Hmm. Interesting use of different music, but I can't say I liked it. (The Ginger Rogers ones remain my favourites of the links posted so far.)

All of the Charlestons exaggerate movements in a manner that I find both unpleasant and dated, rather like zoot suits would be.

However, at least this one also avoided the dreaded criss-cross hands-on-knees.

...

I was kinda hoping Brian Fortuna might choreograph a Charleston I liked - because he's done interesting things with some other dances, and if the judges find them too lyrical or "Darcey Busssell" or whatever, that tends to mean I like them - but it's looking like he and Ali may not be dancing.

Thanks for putting the Charlestons up there - I laughed and enjoyed them.

I always associate the Charleston with great joie de vivre, fun and humour.

If they can get that essential joyous quality into the dance it will be huge fun - I can cope with it being a bit messy.

Goodness the Charleston is an iconic dance though, those bright young things, doomed youth and all that.

I agree and I think I can hear echoes of Barry Fife saying "It's not strictly ballroom, is it?"


Hear, hear!

How on earth is it snobby to dislike a dance you think looks ungainly and ugly? I really do not like the charleston, I never have. How that makes me a snob I have no idea

Wasn't "doomed youth" earlier -- WW I?

What passing bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.

Etc.

They were reacting against all that - they knew life was short - they were sick of the talk about the war and wanted to live. The aristocratic, decadent social circles of the 'bright young things' were in decline though, reality kicked in, they were wasted by drugs and drink and decadence, and those that survived had the depression and WW2 to look forward to.

The Charleston represents some mad assertion of LIFE of fun and naturalness, it was a truly culturally revolutionary thing, not all for the good. It has been a very powerful idea though.

No, it's not Strictly Ballroom. It's Strictly Come Dancing. No mention of 'Ballroom' , or indeed Latin, at all .

Thanks for the clarification. Makes sense.

Though I have to say the aristocratic, decadent social circles wasted by drugs and drink and decadence sound like they deserve more interesting dances than the Charleston; and I find it difficult to associate the Charleston with naturalness, since exaggerated and distorted movement seems such a fundamental part of it.

Can I just say my Barry Fife comment was just a joke!

Night night!

Ah - there's reasons for that - but wouldn't you say that the Charleston, in it's original style, is hugely free and fun compared with the constrictions associated with the Edwardian era it sprung from? And Victoria hadn't been dead long either.

Could have been devised for Chris Hollins then

Of course everyone will have their own opinions on any new dances that are brought in as they do on the dances that have featured from the start.

However, it's not as if any current dances are being dropped to make way for the new ones - all the old favourites(?) are still there - we're just getting something new added. It seems like there are people who like the new additions, people who don't and people who are reserving judgement. Plenty of people don't like the rumba, I've heard many comments criticising the samba and quite a few "boring" remarks levelled at the foxtrot but we "endure " these every series without too much pain.

Few dances are going to please everyone all the time. It's one week and, at the very most, the maximum number of either dance anyone will have to endure is three. Just grin and bear it - if enough people think like the detractors and make their feelings known this may be the first and last time we see these dances.

There was obviously the time (because of the two dance opening weeks) to include new dances this year and the Charleston and rock and roll just happen to be the ones that the PTB have gone for. Some may wish the choices had been different - others may be embracing them, but whatever you think about the Charleston, it's going to be quite a new experience!

I don't understand the part I've bolded. Surely almost all Ballroom and Latin dances are just strings of exaggerated and distorted movements? So much so that to do Latin one has to be partial contortionist and gymnast, and to do ballroom one has to be able to bend backwards and hold the pose 'just so'? I've always thought those movements look quite ridiculous and rather painful.

Interestingly, the classification and assertions of 'correctness' took hold in the late 30s I think.

Socially perhaps, some effort at control asserted, and times were tough.

We broke free again a bit in the fifties, and the sixties sort of echo the twenties, for similar reasons perhaps.

It's all fascinating and it's that wonderful tension between control and naturalness that makes dance so damned fabulous.

Isn't the Charleston a dance of American origin, where the Edwardian era was called something else and had a rather different nature and significance? But I am finding this interesting. What are the "reasons for that", if they wouldn't take too much time to explain?

In any case, "free and fun" just don't seem the right words to me. The Charleston seems very stylised in an odd and artificial way. The criss-cross hands-on-knees thing is just bizarre.

Looking at some of the clips people have linked, the Charleston looks like it combines ugly moves and positions with a caricature of gaiety. Like, instead of a natural expression of happiness, you put on a big-mouthed "wow I'm happy expression" while waving your arms at odd angles.

The DWTS ones seem to have been taken as opportunities for ham acting a 20s scene around a bit of dancing.

The Ginger Rogers ones, however, are much better, though largely because they leave out so much of the aspects I dislike.

Barry Fife = Strictly Ballroom = brilliant film! I love it

Damned doubler - apologies.

I'm no expert Veri, but a few bits of info might help.

In the late Victorian era there was a huge interest in 'the natural' (post Darwin) there was a great cultural, European interest in the 'noble savage' ideal.

Tarzan was written in this era, and there was a lot of info and respect, actually about other cultures that we had come into contact with through the empire building of the time.

Interestingly Josephine Baker was a huge hit in France around the late 19 teens, Jazz was being brought into Europe etc. There was an association with 'other cultures' as being 'natural' and having influence to offer ideas.

The Charleston is a dance of African origin, I would think, via America, but there was a different level of mainstream acceptance in Europe.

It is fascinating, and impossible to 'pin down' but the Charleston doesn't have 'unnatural' moves, any more than the Samba does, they are just not what we were, or are, even, used to.

The were absorbed and transformed through time and place, as everything cultural is. But the Charleston remains a sort of oddity of time and place, because of circumstance and history and the feeling of the twenties.

I hope this silly sketch of it all helps a bit.

That's a good point, and I can see why you're questioning what I said.

However, I think I'm on record as strongly disliking the very exaggerated dance faces and positions that the professional dances - and even more the guest champions and pros - sometimes get into in their Latin and ballroom routines. I prefer the more natural movements of the less "accomplished" dancers.

The Charleston seems to involve a lot more of that sort of exaggeration and distortion.

Also, a lot of the exaggeration / distortion of the Latin and ballroom dances we've been seeing in SCD is what we might call a fluid extension of natural movement. ("Fluid extension" is a term I've just made up, because I don't know of any official term for it.) An ordinary walking step becomes a longer, more graceful step, a pattern of short and long or fast and slow is added, the motions are generally fluid and smooth. Even exaggerated positions such as the woman arching back from her partner form a graceful curve that is produced in a fluid way. Sure, there are staccato movements in the tango, for example, but they're essentially fluid movements speeded up.

You don't, for example, kick your feet out at odd angles in a kind of cartoon caricature of abandon. The movements aren't ungainly.

It might be argued, I suppose, that the jive starts to get into some of the same territory as the Charleston, and the jive is one of my favourite SCD dances. But it doesn't take the distortions as far as seems to be common in the Charleston, and taking something further can be, well, taking it too far.

(I'm not sure how much sense this makes. It is kinda late. But that's my attempt for tonight.)

A Charleston done well can be really good but I don't hold much hope for the ones on SCD they seem to be going for 'acting' it from the little on ITT.

The Charleston was the forerunner of a few dances - the Lindy Hop (named afrer Lindenburg's Flight) and from the Lindy came various other types of RNR/Jive type dances

The Charleston itself was performed from the 1900's by blacks in the South around Charleston, South Carolina. The dance became widely popular after it was performed in the Musical Runnin Wild in 1923 to the song The Charleston.

I'm more concerned that after picking up some celebs for failing to point their toes in the jive, we now have two dances- the Charleston and Rock nroll - where pointed toes are not required.
Very confusing, and actually helps out the poor dancerswho find foot pointing difficult.

Don't worry - There are a lot of lurking Barry Fife fans around and we all got the joke. Comprende?

Who's judging these dances - the usual suspects, or are the two experts being brought in as guest judges?

Whew!

Why should the Charleston be any less viable as a dance discipline than the VW ? There were hundreds of different Waltz styles, we just happen to have decided on the Viennese Waltz and the International Standard Waltz as ballroom disciplines. Come to think of it, what happened to the Minuet or the Polka ?..just as valid, if you want to go back to the Regency period.
I think dancing should be fun, both for those who participate, and for the remainder of us who watch from our sofas. I'm looking foward to this week, the Charleston from the Roaring 20's and Rock n' Roll from the 50's..great fun.
I would really like to see an exhibition of "acrobatic" Rock n' Roll, maybe from the world champions, they come up with some remarkable moves..and no, I'm not suggesting they introduce that as part of the competition.