Social Dance

The books details how Canadians who dance for social reasons have made it: a fun activity, exceptional exercise, spiritual awakening, and a therapeutic medium.

Discover the incredible world of social partner dancing. Complete beginners welcome. Learn in your living room or on an enormous dance floor. This is the second edition of a book previously called the Partner Dance Handbook. It teaches a “social” style of dancing common on dance floors around the world. This is different from the “formal” style seen in shows and on television. This social style is easier to learn for beginners, is arguably more musical and interpretative and can offer variations if you are already a formal dancer. Note that most other books and videos teach the formal style. The author’s experience is that at social dances this social style is far more common; obviously though this can vary from place to place. The author, Dr Duncan James, has taught thousands of people to dance in person at his classes and thousands more to dance via his YouTube channel. You can learn with Duncan for free on YouTube with his 44 free instructional videos. However, the videos and this book were created at the same time to work together; getting this book will give you a richer learning experience. Note that this book has no illustrations as it relies on the videos which are linked for free from the text. The particular benefit of this book is that it goes into much greater depth, appropriate for keener students. This book and the videos are designed to work even if you only have a small space available for dancing. How to Partner Dance Socially will guide you from complete beginner all the way to popular social dancer in the ballroom dances of foxtrot, quickstep and waltz and the latin dances of rumba, salsa and cha cha. A unique, practical approach means you will quickly learn to navigate a crowded dance floor, feel the music, improvise and enjoy dancing with your partner. A couple who have never danced before can realistically join a social dance (and not look out of place) after only an hour of practice with one of the complete beginner lessons. Advanced dancers can use some of the simple social moves as variations, work on the connection with their partner, learn to recycle moves between dances and discover ways to improvise to the music. If you are a teacher this book has detailed teaching advice and lesson plans. Remember this book is teaching a “social” style of dancing and not the “formal” style. The 44 companion videos can be watched on YouTube for free (via links in the text) or downloaded for free as a zip file (a link to this is also included in the text; the download is provided by the author and is limited by his internet host to a certain number of downloads every month). Buy How to Partner Dance Socially now to join in the fun on the dance floor!

A step-by-step guide to learning five different social dances including the swing, cha-cha, fox-trot, waltz, and polka, with illustrations that show proper technique, suggestions for detecting and correcting errors, practice drills, and checklists for evaluating progress; includes a music CD.

Social Partner Dance: Body, Sound, and Space is an ethnographic theory of social partner dancing built on participant observation and interviews with instructors of tango, lindy hop, salsa, blues, and various other forms. The work establishes a general analytical language for the study of these dances, based on the premise that a thorough understanding of any lead/follow form must consider in depth how it manages the four-part relationship between self, partner, music, and surroundings. Each chapter begins with a brief vignette on a distinct dance form and explores the focused worlds of partnered dancing done for the joy and entertainment of the dancers themselves. Grounded intellectually in embodiment studies and sensory ethnography, and empirically in ethnographic fieldwork, Social Partner Dance promotes scholarship that understands the social, cultural, and political functions of partner dance through its embodied practice.

Originally published in 1963 and authored by the then Editor of the Dancing Times, this was a pioneer work discussing not only the origins and development of many social dance forms from early times, but also relating these forms to their environment. As well as its role in social history, the book analyses the role of dance as a prime creative power in Renaissance spectacles which depicted and celebrated diplomatic, military and regal occasions. After a wide-ranging introductory chapter on the origins of dancing, the book takes the reader through the centuries, discussing in turn the Basse Danse and the Moresco of the Middle Ages, the Pavane, Galliard and Courante of the 16th Century, the Minuet of the 17th & 18th, the Allemande, the Waltz and the Polka as well as Jazz, the Cha Cha Cha, the Jive and Twist.

The influence of dance upon consumers has long been understood by advertisers. This work investigates the use of black social dance in television advertising. Covering the 1950s through the 2010s in the United States, dance is shown to provide value to brands and to affect consumption experiences. An interdisciplinary work drawing upon anthropological, phenomenological and cultural theoretical approaches, the text provides a theory of dance for a culture that has consistently drawn upon African-American arts to sell products.

Social dance was ubiquitous in interwar Britain. The social mingling and expression made possible through non-theatrical participatory dancing in couples and groups inspired heated commentary, both vociferous and subtle. By drawing attention to the ways social dance accrued meaning in interwar Britain, Rishona Zimring redefines and brings needed attention to a phenomenon that has been overshadowed by other developments in the history of dance. Social dance, Zimring argues, haunted the interwar imagination, as illustrated in trends such as folk revivalism and the rise of therapeutic dance education. She brings to light the powerful figurative importance of popular music and dance both in the aftermath of war, and during Britain’s entrance into cosmopolitan modernity and the modernization of gender relations. Analyzing paintings, films, memoirs, a ballet production, and archival documents, in addition to writings by Virginia Woolf, D.H. Lawrence, Katherine Mansfield, Vivienne Eliot, and T.S. Eliot, to name just a few, Zimring provides crucial insights into the experience, observation, and representation of social dance during a time of cultural transition and recuperation. Social dance was pivotal in the construction of modern British society as well as the aesthetics of some of the period’s most prominent intellectuals.

This fresh, inspirational approach shows how to frame the art of dance within the context of life and how to gain the tools to appreciate, discuss and write about dance as a fine art. It also helps develop creative thinking and self-expression.