A Moral Defence of the Regency Ballroom – vide Wilsons Rooms

The adoption of waltzing in England represented a sea change in social choreography. While existing histories have tended to reproduce a few well-rehearsed anecdotes, this work argues that understanding the anti-waltz moral backlash requires contextualizing the epidemic spread of the modern dance as a gendered, European phenomenon. This article assesses the polemic and dancing master Thomas Wilson’s defence of modern social dancing.