Once taboo, social dancing has gained acceptance within a segment of the evangelical community. Does this mean that we are moving away from the unduly restrictive standards once imposed upon young people?

Or is it an overreaction against the unreasonable strictures of brittle legalism, reflecting the larger trend toward the complacent identification of Christians with their non-Christian environment?

In A Guide to Civilized Leisure, Harry Overstreet writes: “A modern social dance, in short, is as often as not a most unsocial phenomenon. Among college men and women it has tended to become a means of severe sexual competition. So the dance has in large measure ceased to be the dance, and has become it kind of terpsichorean stock exchange in which the male members of the exchange do their bidding for their favorites. This individualized form of dance has carried with it also some of the peculiar cruelties for competitive civilization.”

A secular critique of this nature gives rise to serious questions among Christians and non–Christians alike. For the Christian a decision against dancing as a part of dating will more often than not invite challenge. I would like to suggest that repudiation of dancing can be supported from both Christian behavior principles and sound sociological data. We need never fear the force of facts; rather we may face them with the assurance that the Christian evaluation will be clearly substantiated.1

When we examine the premises of those who affirm a rightful place for dancing, we see that they are only partially valid at best. Let’s look at three of these premises to demonstrate the point.

(1) Ballroom dancing is classified as a recreational pleasure, for it combines elements of recreation, relaxation and amusement. But this is oversimplified.

Dancing, more than any other recreational medium, profoundly involves the whole personality. Psychological factors are more significant than the merely recreational.

(2) Ballroom dancing is classified as an art form, for it contains aesthetic elements. It requires technique, and it represents grace of bodily movement. Again, this is oversimplified. Aesthetic values are diminished by the communication of a prevalent erotic idea.

(3) Ballroom dancing is classified as an educational and socializing force. As such it is considered a therapeutic agency. London’s The Dancing Times has as its object the establishment of dancing as a recognized branch of general education. Educators on levels down to grade school endorse dancing as part of the school program. The following statement is probably typical:

“It is much easier for a child to learn to dance and to adjust to a group of mixed sexes before adolescent conflicts and emotional problems are established. At the approach of adolescence, when mutual sex attraction makes a boy-girl relationship desirable and inevitable, a dancing class provides the stimulus and the techniques for making that adjustment naturally and easily.”

But is it desirable for children to make such adjustments prior to the natural time in adolescence? Should all such adolescent conflicts be removed? Rather, may not some of these conflicts be natural safeguards which in the final analysis are more to be desired than easy adjustments?

Dancing may build confidence in those who feel socially inferior, and may socialize those who tend to retreat into social isolation. But surely there are other ways of accomplishing the same result. The question is whether the disadvantages may not outweigh the advantages. Does dancing really permit an individual to acquire and conserve the more worthwhile benefits?

Dancing and emotion

We move closer to the real issue when we say that dancing is essentially a medium of self-expression and self–communication. This definition comes directly from a recognized authority, John Martin, dance critic for the New York Times: “When men are deeply stirred, they resort automatically to spontaneous bodily movement to express their emotional states and convictions which are too elemental to be rationalized in words. Such movement becomes a direct means of emotional communication—an instantaneous transfer, so to speak, of pure mood.”

This leads to the question: What elemental emotional states are spontaneously expressed and communicated by the music, rhythms, bodily contact and movements of modern ballroom dancing?

The Encyclopedia of Social Sciences further defines dancing as “an externalization of emotional energy.” “Physiologically, dancing is a vent for excitement.” When we ask what kind of excitement it stimulates, the answer from this same source is: “It is nevertheless true that since sexual impulses are excited by dancing, many dances that have had their origin in other sources are attributed erroneously to this cause because they have led eventually to sex indulgence.” What an indictment from a non-Christian source. Non-Christians arc sometimes more discerning than Christians. Those who counsel young people on this question of social dancing frequently discover that honest fellows readily admit the sexual stimulation that accompanies dancing, whereas girls more frequently can see no problem, admitting only to a general excitement and pleasure. This, of course, concurs with the differentiation of sexual nature between the male and female, especially as it regards effective stimulation of sex desire.

This same encyclopedia adds: “Increasing freedom in the relations of the sexes has been paralleled by increasing freedom in dance forms.”

Dr. Emory Bogardus, professor of social psychology at the University of Southern California, concludes that dancing “has one leading social function to it, that of facilitating the mutual approach of the sexes . . . it perennially stresses degrading patterns.” This is confirmed by critic John Martin, who writes: “The struggle to subject dancing to decorum is a long-standing, determined, and ultimately hopeless one, rather like trying to inure the devil to holy water. Truth to tell, dances are inevitably more or less crude of surface when they spring spontaneously to life, for the dancers care less than nothing about how they look. Since it is likely to be amorous emotion, the movements that it creates are clearly not going to be cold and aloof. But when decorum censors and modifies them so that they acquire elegance, it takes away their function, and before you know it the dancers are off again creating new dances to give them emotional satisfaction.” Martin concludes, “The dancers are bound to win in the end, for exuberance and creative impulses are not controllable by code.”

Incidentally, this is a final answer to the argument for supervised dances. As has been forcibly said: “You cannot supervise the eyes, thoughts, imaginations or nerve-centers.”

The Textbook of Social Dancing by Agnes and Lucille Marsh of Columbia University says: “The social dance, then, can be designed as love-dancing. It is the expression of the sex philosophy of a given period. We must consider the social dance as a manifestation of the sex psychology and philosophy of the time.” So, as high as the sex morality of nonChristians at a given day, so high and no higher will dancing be capable of interpretation.

“When one honestly evaluates the sex philosophy of our day, and the prominent role of social dancing in its expression, one must conclude that here is a realm of ethical behavior that has been captured by the god of this world and is one of his delights. However harmful or not to the participant, earnest Christians must regard it as a matter of identification with ideals that are not Christian.

Colliers Encyclopedia declares: “The social dance has usually been the result of joint physical exuberance and sex stimuli.” And the sociologist, Munsterberg, tells us that peaks of interest in dancing historically correspond to peaks of social stagnation and carelessness, and indifference to public life and responsibility. Dancing is recognized as one of the chief escape functions. Munsterberg further points out that tyrants have often promoted public dancing in order to divert the attention of the masses from political corruption. He adds that the lower the stratum in society, the more emphasis is found upon dancing. Even H. L. Mencken (in his Treatise on Right and Wrong) comments on the new morality of our day in these words: “Moreover, the general laxity of manners has liberated many ancient incitements to dalliance, including especially alcohol and the dance.”

Music and rhythm

It is impossible to consider the nature of social dancing apart from the music and rhythm that are so much a part of it. Consider first the rhythm.

The body rhythms essential to life (such as breathing, heart-beat and walking) establish man as a rhythmical being. Emotionally, excitement and ecstasy are associated with rhythm. Rhythm can induce autointoxication. The close association between rhythm and sexual excitement is well known.

Rhythm identifies individuals with each other. Military leaders recognize this, as demonstrated by group calisthenics executed in regular rhythm, or in the goose–step of the Nazi youth movement.

If rhythm can indore autointoxication and sexual excitement, the perils of dancing become immediately evident. Add to this the close embrace and sensual music. The embrace and rhythm in dancing make the partners one in movement. In her book, Personality, Marjorie Greenbie writes: “The modern dance is more subtle in its demands . . . it depends on the closest psychic union, for the moment, between the partners, and a response to the almost unconscious intimations of one to the other.” Small wonder that men have always found dancing to be the most effective initial step toward promiscuity. No matter what else may be said, the dance depends upon the proprietory embrace and rhythmic suggestibility.

In this rhythmic oneness, the woman is pliant while the man leads, suggesting that both the will and body of the woman are subject to those of the man.

Dr. Foster Kennedy, Cornell neurologist, says: “The more primitive a people, the more is the beat stressed in their music.” Jitterbug is perhaps the closest parallel to jungle dancing. One would conclude that this is because the same primitive emotions are being expressed.

Liberty of bodily movement is always imperiled by the tendency to licentiousness. Mere movement as such produces excitement, as we know. This could not be more evident than in the “Twist,” which produces enormous emotional excitement and conveys uninhibited sexual overtones. Uniformity of movement (rhythm) produces emotional ecstasy. One effect of this is psychological detachment from the environment. This is seen in the hypnotic effect of primitive dervishes. Rational patterns are subordinated to the emotional by persistent rhythm, until the mind is detached from much of the immediate environment. There is instead an emotional concentration that leads to an ecstatic experience. This amounts to an inhibition of moral sensitivity, which is demonstrated in the autointoxication induced by savage war dances and dervishes. The individual loses control of his will and becomes a servant of the rhythm and excitement. He becomes willingly identified with whatever demands his excitement puts before him. If the demands are sexual, his self-control is severely tested.

The music that accompanies social dancing contains two important elements. One is the use of highly exciting dissonances, such as in modern jazz. The other is close harmony put to slow rhythm. What subtle idea does each interpret? Dissonance is simply the violation of harmonic laws. Whereas musical harmony finds an emotional response of acceptance, dissonance creates emotional excitement and resistance. The highly exciting dissonance represents a revolt of the ego against the confinements of authority, against imposed standards. The revolting ego of man craves independence and the spontaneous expression of its moods and desires. For this reason, musical anarchy creates a disturbance in our emotional nature. This disturbance is exciting. Musical anarchy finds its correspondence in the sinful nature of man‘s ego which would defy the laws of God and His authority. It represents the breaking away from established limits, the discarding of established restrictions.

On the other hand, close harmony set to slow rhythm is sensually suggestive. It accentuates the idea of closeness. The dancers’ personalities are subject to the sensuous appeal for closeness and the domination of bodily movement. Most ballroom dancing is accompanied by this second type of music and rhythm.

History of dancing

The history of dancing is important for this study, and may help us arrive at a better estimate of where it is going.

Early danCing masters, such as Guglielmo in the fifteenth century, distinguished between “dance as an art, and a vile adulterous affair.” Count Baldassare Castiglione (the Emily Post of the Renaissance) tells us that French dances such as Brando and Moresca are indecent. To shield their identity, men wore disguises when they danced. The indecent Branda was refined into the minuet. But when it became refined, the minuet was quickly discarded, and from a whirling German peasant dance came the face-to-face waltz.

Disapproval of the waltz was violent until Czar Alexander II danced it publicly at Almacks in 1816, giving it respectability overnight.

In 1910 the ragtime revolution broke out from cheap dives across America. Finally it was standardized in the form of the fox-trot and one-step. These in turn led to ever new forms, each one successively needing refinement. Notably, since 1910 dance forms have developed clearly in the direction of freedom between the sexes, and the discarding of the inhibitions of modesty.

The slow fox-trot and the one-step are based on old ragtime dances of the primitive negro underworld. The Lindy is entirely primitive in style and form. The Samba came to the United States via Brazil, where it was introduced centuries ago by African slaves.

Modern social dancing came in part from the sixteenth-century French. Catherine DeMedici introduced the fashion into France. From Paris came leadership for all Europe in both immodest fashion and immodest dance.

The Tango, Conga and Samba all came to the United States from Latin America, and for the most part from the slum brothels where they are recognized as interpretive of adultery. So we see that historically, dance origins relate to expressions of licentiousness.

Even medical science clearly identifies dancing as a sex stimulant, going so far as to define it as an erotic exercise, as part of the sexual commerce itself. Medical Review of Reviews states: “There can be scarcely any doubt that dancing came about as an adjunct of sexual stimulation.” Professor W. C. Wilkinson of the University of Chicago analyzed the modern dance as “a system of means, contrived with more than human ingenuity, to excite the instinct of sex into action.” Roman Catholic Archbishop Spaulding of New York said that the confessional reveals the fact that nearly every known lapse of female virtue is traceable to the dance.

Judges dealing with the attraction of teen-agers to roadside dance halls tells us that the supervised dance is the first step to trouble, for it is not satisfying emotionally but becomes a feeder to less frigid dance resorts and the teen-age rendezvous. The significant point here is the tacit acknowledgment that dancing is emotionally exciting in the particular sense that it inflames sexual desires.

If Christian young men and women are to present their bodies as living sacrifices to God, and if the body is a sacred trust from God, the “temple of the Holy Spirit,” then it is only reasonable to evaluate modern social dancing as a perilous incitement to lust. And since dancing involves two persons, one who dances without impure thoughts cannot assume that this will also be true of the other. Thus one may unknowingly contribute to the secret indulgence of lust in another.

Dancing, like petting, will remove the desire for other wholesome activities which a couple may enjoy together with more profit and less tension. It is for these considerations that dancing may be regarded by the Christian as falling far short of the purposes of God for the sanctity of dating.

1. In quest of an objective evaluation for those who would be mature disciples of Jesus Christ, my frame of reference will necessarily involve extensive use of secular sources.

Reprinted by permission from HIS, student magazine of lntervarsity Christian Fellowship, © 1962.