strathspey@strathspey.org:44473

Jill Herendeen

Re: Dance Cards and the floor

March 4, 2006, 4:22 p.m. (Message 44473, in reply to message 44467)

My rather historical understanding of dance cards is that they were useful 
for a) very popular girls organizing their partners in a civilized way, and 
for less popular girls pretending they were waiting for their partner to 
appear when in fact they lacked one;  and b) making certain of getting a 
partner whom you know really knows how to, say, tango, for the sole tango on 
the program, if you're a real tango afficianado (or polka, or waltz, or 
whatever).  I daresay they would cut down on the time needed to find a new 
partner.  Mind you, I am NOT speaking from personal experience.  I can 
report that my great-aunt had a scrap book of dance cards saved from 
ballroom dances (NOT scd) she'd attended in her youth.
   As for meeting partners in the middle of the floor...in my dim & distant 
past I recall being admonished, in ballroom-dance lessons, that dance floors 
were NEVER to be anything but circumnavigated (in-between dances, that is). 
Is this concept foreign to SCD?  Or just completely passe?  Or both? --Jill 
H., Lyons, NY