What is the waltz for?

I am indebted to a Facebook-using reader of Dr. Kwasnieski’s “Tradition & Sanity” substack for asking “How is dancing with members of the opposite sex better than other forms of recreation?” Like partner dancing, good questions set guidelines and limits. These are very helpful when expressing thoughts and arguments.

The acute inquirer has asked not about dancing per se here but about dancing with members of the opposite sex. This gives me an opportunity to underscore the very Christian concept that men and women can and should be friends.

Incidentally I don’t mean intimate friends here, or drinking buddies, or substitutes for friends of the same sex. I mean platonic, friendly relationships between parishioners, neighbours, colleagues, generations. I mean the old bachelor downstairs carrying our recycling to the kerb to spare me the effort (my husband is disabled), and my untangling the wind-blown laundry on his clothesline when I notice it. I mean any friendly young man escorting any lady of his acquaintance through the streets at night with no thought but for her safety and peace of mind. I also mean a woman’s ability to go alone to the supermarket in broad daylight without the slightest concern that she will be kidnapped or beaten by her neighbours.

I don’t want to fall into cultural comparisons, particularly as I am not very cognizant of non-western cultures. However, I will point out that western Christian adult women have not lived in purdah and have never been kept in the gynaeceum. In short, we have not spent our days locked away from men, however chaperoned we may have been, or whatever social rules governed our relations with them.

In Chaucer’s late 14th century Canterbury Tales, men and women travel and converse together during their pilgrimage. Among the storytellers are two nuns and a woman in the fabric industry. Western women have always taken part in the marketplace as farmwives selling produce, fishwives selling fish, merchants selling cloth and a host of other trades and public roles. And what has made this public life possible, in a species where the male is up to 75% stronger than the female, is an understanding that women are not just mates but friends.

It also relies on the understanding that men can and must govern themselves in such a way that women are not perpetually frightened of male violence. They use their superior strength and size to help women, not to hurt us. When we talk about “chivalry” today, or “gentlemen,” we are talking about men who genuinely want to be helpful to women and who put us at our ease. And when we talk about “ladies,” I think of women who use our own kinds of power (sexual, emotional) to help men, not hurt them.

Partner dancing is an expression of this friendship between men and women, and it fosters this friendship, too.

One of my many objections to remarks made in the comments box at “Tradition & Sanity” or on Dr. K’s Facebook pages is the assumption that all partner dancing is sexual in the physical sense, as if a male hand clamped to a female shoulder blade for three minutes were a lingering caress. This is nonsense, as anyone who has seen a mother and son whirl about a room in a Viennese waltz could tell you.

Of course, partner dancing does underscore the complementarity of men and women. The roles are different and their implications are so disturbing to gender activists that they prefer the words “Lead” and “Follow.”

In waltzing, as in some other social dances, the gentleman decides if his abilities are a good fit for a certain piece of music. He then invites a lady to dance to it with him. If she accepts, he leads her to the floor and then chooses a number of set patterns that their dance will follow. He does this on the spur of the moment, and at the same time he watches to make sure he and his partner do not crash into anyone else. When the dance is over, he does not awkwardly leave her in the middle of the floor but escorts her back to her chair or cedes her to another partner.

For her part, the lady is acutely attuned to the wishes of her partner. Her acceptance of his invitation is a tacit promise to follow his lead until the piece of music ends and to make the journey as pleasant as possible. She trusts the gentleman to take care of her well-being on the dance floor. She “listens” carefully to the hand on her shoulder blade, the shoulder or bicep under her own hand, and the hand that her other hand is clasping: they should all be transmitting directions. At the same time, she is conscious of her feet. She stifles any temptation to correct the gentleman’s dancing and she forgives him for stepping on her shoe with a generous “My fault!”

This may look like a figure of Christian marriage–the gentleman chooses a lady after establishing his fitness to marry and the lady accepts his responsible, caring headship until the music of life is over–but it also points to men’s ability to make women happy by solving our problems in a challenging world (getting the lid off the pickle jar, loaning his electric drill, moving the heavy potted plant, escorting us to our bus after dark) and to women’s ability to make men happy by saying, “Thank you. You are necessary.

Dancing with the opposite sex is better than other forms of recreation because it models and fosters friendship between men and women. It trains boys in graceful movement, in making decisions on the spot, of being gentle with girls and women and, indeed, in the importance of assuring our physical safety.

It also inculcates in boys and men the courage to tell girls and women what we have to do. Being a wife, I am loathe to admit it, but there are times when my husband, the soul of patience and tolerance, has to tell me what to do. (In non-marital relationships, it is advisable for the man to ask if he might offer some advice and wait for the woman’s “Yes, please!” before proceeding.)

Dancing with the opposite sex trains girls and women in graceful movement, in paying strict attention to a man’s orders without arguing, in patience and in generosity. Hopefully it rids us of the poisonous “boys are stupid–throw rocks at them” attitude we pick up in childhood. Whereas boys need to learn to lead, girls have to learn to not lead all the darn time. We also need to learn how to care for the men around us in the way that only women can: with reassurance, with encouragement, with approval.

Meanwhile, every partner dance is a mutual project, like a game of chess in which both people win, or doubles in tennis, where all partners win. When both partners are novices, the dance is like a puzzle to be solved together. When they have had enough practise, the dance might become a conversation. In the Lindy Hop, for example, you can dance shared jokes.

So let us put to rest, please, this idea that all social dances are a gateway to sexual sin, or even that they are an inexorable precursor to romance. Dancing in general is the physical generation and expression of emotion–usually joy, and the waltz, as it is danced today by Christians, is the physical expression of chaste friendship between, and the complementarity of, men and women.

UPDATE: Catholic readers in the UK may be interested to know that tickets are still available for the Edinburgh Michaelmas Dance. This will take place on Saturday, September 28, 2024 from 7:30 PM to 11:00 PM. For tickets, please contact me at info@tradcathsocialdancing.co.uk.

To buy tickets for the Eastertide Dance 2025, please contact me at info@tradcathsocialdancing.co.uk.