Strictly Ballroom.

The combination of a puritan sense of decency and a Victorian sense of decorum had kept dancing under strict social control in America for two hundred years. To be sure, the lofty European ballet and the antics of "theater people" were tolerated, but Americans in general did not appreciate expressive movement of the body. Until the late nineteenth century, the genteel upper classes considered dancing a "common" amusement, and the public dance halls that peaked in popularity in the first decade of the 1900s were most decidedly for the commoner sort.

The Waltz.

The trend toward dining out and night-time entertainment that began in the Gilded Age of the late 1800s had a liberating effect on well-to-do sensibilities. By the turn of the century the annual charity cotilion had given way to the occasional private ball, and the ability to dance was a valued social grace. Still, the waltz (its...