Waltz

Music: Waltz

Position: Couple

Formation: Couple

The waltz was extremely popular in Victorian times and often half of the selections danced at one of our events are waltzes in one form or another. We divide them into two categories, the “set waltz” and the “free waltz.” The set waltz is a group dance set in a Sicilian circle or quadrille formation and is often a progressive mixer where dancers will change partners. A free waltz is a couples dance without defined choreography.

The waltz is thought to have originated around 1750 in Bavaria and Tyrol. Originally it was intended to be danced at a pace described as “walking with motion,” but became much faster in Viennese society. To this day the “Viennese Waltz” is danced at a very brisk pace.

The waltz took a little while to catch on in early America since the closed position, where partners are actually embracing each other, was considered much to risqué for polite society. Even in Britain, the great romantic, Lord Byron, was aghast to enter a ballroom and see the woman of his desire waltzing with "a huge, hussar-looking gentleman, turning round and round to a confounded see-saw, up-and-down sort of turn, like two cockchafers spitted upon the same bodkin." ¹

But you can’t keep them down on the farm once they’ve seen Paris, and by mid-century the waltz was perhaps the most popular of dances.

In modern ballroom vernacular there are many defined styles of waltz. Our instruction emphasizes “American Waltz” (introduced in Boston in 1834) in which many figures follow the form of Long Step, Short Step, Close. American style is a type of "glide waltz" that minimizes leaps, hops and other athletic figures popular in 19th Century Europe. It also rarely involves the European preference for “passing feet,” where the feet are not brought together (closed) on the third beat of the measure.

¹ Sylvester, 1949