Curt Sachs [1881- ] World History of the Dance, (Trans, Bessie Schönberg) The Norton Library: N.Y., 1937 (1965), 1910
"Since the Brazilian maxixe of 1890 and the cakewalk of 1903 broke up the pattern of turns and glides that dominated the European round dances, our generation has adopted with disquieting rapidity a successsion of Central American dances, in an effort to replace what has been lost to modern Europe: multiplicity, power, and expressiveness of movement. to the point of grotesque distortion of the entire body. We have shortly after 1900 the one-step or turkey-trot; in 1910, inspired by the Cuban habanera, the so-called "Argentine" tango with its measured crossing and flexing steps and the dramatic pauses in the midst of the glide; and in 1912 the fox trot with its wealth of figures. After the war we take over its offspring, the shimmy, which with toes together and heels apart contradicts all the rules of post-minnesinger Europe; the grotesquely distorted Charleston; in 1926 the black bottom with a lively mixture of side turns, stamps, skating glides, skips and leaps; and finally the rocking rumba-all compressed into even movement, all emphasizing strongly the erotic element, and all in that glittering rhythm of syncopated four-four measures classified as ragtime. One can hardly imagine a greater contrast to the monotony of steps and melody of the latter part of the nineteenth century.
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"Only the tango has continued to enjoy undimished favor for more than twenty years in spite of polishing and refinement. To be sure, it is no pure Negro dance and owes its best qualities to the unusual dance talent of the Spaniards, who for four hundred years have made fruitful contributions to the European dance. When the tango made its appearance in the old world in 1910, it released a dance frenzy, almost a mania, which attacked all ages and classes with the same virulence. You may shake your head, smile, mock, or turn away, but this dance madness proves nonetheless that the man of the machine age with his necessary wrist watch and his brain in a constant ferment of work, worry, and calculation has just as much neeed of the dance as the primitive. For him too the dance is life on another plane.
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