26 October

The waltz was considered scandalous when it began, due to the close touching of male and female bodies. We can laugh at that now, but what replaced it? Modern dancing is mostly individuals making stuff up (very often badly), and there's little if any touching. I think the decline of choreographed dances was a real social loss. Only the very best musicians can improvise well for example, now we expect everybody to do that, with dancing. It excludes so many from the activity. Plus dance was a sophisticated social thing, a way to mediate the relationship between the sexes. Replaced now with ridiculous 'consent' culture trying to paper over the void left by the stripping away of these sorts of frameworks. Like you're haggling over a second hand car.