two, three, hesitation.

Inside foot.

Outside foot, sigh. Three steps.

Hesitation again. Huh!

Huh, huh.

Learning to dance really well gave you undeniable sex appeal.

But when the diarist, Samuel Pepys, and his wife,

Elisabeth, let a dashing young dancing master into their house,

they discovered a darker side to the passions dancing aroused.

Pepys's wife, Elisabeth, had been hassling him

to get her dancing lessons.

She was ashamed that she couldn't do it very well. And this was to

do with class, too - she felt that it was a posh skill for her to have.

So Pepys engaged a dancing master called Francis Pembleton.

Pepys described him as "a pretty neat black man,"

but in the 17th century this just means that he had dark hair.

In no time at all, Pembleton was in the house twice a day

giving lessons, and Pepys was getting jealous.

"Friday, 15th May, 1663. Home, where I found it almost night,

"and my wife and the dancing master alone above,

"not dancing but talking.

"Now so deadly full of jealousy I am that my heart and head did

"so cast about and fret that I could not do any business possibly."

HE SIGHS

Now Pepys knew that dancing masters had a dodgy reputation.

One 17th century play describes how they'd be handling your thighs

and seeing your legs as they positioned your feet.

"But I am ashamed to think what a course I did take by lying,

"to see whether my wife did wear drawers today as she used to do,

"and other things to raise my suspicions of her."

Luckily for Elisabeth, she was wearing drawers.

Pepys was proved wrong,

but that didn't stop him from continuing to spy on her.

"Sunday, 24th of May, 1663. At church.

"Over against our gallery, I espied Pembleton...

"..And saw him leer upon my wife all the sermon, and I observed she

"made a curtsey to him on coming out without taking notice of me at all."

HE SIGHS

By this time, you do get the sense that Elisabeth was maybe teasing her

husband, winding him up by flirting with the handsome dancing master.

Eventually Pepys exploded with rage and he put his foot down.

No more dancing lessons.

For the next two centuries, dancing masters played

an indispensable role in polite society,

but they were often regarded with barely disguised disgust.

Many of them were French and were seen as sleazy foreigners who would

take any opportunity to get up close and personal with their pupils.

These dodgy lotharios became favourite figures of fun,

mocked for their ridiculous hair, their excessive frills

and their heavy make-up.

# Je vais et je viens... #

The complaints about 18th dance masters sound pretty familiar.

You know, sometimes my colleagues are thought of as being a little

bit camp, a little bit over the top, however ever compared to

those poor 18th century dance masters, we've got it easy.

You know back then, they were called the scum and the dregs of the earth.

Liberty!

And one, two, three, four, five, six.

You do it so dainty!

You do it dainty. You are, you know, you are.

-You've got that dainty look.

-But it still has...

Dainty in the feet, but stronger in the upper body.

By the beginning of the 18th century, anyone who was anyone

had to know how to dance the minuet.

We'll be facing our own trial by minuet at our Georgian ball,

so dancing master Darren Royston is busy reining in my more

flamboyant tendencies.

One, two, three, four...

-No, I know I went...

-You're presenting too much.

Yes, I'm going, "Oh, look at her, fantastic."

-You're going to be able to do that later in the dance.

-Oh, good.

But at the beginning, it's all very collected.

Once I think about the hands, the feet go straight out the window.

-Let's forget about the hands for a minute.

-Yes.

And go back to the feet.

And, one, two, three, four, five, six. Think of the turn out.

Think of the vertical. And one...

Stay where you are

and now do a balance to the right, balance, and balance.

But you still have to because this is La Belle Dance,

the noble dance, you have to keep everything in its first position.

So if you were doing this, you'd be called grotesque,

OK, because you, you were actually turning.

-I'd hate that if they'd said, "Look at him."

-But it's because...

-You have to keep that openness to show your nobility.

-Yes.

So, remember, the mirrors are there in Versailles

-for Louis XIV, so...

-Yes.

-You've got this whole idea of seeing yourself.

-Oh!

So you step, keeping that openness with the legs.

Are there going to be other people doing it at the same time?

-No.

-Oh, good. Cos then there's no-one to compare with.

-It's just you and Lucy, because the dance...

-Oh, good.

..where the two people are being tested.

I thought there would be

all these lovely, floaty people, all in their...

Well there are around, but they'll be criticising you.

Liberty.

Do you know what that's like?

No, I've only been on the side where we do the criticising. And...

And one, two, three...

'Ballroom dancing is all about keeping your feet perfectly

'parallel, so learning to turn them out feels completely unnatural.

'I'm so lucky I've got Darren here to hold my hand.'

-Now on the side.

-Yes.

Right and behind, side, front, and right, keep going that way.

-You have to be up on your toes.

-Right.

So you step, turn and step.

That's it, except you have to always be...

a noble style, that is the vulgar grotesque way.

I love the words, the grotesque and the noble.

I'm going to leave it to you people to decide which I am.

-Very good. Now shall I show you some hopping minuet steps?

-No.

It did get quite stressful for him really.

It's very different to what he's been doing before.

And of course, he's on show - the legs are on show in this time.

It's not...that's what's important.

So he is going to have to kind of really practice that.

Dancing masters of the time might have sort of called it

dancing grotesque because he's turning the legs the other way.

Once, the country had been split between those who danced

and those who didn't,

but by the 18th century, dancing had lost its dubious reputation

and the new sensation of the age - assembly rooms -

were opening up the ballroom floor to more people than ever before.

When the rooms here in York opened in 1732,

they were the most magnificent in the country.

When York Assembly Rooms opened, the subscription to belong was £25 -

that's £2,000 today.

But you could also - for sixpence - sneak up onto this roof,

in order to look through the window

and spy on what was going on down there.

And what they saw through this window was pretty much

a revolution on that dance floor, because this was Britain's

first purpose-built public space for dancing in.

It was public in the sense that admission didn't depend on

your title, or who you knew, it all came down to your ability to pay.

So this was a little step towards democracy in dancing.

For this totally new type of gathering, the architect

Lord Burlington designed the first neoclassical building in Britain.

Burlington's brief was to create a room 90 feet long with somewhere

for taking tea, somewhere for playing cards and a pissing place.

Other than that, he was allowed to do whatever he wanted.

So he modelled his masterpiece on an Ancient Egyptian hall - adapting

it to the Yorkshire weather with the addition of a roof and walls.

Everyone who aspired to be anyone was eager to bankroll the project.

So all of these people together paid for it to be built.

Yeah, raising about £6,000.

And how would you characterise these people,

they're not all dukes, are they?

There are five dukes, a dozen earls, but half of them

are general merchant adventurers or trades, Dr Cook, for example.

The Thompson family gave as much as the Burlington family.

They were traders, mostly in wines.

-A plain gentleman, look at him...

-Yes.

Richard Lawson, just a gentleman.

Would you say that this represents a sort of opening up of

Georgian society, a collapsing of the hierarchy?

I think it's a wonderful, egalitarian approach to assembly,

to allow people to aspire.

From Newcastle to Newmarket, Bath to Birmingham,

assembly rooms became a fixture of every Georgian town.

Dancing was only part of the draw - alongside the minueting

there was plenty of meeting and greeting and wheeling and dealing.

-There is...

-What's all this in front of the columns there?

This isn't here anymore.

-These benches were originally hard up against the wall.

-Right.

And that was the big problem at the beginning

because most people sitting on the benches couldn't...

-They couldn't see?

-They couldn't see what was going on.

The columns were in the way.

But more importantly, they could not be seen.

Oh, right, OK.

In the 1750s, the corporation realised that they had

to do something about it, so they moved the benches to the front.

Who was sitting on the benches, ladies?

The ladies waiting to be asked to dance.

-Oh, so it was like a shop window, choose your lady.

-Very much so!

The surroundings were more sumptuous

but the true purpose of the minuet at the assembly rooms was just

the same as the Cushion Dance on the village green.

But instead of choosing your own dancing partner,

a Master of Ceremonies made the introductions, pairing up

couples on the dance floor, who often ended up as partners for life.

This local lady writes that

"there's an extraordinarily good choice at the assembly rooms,

"200 pieces of women's flesh, fat and lean."

Oh, yes, there were many, many occasions where

deals were done and marriages were made.

So this was essentially a meat market,

but it has to be the most elegant one in Europe.

I think you're right.

As we prepare to run the gauntlet of our Georgian ball,

our manners will be as important as our minueting.

This was a world so regimented

and refined that one step out of line could spell disaster.

Fortunately, plenty of 18th century authors were on hand

to help the socially awkward.

Our bible for today's deportment lesson is

The Rudiments Of Genteel Behaviour, by Francois Nivelon.

The book really covers how to comport yourself in polite society -

how to stand, how to walk, how to bow

and just a few things about how to dance the minuet.

Oh, golly, so this is pre-dancing, we haven't even got that far?

No, there's a lot to learn before you dance a step.

I think one of the things is I probably need to swap you over, so

that the lady is on the gentleman's right, in the place of honour.

-Ah, OK.

-Ah!

It says here, Len, you've got to have

"manly boldness in the face, tempered with becoming modesty."

-Precisely.

-I've got that.

I've got that already, it's just a fluke of nature.

And of course, the humility of your face might mask deeper emotions,

and it's important not to show deeper emotions in a social situation.

So if I was in the assembly halls and there was

quite a nice looking girl over there with a fan in her hand,

-I wouldn't be sort of leering or...

-Definitely not.

You may wish very much to be introduced to her,

-but you wouldn't show by the merest flicker...

-Hm.

-..of expression...

-Yeah.

-..that your interest was other than polite.

-Of course.

So the first thing you need to do is offer her your hand to take,

and it's not just a question of going...

Come here, girl.

It really needs to have an extra motion.

Oh, yes, look.

She will place her hand in yours with a small circular motion.

Oh, round the front.

LEN WHISTLES

I think without the whistle would be better.

You can quite understand why this all died out really, can't you?

So, the gentleman has the lady under his thumb.

Oh, I don't like that.

OK, girl, let's go for a stroll.

See, a nice stroll along, a little walk, down we come.

-Remember your posture.

-Yes.

-Oh, yeah, yeah, forgot that.

Walk a little slower, smaller steps,

an elegant extension of the leg, turn out your feet.

Would this be the sort of speed that we would be going at generally?

Never in a hurry.

Never in a hurry, not too fast and not too slow.

Remember, you are here to see and to be seen.

Moira, I think Len's wiggling his hips. Huh!

Never, no.

-No hip wiggling.

-Are we doing well?

You're doing very much better than you did when we started.

I guess we're nearly there.

Are you pleased with me, Moira?

I think you're splendid, absolutely splendid!

For the dancing masters of the day,

the notoriously tricky minuet was big business.

And to find out how my 18th century counterparts taught it,

I've come to the Bodleian Library in Oxford.

In 1735, one of the country's leading dance masters -

Kellom Tomlinson - published The Art Of Dancing,

a lavishly illustrated how-to guide to the minuet.

Well, Jennifer, to be honest with you,

I've studied dance manuals for 50 years

and I haven't got a clue what any of this means.

Well it takes a while to get used to it

because it's telling you different things all at once.

On this particular plate, he's set out the basics of Beauchamps-Feuillet

notation, which was a dance notation system in common use by his day.

A different symbol indicated every movement of the foot -

a sink, a rise, a bound.

These were put together to form steps with a line showing

the dancer's floor pattern -

providing all the ingredients for the perfect minuet

And what exactly is going on here with all of, you know,

what are they doing?

I can see they're attempting to dance,

but there's a lot more going on than that.

There's a lot going on.

This is actually from the end of the dance, where they're

going to come towards each other and take a two hand turn.

-Ho!

-Exactly.

I've been told about this, and I'm looking forward to it.

So they're just coming in for the climax.

That's right, yeah.

And what you've got here, this is where Tomlinson is so clever.

He's given the music along the top of the page.

So that you know how much music is required.

He's written along the floor in Beauchamps-Feuillet notation,

-so you see that they're going to come in...

-Yes.

..and make a circle before turning to face the front again

to make their final bows and curtseys.

-And you'll see that they're making very close eye contact.

-Hm.

This dancing was very, very subtle.

The only time you made physical contact with your partner

was when you took hands.

You know they look so comfortable in their faces,

you know, so calm, but I would imagine that

their hearts are pounding at this point.

Oh, I think so because, apart from anything else,

this dance was danced one couple at a time with everybody else watching

and probably passing snide comments as well,

if they didn't like either of the dancers.

My expectations were that seeing this book would help me in

my quest to do a fantastic minuet, but I think actually

-it's just filled me with dread because there is...

-That...

-..so much to it.

-That is a very 18th century reaction.

And in fact, in the end, people had a love-hate relationship with

this dance, because they knew they had to dance it well.

They did not like the amount of work they had to put into it

or the fact that it was quite complicated.

And particularly in the English ballroom, there was huge

-problems getting men to get up and dance the minuet.

-Hm.

-And we can see why.

-Yes.

We've got just one dance class left before we show off our minuet

in public and, at long last,

I can get my hands on the Ginger to my Fred.

So I've finally got you both in the same room and so we can now

really do what is the minuet, a dance 'a deux' for a man and a woman

-OK.

-So the first thing is the final connection that

happens in the minuet, they're kind of soaring in to meet

and you're going to be as far away from each other as you can be.

So if, Lucy, you go over to this corner.

-And Len comes over here.

-Yeah.

-Aeroplanes in.

They wouldn't have called them aeroplane arms

in the 18th century, it's just that this picture

-looks like they're doing something like that.

-Yeah.

They're actually finding that glide and lift,

-a bit like an eagle soaring in.

-Yeah, soaring in.

-Soaring in, OK.

OK, soar.

Don't go too high too soon. OK, and back.

Then you're seeing each other, you're starting that,

exactly and just... THEY BOTH GASP

Just as you've done that. LUCY GASPS AGAIN

No, but you've got to go round.

Exactly, you've got to resist that temptation.

And as you see is it, that lift is going to start low down.

So we're going...

One, two, stroke, li...

Gradually lifting. Two.

And by two, you need to have landed on his arms.

-Oh! Hang on, so pretty quick.

-It's pretty quick.

-Ah!

-And, Lucy, you never turn your back

-Never turn your back on Louis XIV.

-Never turn your back.

-I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

Guillotine. No.

So that's the technique now.

It's always to keep your eyes on your partner.

-What I'm going to teach you now is the 'Z' pattern.

-Right.

This is the most important pattern in the minuet.

It's based on the serpentine 'S.' So you're making an 'S' shape.

But how the dancing masters taught it is by telling people to make a 'Z.'

-Right.

-Cos then it was very clear.

-It's almost as if this is a river.

-Right.

And you're going to cross it, so you can't swim, you've got to stay dry.

Now you're on the edge of that river.

You want to cross, but you've gone into the river bed,

see what I mean, so you stay on a very straight line.

-Very straight.

-And now you're going to cross the river

because there's a bridge all of a sudden, yes.

OK, the bridge is here.

So as you come, you're meeting each other, straight, straight.

That's it, you don't touch, you just pass.

And you don't turn your back on your partner,

-so you keep turning that way until you get to where Lucy...

-Was.

Was, over there, and where Len was.

Now crossing, one, two, three, four.

That's it, good, good, yes, yes, that's it, and keep going...

-Oh, apart again.

-And then back to your partner.

When the hell are we ever going to get together and we link arms?

The next bit, the next bit.

But you've got to get the tension between you.

-Oh, yes.

-That was the shape of it, that was to get that going.

Yes, looking at each other.

No. Yes, feel that feel that tension, the space, the distance.

Yes, now we can see it. Yes, lovely. Now, you want to meet her, don't you?

Yes, I do, I can't wait to get my hands on her.

You're only allowed to get one hand at a time.

-And it's my right one?

-And it's the right hand first.

-So we go.

So we come round and you're going to offer your right hand.

-You could take right hands.

-But it's more...

But the most genteel is you're just linking wrists.

'The minuet might look terribly formal and frigid.

'But like all dances,

'it was designed to bring courting couples together.'

And now the two hands that you practised earlier, in you come.

'In a dance with scarcely any physical contact, imagine how

'thrilling even the slightest touch of the hand would be.'

And now three...

And round, opening up.

One backwards, one, two, three, four, and step to bow.

So that's the whole dance?

That's the whole dance in the version we're going to do.

-It could go on longer...

-No, no, no, don't, don't.

But the 'Z' pattern is like a chorus...

-Yes, no, we want...

-..that you have to get right.

-Everybody is watching how you organise your space.

-OK.

-OK.

OK, so that was quite a momentous moment having Len and Lucy

together because of course we've been training Lucy up.

And you know she's so wanting to get the steps so precise that, of course,

I think it was a bit of a shock then with Len

so fluid, putting the two together.

Erm, I'm a little bit worried because that's going to...

They've both got to think about the space that they're dancing in

and not lose sight of each other.

Both of them had to really work hard to keep that

idea of the space of where they were dancing.

'When it came to cutting the perfect figure on the ballroom floor,

'a Georgian lady's secret weapon was her wardrobe.'

# I feel pretty

# Oh, so pretty

# I feel pretty and witty and bright... #

'Her dresses were ingeniously engineered to enforce

'the rigid posture demanded by the minuet.'

Breathe in.

I've straight-laced myself as opposed to cross lacing

because cross lacing is easier to undo

-and therefore it's only used by prostitutes.

-Quite right.

And also, you've got a back lace corset,

which is very much the symbol of the upper classes,

who would have required a servant

to have done this job for them, of course.

What's the next layer?

-OK, well you need one final addition to your corset.

-OK.

We need to include one of these, this is the busk.

That one's rather beautiful, it looks carved like a totem pole.

It is, this would have been carved by a lover for his fiancee, perhaps.

Huh! That's rude, he's saying I want to be between your breasts.

Very possibly, but perhaps we could interpret it as,

-I'd like to be close to your heart.

-Oh, OK, that's nicer. Yes, OK.

So he's put a lot of effort into doing that.

He has, you've got hearts carved into this part here,

we've probably got her initials there at the front.

That would be stuck down here.

It would, there would be a sleeve that it runs into

and this is going to mean that you can't lean forward at all.

There's something a bit S&M about all of this, isn't there?

It's about inflexibility, and all about creating that

wonderful graceful line that you will be cutting on the dance floor.

That's the way to look at it.

-Petticoat time.

-It is.

Right, arm coming through.

This is going to be the one that's actually visible to the public.

So even though it's called a petticoat,

which we traditionally associate with being an undergarment,

this is very much made to be visible and on display.

Now these sleeves seem a funny shape,

they're not straight like normal sleeves, are they?

No, they'll feel quite different, set a bit further back

and with a bit of a curve in them,

which is all again trying to help give you the right posture

for creating again that fine line and elegant appearance.

It's like some cruel ballet master has taken over the world

and is trying to get everybody to stand like that, right?

Yes, it's all about posture and having your shoulders back,

correct deportment and standing elegantly.

I'm embarrassed that poor Hannah's having to get so intimate with me.

Right, here we go.

-Yay, that's going in.

-That's it.

I think I look pretty fabulous.

And I think a lot of people would think that the Georgians

should look paler than this, more sort of pale pinks and baby blues.

I think that's a common misconception.

This was about making a statement, a statement of wealth.

But also bearing in mind the candle light,

by which they would be dancing.

You needed really gaudy fabrics

and distinctive contrast to actually see all that detail.

And look at all these little sparkly sequins that are set into it,

that must have glittered in the light of the candles.

Our day of judgment has finally arrived.

Lucy and I are preparing to debut our minuet at our very own

Georgian pile - Syon Park.

Where we're hoping to pass muster

with an audience of expert minueteers.

Ooh, look at you!

Oh, yes. Oh, yes - very George III.

At least they won't be able to see my feet

cos they'll be hidden under my dress.

-But yours will be on display.

-I'm not too worried about my feet.

It's just where they're going is the concern.

SHE LAUGHS

I'm hoping now I won't get in trouble for looking at my feet

cos I won't be able to see them, they're going to be hidden

-under my skirt.

-Yeah, all tucked up.

In fact, you could have faked it and had sort of a hovercraft effect.

You know, under there and you could just...

I could be on a trolley and you could be pulling me.

Yeah, and you could have just been led along.

There's so much to think about - the steps, the floor pattern

and all the subtleties of how you connect with your partner.

I now understand why the Georgians were terrified of the minuet.

After hours of coaching by Darren, new shoes,

new hair and a lot more leg then I usually show, all eyes are on us.

MUSIC STARTS

(Over to my corner. That way.)

APPLAUSE

Thank you.

We got all the way through!

I didn't know where I was.

MUSIC STARTS

So do you think we got a ten, then?

I don't think it would have been a ten from Len,

and I don't think it would have been a seven.

I think you were a good six.

A good six, oh, I'll take that.

And I was probably more a four.

Cos I was watching you to see where you were going

and just copying you, more or less.

Except when I led you astray.

You did lead me astray, you naughty girl.

They kept trying to hang onto the style, which was good,

but they didn't really get all those figures that were so important.

The symmetry went a little bit and

they would be criticised for that quite heavily.

We are used to fashionable dances coming

and going in the twinkling of an eye, so it's quite amazing that the

minuet was everybody's favourite dance for 100 years.

But by the end of the 18th century though, people were starting to

get bored of it and there was a new craze just around the corner.

Of course they were getting fed up with the dance,

they wanted something a bit more fun, they wanted to have

something a bit more physical. However, do you know what?

I wouldn't mind just one more go at it. What do you think?

-The last minuet. Yes.

-Come on.

THEY LAUGH

Next time, we'll be getting to grips with a rustic dance that

revolutionized the stuffy Victorian ballroom.

On the day, could I dance perhaps with you?

In this age of innovation, dancing became fast, frantic and giddy.

You've lost control of your vehicle, sir.

Etiquette was everything and we'll be following the strict

rules of the dance floor to dazzle at a high society ball.

Ladies and gentlemen, the new dance - the polka!