Revolution on the Dance Floor 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.

HE LAUGHS

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...

-And then 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.

In the 19th century,

slow and stately court dances fell out of favour.

In their place, some humble peasant dances

captured the hearts of the Victorians.

These were faster, they were freer and they were a lot more fun.

But speed and scandal went hand in hand,

and as dancing became more democratic,

it also got more debauched.

As the dances speeded up,

couples went from dancing at arm's length

to being locked in each other's arms in a close embrace.

For the up-tight Victorians,

this was nothing short of a revolution on the dance floor.

This is the last place on earth you'd expect to find dancing!

19th-century Britain was defined by the Industrial Revolution.

Manufacturing changed for ever as machines created

a mechanised and monotonous workplace for the labouring classes.

Noisy machines, hard graft, 12-hour shifts...

It doesn't sound like there'd be

much time, space or energy left for dancing.

But dancing was still Victorian Britain's favourite entertainment,

and for a new breed of factory workers,

the urge to dance was as strong as ever.

There was no health and safety in those days,

the only protection they had were the clogs on their feet.

In places like this, Queen Street Mill in Burnley,

the workers danced in them to relieve their boredom.

Why did they clog dance in a place like this?

When the Industrial Revolution occurred

at the end of the 18th century,

people were very concerned about people becoming automatons,

being absolutely subsumed by the machinery.

And whereas before you'd have the artisan worker,

who sat at his loom and could take breaks, had his family around him,

it suddenly became this very alienating,

very...inhuman type of production.

I can imagine that there was one girl

who was making a bit of a clinky-clanky noise

and she talked to her friend and said, "Let's do it together."

And...and so it grew into what it is.

And that's exactly how clog dancing progresses,

it's one person showing a step,

another one saying, "Oh, I can do that a bit better."

-Or, "What about adding this bit?"

-Yeah.

-And it's always developing.

MACHINERY CHURNS RHYTHMICALLY

The machines were the music.

When you listen to the machines, they've each got their own rhythm.

The steps are actually called after the components of the machinery.

So we get "the cog".

We've got steps that look like the shuttle

shooting backwards and forwards.

Two up, two down,

which is the movements of the bobbins going across

or the shafts going like this.

If you look at the governor, that's what controls the whole engine,

it's really the heart of the mill, and you get that spinning round

in one of the other steps, the twist steps.

Step, twist, that's it.

Just a lot of those.

-Perfect!

-Ooh!

Ooh! Sort of.

Love it! I love... I love how they've taken these sounds,

these natural sounds and...and made dance out of it.

Oh. I don't like the arms, I only like the feet.

-All right, let's start like that.

-I'm going to link arms. Go.

Ooh!

Twist it! Oh-ho!

I'm doing it, sort of!

'Clog dancing became one of the first dances

'borne out of the daily lives of the working classes.

'I suppose it was the Victorian version of street dancing.'

-Whoo-whoo!

-HE LAUGHS

What a team!

While working-class people drew their dance influences from the factory floor,

the upper classes were taking theirs from the ballrooms of Europe.

The dance that really stood out in the 19th century

and which became the first modern dance craze was the polka.

Len and I will be finding out

what it was like to polka at a grand Victorian ball.

And to get to grips with this exuberant dance,

I'm meeting Darren Royston, historical dance teacher at RADA.

I have some deep memory from my childhood ballet lessons

that it goes step, together, step, hop,

but unfortunately that's about the limits of my knowledge.

And this one, I'm going to be dancing with Len like that.

We've got to be somehow as one.

That is quite a terrifying prospect, so we'd better get on with it.

Right, hello, everyone.

-Hello.

-Today's class is the polka.

A couple dance in the Victorian ballrooms,

but with rustic and peasant origins.

And all the dancing masters of the day wanted to introduce refinement,

so you were gliding through the floor while you were doing it.

Now, the polka is one of these round dances,

so you can't polka until you've waltzed.

So waltzing in the Victorian times just means turning,

it means a turning dance. So we're going to all come together

and start just waltzing around the room.

The waltz developed in the 18th century

as the European nobility refined boisterous Germanic folk dances.

The polka added a hopping step to the waltz's whirling movements.

Good. Right, now stop there. Good.

So now we're going to allow you to meet a partner.

This is going to be the same ballroom hold for the polka,

but it's been established through the waltz.

So you're waltzing round. Two.

One and a two.

DARREN HUMS WALTZ

The waltz and the polka were a world away

from earlier dances like the slow and stately minuet,

and they saw couples holding each other scandalously close.

-HE HUMS WALTZ

-Lovely! Hold it there,

-Are we feeling dizzy? Are you OK?

-It's so romantic!

-It is a bit romantic.

-I think we're falling in love.

-LUCY SIGHS

Now think of your little old feet

that are going to learn the polka hopping rhythm.

That's the bit I remember from my childhood dancing lessons,

-step, together, step, hop, yeah?

-Yes.

The hop is important, but all the dancing masters

-would be having a...a heart attack if they saw you hopping so high...

-Was that not a good hop?

..and jumping with your legs so springy,

because now it's about gliding along the floor.

-But for little girls doing ballet class...

-Are you saying that my hop was inelegant?

-Erm...yeah.

So the polka step involves a hop,

but keeps the foot very tight to the other foot.

And it's just a preparation before you do the polka step,

which is going to be a...glide, cut, spring.

Then you do your little preparatory hop with the other foot.

Slide, cut, spring.

Hop.

Slide, cut, spring.

-Hop. So remember all that refinement.

-Mm.

The steps have to be even smaller, even tighter.

And here we go. And...hop one, cut, spring.

Hop one, cut, spring. Hop one, cut, spring.

'I think she has to work very hard

'to kind of control that energy that she's got.'

It's hard to know what will happen when she's with a partner,

so next class will test that.

On the floor. And how do you do? And who are you?

And hop, step, step. And hop, step, step.

LUCY LAUGHS

In the early 1800s,

the new dances gave new opportunities for members of high society

to get tantalisingly close to each other,

creating perfect conditions for courtship and romance.

And the most exclusive place to meet YOUR eligible match

was Almack's, a club that once stood in St James's, London.

People called it the "Marriage Mart".

Getting onto the subscription list for Almack's,

the guest list, if you like,

was such a big deal that people even wrote poems about it.

All on this magic list depends -

fame, fortune, fashion, lovers, friends.

But if once to Almack's you belong, like monarchs, you can do no wrong.

The club was ruled with an iron rod

by seven well-connected women known as "the patronesses".

With the power to make society marriages in their hands,

they decided who could attend

and enforced strict regulations on correct behaviour and attire.

I've come to the ballroom of the Savile Club in Mayfair

to find out what it was like to dance

at Regency London's hottest nightspot.

I'm quite excited by the idea that we have these lady dragons in charge.

Is this girl power in a masculine world?

Well, in a way, it is.

In their connection with Almack's,

they were models of propriety, fantastically strict.

Even specifying, you know,

which girls were allowed to dance which dance,

depending on their good behaviour.

We've arrived at Almack's,

it's Wednesday night, it's ten o'clock, it's our big night out,

what are we going to experience?

Dancing itself would have been very traditional.

If you'd popped your head round the door, you'd have thought,

"Oh, they're just dancing country dances."

For the people involved, of course,

it's almost sort of electric because it's like speed dating.

BOTH LAUGH

Here are the young girls looking for husbands.

And here are the men thinking, "How much money has she got?"

You know, "Is she charming enough? Will she do well?

"What will the other people at Westminster think?" et cetera.

I mean, have tiny moments in which to make a great impression

and all the time you're looking and thinking, "Is that the one?"

-Although, probably...

-"Could it be you?"

-"Cold it be you?" Exactly.

-BOTH LAUGH

And the dragons also took their role as kind of marriage organisers very seriously.

So that if a young man had a ticket and he came for two years

and there was no sign of romance,

when he applied again the third year, I'm afraid he was thought to be out,

perhaps because he was not oriented in quite the correct direction.

Excellent.

-You're a dragoness yourself!

-I'm a dragon. I am!

-BOTH LAUGH

The rigid regime was not to everybody's tastes.

A visiting German nobleman remarked

that it was "like being at a cattle market".

So even people who'd got through the fabled doors of Almack's

could find it a little disappointing.

The dances were boring,

there wasn't much to eat, there was even less to drink.

By 1814, the lady patronesses were worried -

eligible bachelors were staying away.

So they took action.

They introduced a rather racy, new dance called the quadrille.

And when that didn't work, they even introduced

the dangerous, dirty, new dance that had been sweeping Europe...

This was the waltz.

MUSIC: Take This Waltz by Leonard Cohen

# Take this waltz

# Take this waltz... #

Whilst the upper classes were mingling in stuffy Almack's,

the lower classes weren't to be outdone.

After a hard day's graft in the factory,

they wanted to let their hair down.

Duty laws passed in 1825 slashed the price of spirits

and led to new drinking establishments

popping up across London.

They were called gin palaces, and it was here

that the working folk could drink and dance in luxury.

-So this would be quite a posh place for the working classes?

-Mm.

Exactly. Home would be perhaps one room in Bethnal Green,

where I know your own family came from,

with eight, nine, ten other people

living, working, sleeping all in one room in a grotty tenement.

So, coming in from the dark streets outside

into this beautifully lit, really ornate, palatial interior.

-They call it a gin palace for a reason.

-Yeah.

And, you know, given the chance between hanging out at home in a slum

and coming in here for a bit of gin and a knees up,

-you can see why it appealed to people so much, can't you?

-Yeah.

And what sort of dancing would they have been doing in these pubs?

-It wasn't a sort of sedate sort of stuff?

-No!

Quite a contrast to your formal ball, as you can imagine,

that the middle and upper classes would have been having.

There wasn't any waltzing, generally. This was kind of a class divide over the waltz.

The waltz was a bit posher. So they loved the jig, something they called the flash jig,

and the hornpipe, a lot of people would dance the hornpipe.

They had a clog version, the clog hornpipe.

They called it a knees-up for a good reason -

it really was very, very lively, very energetic dancing.

And we can see, this is an illustration by George Cruikshank,

he was Charles Dickens' first illustrator.

-Yeah.

-They all look a bit rough, don't they?

-Yeah.

-They all look slightly drunk.

-That woman's got her bonnet off.

-And I like... I like up here, the rules, you know.

-"No two gents to dance together."

-I know.

-SHE LAUGHS

"The gents should not dance in their hats."

Well, it's obvious that that's gone out of the window.

As it says on this illustration, "From the gin shop to the dancing room,

"from the dancing room to the gin shop,

"the poor girl is driven on in that course which ends in misery."

-Misery.

-Yeah.

-In misery, absolutely.

-These are anti-working class, anti-drinking propaganda.

-Yeah.

Well, I suppose, up until this point,

-higher society had had total control over everyone.

-Exactly.

-Yes, exactly.

-And suddenly there's all these girls and blokes,

you know, earning a few bob, not a lot,

-and off they went having a good time and they didn't like it.

-Exactly.

What they don't like is the kind of idea of working class factory girls,

who were the first kind of independent women,

having fun, getting drunk, out on their own.

The lower orders may have been flouting the rules of etiquette and decorum on the dance floor,

but the privileged classes in their ballrooms

were becoming ever more tightly corseted.

As the Industrial Revolution took hold,

it led to innovations in fashion which dictated the way we danced.

The waltz was a dance that was here to stay.

The steps would essentially remain the same,

but as the 19th century went on, the way they were danced began to alter.

And the waltz developed hand-in-hand with the fashions of the age.

The way you danced and the way you dressed were absolutely inseparable.

The earliest waltz dresses were nothing like

the rib-crushing corsets and billowing ball gowns we associate with the 19th century.

You're dressed 1810, thereabouts, the classical era of dance.

And you've got beautiful fine silk.

It's high-waisted, so it's emphasising your femininity

and making you look taller and thinner and more column-like.

And the hemline is much higher,

so it means that we can see your feet at all times.

-OK, so...

-So we're good to go?

-Yep.

HE LAUGHS No.

-Sorry, did I wallop you?

-Yes.

-HE LAUGHS

One, two...

'The waistline dictated the hold, and in this period,

'the gentleman's hands were placed very high up the back.'

It's the art of French waltzing.

And for the first time in history,

-we're dancing and looking into each other's eyes.

-Yes!

And the waltz is one of the only dances

where you actually do spend the whole time looking at each other as you dance.

Thank you. Next!

By 1830, the waist of the dress

had dropped and the skirt had ballooned in size.

It's made of stiffer fabrics to make them stick out more

and to show the luxury of the period.

-Supported by petticoats.

-And another one!

Including... You could have up to five or even six.

-But this one's corded.

-What does that mean, corded?

It's string, basically, sewn tightly into the petticoat,

so it helps the petticoat stick out

-and give you that beautiful twirl.

-Like a bell?

-I'm guessing that this is going to be about the twirling, is it?

-This was.

It's going to be the fastest that we do and it is going to be twirly.

Ah! So I guess that the hold has dropped down a little bit?

-I'm going to place my hand on your waist.

-Yes.

-And we're actually going to hold...

-Oh, down there?

-Just down there to balance out.

-So does that go there?

-Yeah. Yeah, just there.

-So this is going to be fast.

-It's going to be very fast. Ready?

-Yes.

And... One, two, three.

One, two, three. One, two, three. One, two, three.

One, two, three. One, two, three.

-You feeling giddy yet?

-Yeah.

SHE LAUGHS

-SHE PANTS

-Fine?

I'm coming back. Wargh!

Why did they want to be giddy like that?

-It was the thrill.

-It was the delirium?

-The delirium of the world whirling past.

-And the swirling of the skirts.

-And the swirling of the skirt.

I feel carsick! HE LAUGHS

The dresses then began to make use of Victorian technological innovations.

SHE LAUGHS

I look rather good, don't I?

You look amazing.

-I LOVE this.

-Mm.

-Are we in 1850 now?

-Late-1850s.

-Mm-hm.

-And you can see the waist is still at its natural height,

but it's much tighter in.

They'd invented metal eyelets,

steel boning in corsets, sewing machines.

We could get you into tight, tight fitted corsets.

-This is industrial ball gown business.

-This is industrial ball gown.

And to make the skirt bigger, more voluminous,

-of course, we still have petticoats, stiffened.

-Mm-hm.

-But this is the miracle, steel boning.

-Oh, wow!

So there are actual metal hoops under there called a cage.

-It's made out of steel?

-That's blue steel, so it springs.

So how does the skirt change the dance?

As you can see, the actual movement,

it starts becoming a lot less twirly and a lot more swirly.

-Swoopy and swirly!

-Swoopy and swirly.

So we're going to do a dance, the two-step waltz,

which means that you can actually slow down, speed up.

-Like a game of bumper cars?

-Yes.

-So you're now the driver.

Drive me.

BOTH LAUGH PIANIST PLAYS WALTZ

Looking into the distance somewhere.

MUSIC STOPS BOTH LAUGH

You've lost control of your vehicle, sir!

Thank you.

It's almost incredible that that's the same dance, which it is,

because it felt so different each time.

And it's the clothes, it's the dresses that made it.

If I hadn't have been wearing the dresses, I'm sure that I wouldn't have been able to pick them up.

The swing of the steel on this one.

Oh! it's like being in The King And I.

WALTZ MUSIC

The waltz was a highly fashionable dance,

but it could induce low morals and strong emotions.

For Lady Caroline Lamb, the 19th-century socialite and author,

the waltz became an all-consuming passion,

even to the detriment of the other loves in her life.

MUSIC: Come Waltz With Me by Frank Sinatra

Lady Caroline Lamb became obsessed with the new dance of the waltz.

These are pictures from her sketchbook

of people learning how to waltz.

What I like about these pictures

is that they don't show graceful couples swirling around the floor,

these people are struggling with it, it's difficult.

In her letters, Caroline Lamb

describes how she and her friends would practice waltzing all day

and then they'd waltz all night at balls.

In 1812, she was at the height of her waltzing frenzy

when she was introduced to the poet, Lord Byron.

She was the one who would call him "mad, bad and dangerous to know"

and the two of them quickly became lovers.

Caroline might have been head over heels about the waltz,

but Lord Byron certainly wasn't.

In fact, he wrote this poem about how scandalous this was.

"Say - would you wish to make those beauties quite so cheap?

"Hot from the hands promiscuously applied

"Round the slight waist, or down the glowing side."

It's been suggested that Byron hated the waltz so much

because he was born with a club foot,

which meant he couldn't dance it himself.

The sight of Caroline waltzing in another man's arms

made him so jealous that he made her promise

she would never dance the waltz again.

Caroline was so besotted that she did what he asked and she gave up waltzing.

But their affair didn't last long,

Lord Byron's wandering eye saw to that.

They broke up, and when they met each other for the first time afterwards,

it was at a ball and she said to him, rather bitterly,

"I suppose I CAN waltz now."

Byron's reply was, "With everybody in turn.

"You always did it better than anybody.

"I shall have great pleasure in seeing you."

Now that was a pretty devastating put-down.

Caroline went and hid herself in a side room

and there she got hold of a weapon.

Depending on which source you believe,

it could have been a knife or a pair of scissors or a bit of broken glass,

and she tried to slit her wrists.

She wasn't successful, but blood did go all down her gown.

This became a society scandal and Caroline's name was blackened.

And people thought that this was all

because of the dangerous passions aroused by the waltz.

WALTZ PLAYS

Scandals like this unsettled the upper classes.

And by 1816, the national newspapers were outraged by this intimate couples dance.

The Times got really, really angry about it.

"So long as this obscene display

"was confined to prostitutes and adulteresses,

"we did not think it deserving of notice,

"but now that it is attempted to be forced on the respectable classes

"of society by the evil example of their superiors,

"we feel it is our duty to warn every parent

"against exposing their daughters to so fatal a contagion.

"And we trust it will never again be tolerated in any moral English society."

The waltz caused such a stir, heaven knows

what would have happened if they'd been twerking!

Even though the waltz continued to draw criticism in the press,

the dance crazes of the 19th century couldn't be stopped.

By the middle of the century, a new raucous folk dance, the polka,

was set to take the nation by storm.

# The p-p-p-p-polka

# It is p-p-paradise

# And you got to d-d-dance it

# Cos it's, oh, so n-n-nice... #

First performed on the stage in Britain in 1844,

it was an instant hit in the ballroom

and, for a while, overshadowed the waltz.

The polka got absolutely everybody onto the dance floor.

From Queen Victoria down, it was a dance with truly universal appeal.

# The p-p-p-p-polka is the d-d-dance for you. #

The polka's story had begun in the early 1800s

in the fields of Bohemia, now known as the Czech Republic.

A teacher called Joseph Neruda taught his students steps

he had seen a young servant girl performing,

and in no time the dance was sweeping across Europe.

The polka is still a strong part of the Czech identity,

which is why I've come see how it's performed

at the Czech and Slovak Club in London.

ACCORDION PLAYS POLKA

LEN LAUGHS

-Hello. Nice to meet you.

-Hello. Nice to meet you.

Oh! Whoa-ho-ho, lovely!

Oh, I like it. I like the feeling of it. It's got...bounce to it.

It comes from eastern part of Slovakia which is called Saris.

That's the name also, Sariska polka.

LEN LAUGHS

Oh! What I would love is to see it danced.

WOMAN YELPS

-MAN:

-Hey! Hup!

WHISTLING

WOMAN YELPS

WOMAN YELPS

WOMAN YELPS

-Hey! Hup!

-Wahey!

Oh, I love it!

Oh, yes! You get a ten from Len!

Now, how do... How do you hold to begin when you went round in the great circle?

-Like this? Which foot do you begin?

-So your arm...

-Yes, was here.

-..is in the air because you are very happy.

-I'm happy and I'm proud.

-Yes.

-I'm proud to be part of your nation!

-I am a Slovakian peasant!

-Yes.

Yes. What's a typical peasant name in Slovakia?

-Janno.

-In future, I am not Lenny, I am Janno.

-SHE LAUGHS

-Janno, the peasant farmer.

-So how do you go?

-So...

LEN HUMS POLKA

Nice. LEN HUMS POLKA

BOTH YELP

WHISTLING

One more time.

Left leg...opening out.

-Wah!

-WHISTLING

'The passion for the polka was unprecedented,

'and it chimed with this age of ingenuity.

'The Victorians dubbed it "polkamania".'

I can see why people went crazy for the polka -

it's a dance full of life!

In Victorian England, the polka was such a phenomenon

that canny entrepreneurs cashed in on its popularity.

All sorts of things were named after it, polka hats, Polka Street, polka pudding,

in the hope that they'd be a big hit just like the dance.

Most polka spin offs vanished without a trace, but one,

the polka dot, has certainly stuck around.

-Cheers, everyone!

-ALL: Cheers!

MUSIC: The Blue Danube by Johann Strauss

DOG BARKS

The 19th century was an age of brilliant innovation.

Brunel was changing the world with the marvels of engineering

and new possibilities for communication, travel and trade were opening up.

And in middle-class homes, entertainment was to change radically

with the invention of the upright piano.

This one belonged to three sisters,

they bought this piano second-hand in 1833.

The eldest of them, Charlotte, had to give up playing

cos her eyesight wasn't good enough.

The youngest one, Anne, was a lovely singer,

but the musical star of the family was the middle sister, Emily.

She could play with precision and brilliance.

SHE PLAYS THE BLUE DANUBE WALTZ

But they weren't just any old middle-class family.

These three were the world famous novelists, the Bronte sisters.

And it's very exciting for me to be able to play their actual piano.

SHE PLAYS THE BLUE DANUBE WALTZ

Derek, what difference did it make

when these new upright pianos came in?

Well, this one that we have here is 1820s, late-1820s.

At this time, someone had the inspired idea

to put the strings vertically instead of horizontally.

So the immediate saving was on space

and people could gather round and listen to the pianist.

-And were they status symbols?

-Oh, yes,

like owning a car in the 1950s or early-'60s,

when, you know, not everyone had these.

And you would find a way of affording a piano.

In fact, hire-purchase was invented

specifically to enable people to buy pianos.

And what kind of music were the Brontes playing on it, then?

Of course, you could play your sonatas, you could play the classical repertoire,

but in the home and particularly entertaining visitors,

songs and dance music was what went down best of all.

Very quickly, the waltz and the polka took over as THE popular dances.

Is it fair to say that of all the danceable waltzes,

the most famous is The Blue Danube?

Oh, without a doubt. I think so.

This was a piece that sold in immense quantities.

The publisher used copper plates,

each one could produce 100,000.

Within five years, they'd worn a copper plate out.

By the end of the 19th century,

I think he'd used 100 of these copper plates,

so it's the first million-seller, really.

Let's have a go!

-OK.

-All right.

THEY PLAY THE BLUE DANUBE WALTZ

By the 1850s, the polka's popularity was pushing the waltz to one side.

After getting fired up by the Slovak polka dancers,

I'm looking forward to meeting Darren

to see how the dance was performed by the more reserved Victorians.

-Your pupil is here.

-Great. Nice to see you, Len.

-Nice to see you.

-I've got great news.

-Yes?

-The polka.

-The polka?

-I think I know it.

-OK.

-Sort of. Yeah.

-Right, what's the polka then?

It's a skipping, galloping, hopping-type dance.

It goes something like this.

LEN HUMS POLKA TUNE

# And round the block

-# And that's the way to polka! #

-All right, I've got to stop... I'll stop you there.

-Yeah, that's absolutely right...in a way.

-In what way?

What we're going to be looking at is in the 19th century

when the polka took on as a big fashion in the ballrooms,

they had dancing masters like me, who wanted it a lot more refined than that.

-Refined?

-Refined.

Because ballrooms now had these beautifully polished floors,

so instead of all those wild hoppings and kickings,

it's all about refinement, sliding

and very much about where the feet are.

You've disappointed me. So what we're going to do is refine it?

Refine it.

And round we go.

That's it.

Now, this is no disrespect to Lucy,

who I am looking forward to dancing with,

however, on the day...could I dance, perhaps, with you?

The polka wasn't the only popular dance of the 19th century with rustic roots.

Britain own home-grown country dances also enchanted the nation.

-BAGPIPE MUSIC

-After you.

-Thanking you.

FIDDLES PLAY A REEL

The Scottish reel had been around since the 16th century,

but it was made popular by Queen Victoria.

She found the polka a little bit too racy.

During trips to Balmoral,

she preferred to indulge in this more wholesome type of dance.

Right, the good thing about wearing a kilt against trousers,

-you actually don't need to take your shoes off.

-That's very true.

-Yes, see.

-Very true.

-Right, now let me get these trousers off.

-So, what were you doing just now?

So we were doing a country dance called Mrs Mcleod.

And it's the sort of dance that Queen Victoria

would have been taught by her dancing master, Joseph Lowe.

Some people would be surprised to think of Queen Victoria,

who we think of as having weight issues,

skipping away on the dance floor. Was she any good at it?

Well, she certainly was very enthusiastic.

We've got lots of records from Joseph Lowe's diaries

to say how much she enjoyed the dancing,

that she'd join in with her children, local people,

and clearly she got a lot of pleasure from it.

She did at one time confide in her dancing master

that she was a bit worried her style of dancing

might be a bit too masculine.

Have you got something slightly larger?

Slightly larger? Well, I...

This one's slightly shorter, but it might go round.

The girls...the girls would like it, you know.

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

Give me a little...a little picture of the family dancing from Lowe's diaries,

-from the dancing master's diaries.

-Well, it would be very informal,

the Queen and her family doing a reel of four perhaps, or a reel of Tulloch,

and sometimes this would go on until three o'clock in the morning.

Clearly, they were having a great time.

In fact, Lowe was almost thinking they were having too much of a good time.

-Ooh!

-Now, does that give you a little more comfort and confidence?

-Ooh, now!

-Ooh! I always like a girdle! Oh, yes.

-LAUGHTER

The Queen and Prince Albert had fallen in love with Scotland,

buying Balmoral in 1852 so they could retreat there every summer.

With this royal seal of approval,

the Highlands and its dances became all the rage in Victorian society.

The Eightsome Reel is THE most celebrated Scottish dance and it's easy to see why.

And one, two, three. Two, two, three.

Left, right. Left, right.

And one, two, three. Two, two, three. Left, right. Left, right.

-Lovely.

-Very good.

-Now then, Len.

-Yes?

-For the men, it's all a bit more robust.

-Good.

-That's what I want.

-So we start the same as before. One, two, three.

-Yeah.

-Two, two, three. But instead of doing those rather dainty points,

we're going to do high cuts.

-High cuts are for men, real men.

-High cuts?

-High cuts, yes.

-Show me a high cut.

-So we'll lift our left leg behind our right calf.

-Oh, no.

-Then that.

-No!

-That and that.

-LAUGHTER

-That's not manly at all.

-I've got to be honest with you, I'm cheating.

-Are you?

I am. I'm doing whisks in the samba.

Two, two, three. Three, two, three.

-OK.

-Four, two, three.

-Len, left, right, left, right.

-Oh, shut up!

LAUGHTER

One, two.

-And...left, right.

-Ooh! Way-hey!

-APPLAUSE

-Wahey! No, no, no!

-LAUGHTER

Oh!

That's it.

And back again.

You missed that bit.

During Queen Victoria's reign,

a quarter of the world's population was under British control.

It was on the nation's playing fields

that public schools taught the future men of industry and empire.

Dancing lessons were pushed aside

as sport gave the young men their fighting, competitive spirit.

Ohh!

In spite of the popularity of the polka,

as the end of the century approached, high-society men

retreated from the ballrooms as they no longer knew how to dance.

And with all this talk of empire,

dancing was now viewed as effeminate,

as a letter in the press pointed out.

"When nature built man, she gave him an arm to wield a sword and a foot to tramp the world,

"but never a toe to trip with light and airy tread

"across the polished floors of a 19th-century ballroom."

It's extraordinary that those Victorian attitudes of men dancing have never really gone away.

Men still worry that dancing isn't what real men do.

And, crazy as it sounds, there are plenty of men who still believe

that dancing really well is actually more embarrassing than dancing really badly.

-He's got him!

-Whoa!

MUSIC: Polka Face by Weird Al Yankovic

Right. Lucy, we better get warmed up for this,

-we don't want to pull a fetlock.

-SHE LAUGHS

50 years earlier, at the peak of polka fever,

The Times was reporting that dancing masters had to work "day and night"

to keep up with the demand for polka lessons.

We want to polish our steps and see how it feels

'to dance together in the Victorian ballroom hold.

'So we've come for a class with our dancing master, Darren.'

Here we are! Have you been practising?

-Yep!

-Cos this.... He's been teaching you his...his rough polka.

We've got to do the finesse, it's got to be the stylish one we've been doing in the class.

This is the first time you're going to be dancing together in a close-couple dance.

Now you are literally in each other's arms.

And later, you're going to have to deal with the costumes, but forget that for a moment.

-Yes. Let's just have a go at it.

-Have a go without the music.

-Are you ready? And...

No...you haven't done that.

So Len's giving you the preparatory hop.

One, two, three. And a one, two, three. And the dainty step.

And a one, two, three. And a one, two, three.

LEN HUMS POLKA TUNE

Yes, now the thing is, Len...

-Yes, yes, yes, yes!

-I've got it. Oh!

-Stop, stop, stop!

It's just too rough! It's too rough!

We need to make it fine. Finesse!

Remember, this has come from the waltz.

Remember, this has come from a beautiful turning dance.

And then they've just added a little hop, when they need it.

-OK?

-Yes.

-To get the light and airiness of the dance.

-I'm sure it will come better when I'm in costume.

-I'm not so sure about that, but let's see.

'Both of them have come on a lot. This is now in Len's territory,

'but everything that I'm trying to get him to do is before the time

'that it becomes a set couple dance, so he's having to unpick things.'

With Lucy, she's now dancing with someone, in someone's arms,

which is very different to what she's been doing before.

'They've got quite a way to go. It's still a bit raucous and wild,

'and if they can find that refined delicacy, then they'll be really doing something quite special.'

-DARREN LAUGHS

-Well done. Well done.

Lucy, you're supposed to be an academic.

SHE LAUGHS

With men losing interest in the ballroom, late-Victorian ladies

turned instead to solo dancing of a type first seen in places like this, the Normansfield Theatre,

which was once a 19th-century music hall.

Music halls had been places for working-class entertainment,

but now they were drawing in

all levels of society with their variety acts.

The one that grabbed female attention was the skirt dance.

APPLAUSE

Now that I have to try.

Now, do you see a beautiful elegant butterfly

or do you see a great big hefferlump?

Oh, a beautiful butterfly.

What exactly was the status of the dance?

Because it came from the lowbrow music hall, didn't it?

It was... It was a very strange mix

of, I suppose, high art and low culture.

Is it quite respectable? I do feel a bit underdressed.

Well, I think classical attitudes

were still considered quite popular at the time.

So I suppose you have the idea that if one's covered in white drapery

it's...it's like the classics, it's artistic.

Oh, well, that's a good get-out clause.

So what are the moves, then?

Well, they... I like to think of them...

They were natural world-inspired, like flowers, shells.

Up, two, three, four. Down two, three, four.

When you do that, you look like the girl in an Art Nouveau poster

with all of those swirly shapes.

Well, that's what those posters come from, it's based on these girls.

-From this dance, I suppose.

-Yes.

-Oh, isn't that brilliant.

I think it's really interesting that this upper-class dance

emerges from the lower-class tradition of the music hall.

And I think that if you were a lady used to being led around in an overheated ballroom

by a man who wasn't very good at dancing, then this must have been a revelation.

It's airy, there's freedom, there's elegance.

It must have been like a breath of fresh air.

In the last dress rehearsal before our polka finale,

I'm getting the point of these Victorian undergarments.

They may look cumbersome, but when you're dancing, they feel great.

It feels very swirly-whirly.

And I'm sure this will help us to...glide,

because we've been doing too much skipping and leaping and not enough gliding in this dance so far.

So, hopefully, this will help with the fancy footwork.

-"The most elegant people..."

-That's us.

Yes, we're the most elegant people.

"..and the best dancers always dance it in a quiet and easy style."

-A quiet and easy style?

-A quiet and easy style.

-But we like skipping around.

-I know, I know.

-"And those gentlemen who rush and romp about..." Is that you?

-Yeah.

That is you, it's you.

"..dragging their partners along with them until they become red in the face

"and covered with the dewdrops of a high corporeal temperature..."

-That's sweat.

-In other words, sweat. That's right, sweating.

"..are both bad dancers and men of very little good breeding."

-Ah!

-So it's good breeding that we need to show in this dance

as you're hopping and enjoying yourself.

The music will be playing the introduction

and you'd go...hop, one, two, three.

DARREN HUMS POLKA TUNE

Try not to look at the floor, try and look around at the way you're going.

And...bring your lady to a rest. A little bow.

A little curtsy.

The lady moving on.

And...meeting the next lady.

Prepare. And...hop, one, two, three.

Up, two, two, three. Up, three, two, three.

What a transformation.

With all those undergarments on, she's started to understand

what it was to control her own body and to let the man lead her around the room,

by being free and easy and enjoying it.

So I'm hoping that all that sort of romping has disappeared now

and she's able to just glide.

She says she'd like to be like a swan

and I think that's probably the image she just needs to hold on to now.

She's still got to work hard, but on top, she's looking beautiful.

The refined steps of the polka required refined accessories,

and a Victorian lady had to make sure

she was equipped to impress at the high-society balls.

-Oh! Hello.

-Hello.

-Come in.

-If I fit.

-I think you will.

-I'm looking forward to seeing some Victorian accessories.

-Good.

'I've come to meet Bridget, an expert in Victoriana, to make sure I'm prepared.'

So, Bridget, I admit that I'm not fully ready to go to the ball, am I?

Well, you just need a few accessories which any young lady would have had.

Now, we'll start with a skirt lift.

-You clipped the hem into... It's a bit like a pair of sugar tongs.

-Ah! Yes.

Right, now, if you hang onto that, you would then thread a ribbon or a cord through

and you would hang it around your waist,

so that you've got your hands free to dance.

I feel like a Christmas tree that's only half decorated!

Give me some more ornaments to dangle off me.

I think you would have needed a posy holder, mother-of-pearl handle.

-Can I put my finger through that?

-You can.

-So I can hold hands with my partner

-and my little bunch of flowers is poking out.

-Yes.

And in case he wasn't smelling too fresh, you see.

-Oh, the flowers are between me and him! Yes, excellent.

-Exactly. You've got a little nosegay.

Now, if we look at a tiny scent bottle, which you might have in your purse

to keep yourself fresh during the dance.

That's the smallest scent bottle in the world!

And if you look at the size of some of the little purses,

you know, that would be a little coin purse.

-Oh, look at that bottle!

-It is adorable.

-And you would just...

-That's the cutest bottle I've ever seen.

Another thing that you would have had on your hands,

again, because it used to get very hot and sweaty,

-you might have had a very fine pair of little mittens.

-Oh!

-Now, those are terribly delicate.

-They're not going to fit me, they're too small.

-But it would stop the palms getting sweaty as you were dancing.

-Yes.

And another accoutrement which would be extremely useful is a sort of pomander.

And it's made of vegetable ivory and it has little holes pierced in it and you put scented wax in here.

-And you could again use it to keep your hands cool.

-Is that to rub onto my hands?

-Yes.

-Or to make your hands fresh.

-And to make them smell nice as well?

-Yes.

-It's like hand sanitizer.

-It is.

-Oh, that's brilliant!

-Then we would move on to your ball card.

-Essential.

-Absolutely essential, because...

It's absolutely, astronomically tiny.

What are the rules for operating with my little programme, then?

Well, one of the things that you have to be careful of

is not to allocate too many dances to the same gentleman,

because that would be seen as compromising.

If somebody books a dance with you,

then to say that you hadn't got it, to rub it out,

to say that the message hadn't come through would be viewed as extremely unkind and bad manners.

So once the person's on the card, I really have to dance with them?

-Yes. It is...

-It's like a commitment.

-It is.

If I'd said I was full up and then he saw me sitting out a dance,

-I'd be caught out, wouldn't I?

-You would be caught out.

And you'd have to say you've got a sprained ankle or something,

but then you couldn't dance for the rest of the evening.

You're devious! You're devious! I like it!

I think I might at last be ready to go to the ball,

with my skirt lifter, my posy holder, my hand freshener,

my perfume bottle and my teeny, tiny dance card.

But, actually, I feel like I'm about to sit an exam,

maybe A-level Ballroom Studies.

What are all these things for? How to use them? When to use them?

But, really, I think that might be the point.

The Victorians wanted to set me a social test

to see if I belonged in their ballroom.

At last the day has arrived for our final performance of the polka.

I now feel like a perfectly poised Victorian lady.

I must remember to curb my enthusiasm for wild leaping!

-Here we go.

-Let's do it.

Now, focus, a few deep breaths.

Are you ready to polka?

-Guess so.

-Let's go!

'And I've got to make sure that I behave like the model Victorian gent

'to fit in with our grand surroundings.'

Ladies and gentlemen, the new dance, the polka!

APPLAUSE

BOTH LAUGH

LEN SIGHS

Well, we got through that all right, didn't we?

I thought we did it all right, you know.

Yeah, I thought that. I was amazed that we didn't go wrong, actually.

How they could dance it all night long, over and over,

-is amazing to me.

-It's the heat that's the problem, isn't it?

I haven't got a fan today cos I needed both hands for this dance and, boy, did I miss it.

-Oof!

-But I can see the fun that they had doing it.

-Yeah, it's nice and bouncy that one, isn't it?

-Yes.

-It's jolly, it's bouncy, you can get into it.

But you're not allowed to, as Darren kept telling us, you're not allowed to romp.

However, let me just say, do you want to do it once more?

-OK.

-Shall we?

-Well, while we've got our shoes on.

-Come on.

-Let's go.

BOTH GROAN

Next time, I'll be taking Lucy on a little trip to the Tower.

-Shall we?

-Let's!

-Ho-ho!

I'll be getting a taste of the 20th century's

first true dance craze.

Before trying something a little less exotic.

You have to jingle your legs.

You can't just kick them, you have to jingle them.

-That's it.

-And we'll be doing our best to impress...

Is he supposed to do it like a fairy?

..at our very own 1920s nightclub party.