That's from Confucius if you're wondering.Persons of a certain age will certainly remember the 1 week high school PE unit on dance. I remember it as square dancing - no touching, except for a passing hand perhaps. And, then in the 50's & 60's along came sanctioned high school dances and not so sanctioned "Teen Hops" at Lakeside. Touching allowed. I'm sure you recall the debauchery of The Hokey-Pokey, The Watusi, The Twist, The Swim, The Chicken Dance and especially The Stroll.
Members of the local ministerial association of the day took umbrage. They were vocal in their objections to these practices and demanded they be terminated, warning of depravity, hell and damnation. The unstated implication was that dancing leads to <redacted> or vice versa.
A letter addressed to Miss Janice P, a PE teacher in the <redacted> Public Schools has come into my possession. I will not reveal where I obtained this, nor the author of the letter. I am prepared accept a prison sentence to protect my sources
I here reproduce a redacted form of this letter, written in 1958.
Miss <redacted>
<redacted> Public Schools
<redacted, Minnesota
Dear Miss P<redacted>,
We, <redacted<, have become disturbed about a situation that has developed in the <redacted> School as well as other schools. We make reference to the instruction, in the Physical Education classes, of ball-room dancing. Word has come to us that even the eighth grade students are being given this instruction. For many of these students this is the time that pastors and churches through the confirmation instructions and Sunday School Classes are trying to instill and develop moral and spiritual responsibility in the child. We feel that dancing is inimical to this moral and spiritual development.
There are many scriptural and non-scriptural sources on which we can base this statement. Just a few will be mentioned.
1 Corinthians 10:31 -”Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.”
1 Corinthians 6:19-20 -”Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God? You are not your own; you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.”
The dance is what Jesus said the pleasures of this world so often are, a thorn that helps choke the Word of God and the spiritual life. Even though many may succeed in escaping the moral delinquency of the dance, there is the second fruit of dancing which is not escaped. That fruit is spiritual indifference. As a persons love for dancing increases, his love, faith and obedience to the will of Christ decreases. There have been enough investigations to prove that the dance has helped many a boy and girl on the way to destruction.
- Mrs. E.M. Whittemore, the founder of the “Door of Hope” home in New York found that “seven out of ten of the fallen girls came to their moral ruin directly or indirectly through the dance.”
- <redacted>
- Dr. E.S. Sonners, a specialist in nervous disorders has stated: “I attack the modern dance as a reversion toward savagery. As a medical man, I flatly charge that modern dancing is fundamentally sinful and evil. I charge that dancing is the most advanced and most insidious of the maneuvers preliminary to sex betrayal.
- <redacted>
About the school dance, we recognize that the surroundings are different than those of the night-club, tavern and ball-room. But we do not feel that the public school should be the training ground for the destructive influences of the tavern and ball-room. Young people themselves have admitted that after one or two years, the school dance becomes too tame and they seek the greater excitement of the tavern or ball-room dance.
We recognize also that there is supervision at the school dance. But few dancers are chilled into a sense of modesty. No individual can supervise the heart or mind of another. No supervision can be provided between the time a couple leaves the school and arrives home. Time and time again supervised dancing has provided the training ground for night clubs and taverns for many who but for the cloak of respectability implied in the term supervision would not have learned to dance.
As Christian men and loyal Americans we can not endorse or approve anything to do with a movement that is ruining thousands of young American men and women. We consider the modern dance to be a moral menace eating its way into the moral fibre of American youth.
Sincerely,
<redacted>
Ok, then. But ... I'm not really buying it. Watch some little kids at play ... it's dance.
- "Everything in the universe has rhythm. Everything dances." - Maya Angelou
- “Let us read, and let us dance; these two amusements will never do any harm to the world.” - Voltaire
- “Dance is the hidden language of the soul.” - Martha Graham
- “Nobody cares if you can't dance well. Just get up and dance. .” Martha Graham
- “After all, Ginger Rogers did everything that Fred Astaire did. She just did it backwards and in high heels.” - Ann Richards
Copyright © 2022 Dave Hoplin
