By Greg Clark, October 9, 1926
Editor’s Note: Normally I would reproduce an article by Greg for this, but this time it is just a synopsis. At the time of this article, jazz was taking over popular music, and there was a lot of hand-wringing by older people about it’s influence on society.The news article starts off well enough, explaining that new dance forms like the Charleston were to difficult for older people, and that the decline of traditional dancing would affect dance popularity. This was also a period in time when dancing followed “rules”. You have to learn the various dance steps, and how “good” you were was defined by how well you performed them. This was true up until the rock and roll era of the 1950s and 1960s. The article then went on to declare that the various “dance masters” (i.e. influencers of the time period) we predicting a return to more traditional dances in the coming season.
The article has not been reproduced, because Greg interviews a “dance master” whose views are racist to modern readers. To put it mildly, the person interviewed did not have a high opinion of jazz, and “negro dance”. The nice illustration by Jim is still worth reproducing.
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