A Defense of Dancing

Whatever happened to dancing, real dancing? Why don’t young people know how to dance anymore? Take any social celebration on a large scale---wedding receptions, for instance. Sometimes, at the beginning of the evening, they’ll play some oldies for which the Baby Boomers will get up and shuffle once around the floor. Then, as the evening goes on, the DJ passes through the generations till at the height of the night, no one is dancing in pairs—everyone is dancing in cramped, disorganized groups: twisting and bouncing and making up dance moves on a solo basis, to the latest hip-hop and funk.

Once, I decided I really wanted to know how to dance; so my brother and I taught ourselves how to do “the Bop.” We only knew a few moves, but we danced together, and loved it—at the Fourth of July picnics in town, at the wedding receptions, etc.—and we invariably got comments and compliments from all sorts, young and old, who said they loved to watch us and that it looked like fun. Then, when I arrived at Christendom, I discovered that there is a dance almost every month. Soon I had learned basic swing, waltzing, box step, contra, and even a little tango. More than that, I got to know the wonderful Christendom gents who danced their feet off to make sure every girl got a chance to dance; I got to know better, too, the other girls as we chatted on the sides between dances. But outside of Christendom, it is very seldom I find people who really know how to dance.

Dancing in pairs, in a definite pattern and style, is one of the social customs that fell somewhat by the wayside in the sexual revolution of the past century. As rules about sexuality and social standards about the roles of men and women were thrown out the window to accommodate liberal feminists, so did other things that involved rules for men and women together, like dancing. People abandoned the dancing patterns of swing and started dancing solo, dancing “freestyle.” A few generations later, most teens today hardly know what real dancing is.

And yet, there are a thousand reasons to learn to dance. You learn to trust, learn to follow and lead, build friendships, grow in respect for each other—and even get the best exercise. But I feel there is a much more important reason for dancing in society today: dancing builds community.

There is no community without communion, and dancing is a form of communion. You and your partner, or you and the entire room, move together in a certain pattern, unified by that common goal and by the rhythm and flow of the music. The pattern—a complicated “lady’s chain” or simple two-step—is the set of rules, the structure, the boundary lines that keep you together. All communion requires a boundary of some sort, because all communion is a sort of binding—a bond. In a friendship, the implicit boundary line is a trust, the tacit belief that you will not betray or deceive one another. In a dance, the rules are the steps you follow. Like a train on its tracks, you can move all the freer when you stick to these boundary lines. They are what make the dance possible—and ultimately, they are what make it fun.

In his commentary on The Divine Comedy, G.K. Chesterton had some words to say about dancing. He realized that a cultural shift in the attitude toward dancing is a mark of modern times:

“. . . Dance stands . . . for order. The dance is, in its nature, a rhythmic and recurrent thing, returning upon itself and therefore, a perfectly correct and orthodox type of medieval moral theology. . . It marks the whole difference between medieval life and modern life. There was a break in history between the medieval and modern age and before that break, life was conceived as a dance, and after that time, was conceived as a race. Medieval morality was full of the idea that one thing must balance another; that each stood on one side or the other of something that was in the middle, and something that remained in the middle. There might be any amount of movement, but it was movement around this central thing, perpetually altering the attitudes, but perpetually preserving the balance. Virtues were like children going round the mulberry bush, only the mulberry bush was that burning bush which is the symbol of the Incarnation. Now since that break in history, the dance has turned into a race. That is, the dancers lose their balance and only recover it by running towards some object, or alleged object. Not an object within their circle or their possession, but an object which they do not yet posses. The flying object; the disappearing object. And as some may hold, a disappointing object. The dance is a rhythmic, a recurrent movement around a known center, while the race is a precipitating movement with an unknown goal. The latter has produced all that we call "progress", the former produced what the Medievals meant by "order." But, it was the lively order of a dance.”

To build a true community, you need to build mutual friendships, respect, and charity; in other words, you need to build communion, and real dancing can do that. People in every time and culture have realized that. Pioneers held barn-raising dances. Peasants in Poland invented the polka. Different cultures have each some unique way of folk dancing. When people celebrate life together, they dance—like David before the Ark.

It’s no secret that we need to build up our hometowns and parishes, our neighborhoods, to become true communities and not simply groups of people. Well, then, “why don’t we just dance?”