Dancing at Christendom

Yesterday I spoke to a young Scot who is bound for a Catholic college in the USA. He told me that he had danced a lot while visiting the States: East Coast swing, West Coast swing… He sounded very enthusiastic, and I suspect he will be dancing up a storm when he starts next year.

“Christendom?” I asked, trying to sound knowledgeable.

No, not Christendom College but another of the new faithful Catholic colleges, the kinds of places I suspect South Bend’s Notre Dame was like a decade before my father went to there (only with girls and computers). And one of the very interesting things about the new Catholic colleges in the USA is how popular partner dancing is there. Could it be that societies that foster chastity and prize marriage are the ones where dancing is most popular? I know a young man in Poland who grumbles that all the single women are at swing-dancing or salsa classes, and try as he might, he simply cannot learn to dance.

My advice to the Pole was that he buy a new saxophone (he played it in high school) and join a jazz band. That way, he could become indispensable to the swing dance scene and talk to girls in the intervals.

Anyway, the American would-be host or hostess may discover a lot more enthusiasm for dance lesson parties than he or she initially thinks, thanks to the popularity partner dancing already has in Catholic circles in the USA.

Here, for example, is a video of this year’s winning swing dance performance at Christendom. I underscore that this is a performance because some people object to the flying skirts and acrobatic moves. They must understand that these moves are not for social swing dancing. (For one thing, it’s too dangerous to do the acrobatic moves on a crowded dance floor.) Also, if bicycle shorts under a short skirt don’t do enough to alleviate worries about modesty, I point out that there is no short-skirt dress code in Lindy Hop. You can swing dance in a corduroy maxi-skirt. Well, I can.

And here is a video of Christendom’s winning waltz performance. I am not sure the end was tasteful (and certainly would be out of place at a social event), but otherwise it is a very accomplished performance.

I imagine there will be critics of this dress, too, as the dancer’s arms are uncovered. However, I would not be among them because–shocker–I have a number of sleeveless dresses for dancing. Finding a nice dress with properly set, not too confining, sleeves for cheap on eBay is difficult. In my neighbourhood, young women march around in skin-tight leggings and crop tops, so bare-armed 1950s dresses on the dance floor are really not the problem.

Anyway, I’m sorry to harp on the clickbait topic of Catholic Women’s Clothing, but it’s the sort of thing that always comes up in discussions of dancing. In fact, as always, the objections to Catholics Dancing is usually to something else, be that hemlines, sleeves, escorting, late nights, priorities, or spending so much money on balls, you have none left to send to your old mother starving in the Irish Potato Famine. (This last sin, recorded in a preface to a famous anti-dancing screed, is high up on my list of Things That Never Happened.)