Arguing that today’s dancing has “lost the ideals and higher purpose of previous times”, Scruton’s essay traces a falling away from the “ideal picture of the ancient Greek dance”. He appears to reserve particular scorn for dancing to techno-style music that is “loud enough to make conversation impossible and, provided the pulse is regular enough, to jerk the body into reflex motion, like the legs of a galvanised frog”.
In the early days of rock, he claims, dance steps required a partner, and this allowed couples to “touch, swing around each other, move together in an attempt to recapture withness”.
Techno-dancing for New Year's
A time of the year once noted for devoutness
now finds people celebrating without-ness.
They dance
far apart and jerk like frogs
with brains in a trance
from mental fogs,
losing all grace and poise
in cacophonous noise,
while on their faces, the hideous grin,
fails to hide an emptiness within.
So says Prof. Roger Scruton
who, like a second Isaac Newton
now deplores dance's former beauty and gravity
being replaced by meaningless depravity:
Don't dance away this Old Year--
instead, perhaps, shed a tear?
HzL
12/27/15
Jive talkin’: top philosopher says modern dance has lost its soul
Professor Roger Scruton bemoans the way formal dances have been replaced by ‘jerking like a frog’ Roger Scruton says the modern way is to dance ‘at’ rather than ‘with’ each other. Photograph: Alamy
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