Ballroom
Slow Waltz
Slow waltz is the term applied to in countries where is the form of waltz commonly practiced. Some confusion occurs when dancers come from these countries to places like the where "waltz" events and invitations are not what they might expect.
Slow Waltz was the name of a dance in the dance category of. Now it is officially called simply "Waltz", but "Slow Waltz" is still in the informal use, to distinguish from other types of waltzes.
Viennese Waltz
The Viennese Waltz, so called to distinguish it from the Waltz and the French Waltz, is the oldest of all ballroom dances. It emerged in the second half of the 18th century from the German dance and the Landler in Austria and in the beginning was disapproved-of on account of its "lasciviousness", e.g. because the ladies' ankles were visible. Later it gained official acceptance and even popularity due to the Congress of Vienna at the beginning of the 19th century and the famous compositions by Josef Lanner, Johann Strauss I and his son, Johann Strauss II.
In the 1920s in Germany the Viennesse Waltz became outdated as more modern and dynamical dances emerged. In England the Viennese Waltz acclimatized, there Boston and later Waltz were preferred.
At the beginning of the 1930s the Viennese Waltz had its comeback as a folk dance in Germany and Austria. The former military officer Karl von Mirkowitsch made it acceptable both for society and ballroom, since 1932 the Viennese Waltz has been present on ballroom dance floors. In 1951 Paul Krebs, a dance teacher from Nurnberg, combined the traditional Austrian Waltz with the English style of waltzing and had great success at the dance festival in Blackpool in the same year. Since then the Viennese Waltz is considered a full privilege member of the International Standard ballroom dances; in 1963 it was added to the Welttanzprogramm which is the fundament of European dancing schools.
The Viennese Waltz has always been symbol of political and public sentiments. It was called the "Marseillaise of the heart" (Eduard Hanslick, a critic from Vienna in the past century) and was supposed to "have saved Vienna the revolution" (sentence of a biographer of the composer Johann Strau?), while Johann Strau? himself was called the "Napoleon Autrichien" (Heinrich Laube, poet from the north of Germany).
Foxtrot
Foxtrot (often spelled "Fox trot" or "fox trot") is a ballroom dance which takes its name from its inventor, vaudeville actor Harry Fox. According to legend, Fox was unable to find female dancers capable of performing the more difficult two-step. As a result, he added stagger steps (two trots), creating the basic foxtrot rhythm, slow-slow-quick-quick. The dance debuted in 1914, quickly catching the eye of the talented husband and wife duo of Vernon and Irene Castle, who lent the dance its signature grace and style. It was later standardized by Arthur Murray, where it began to imitate the positions of American Tango.
At its inception, the Foxtrot was originally danced to ragtime. Today, the dance is customarily accompanied by the same big band music to which swing is also danced.
When rock and roll music first emerged in the early 1950s, record companies were uncertain as to what style of dance would be most applicable to the music. Famously, Decca Records initially labelled its rock and roll releases as "Fox trots", most notably "Rock Around the Clock" by Bill Haley and His Comets. Since that recording, by some estimates, went on to sell more than 25 million copies, "Rock Around the Clock" is technically the biggest-selling "Foxtrot" of all time.
Over time, Foxtrot split into slow (Foxtrot) and quick (Quickstep) versions.
In the context of International Standard category of ballroom dances, for some time Foxtrot was called Slow Foxtrot, or Slowfox. These names are still in use, to distinguish from other types of Foxtrot.
Tango
The dance originated in lower-class districts of Buenos Aires, during the late 19th century. The music derived from the fusion of music from Europe, the South American Milonga, and African rhythms. The word Tango seems to have first been used in connection with the dance in the 1890s. Initially it was just one of the many dances, but it soon became popular throughout society, as theatres and street barrel organs spread it from the suburbs to the working-class slums, which were packed with hundreds of thousands of European immigrants.
Tango postcard, c. 1919In the early years of the twentieth century, dancers and orchestras from Buenos Aires travelled to Europe, and the first European tango craze took place in Paris, soon followed by London, Berlin, and other capitals. Towards the end of 1913 it hit New York in the USA, and Finland.
In Argentina, the onset in 1929 of the Great Depression, and restrictions introduced after the overthrow of the Hipolito Yrigoyen government in 1930 caused Tango to decline. Its fortunes were reversed as tango again became widely fashionable and a matter of national pride under the government of Juan Peron. Tango declined again in the 1950s with economic depression and as the military dictatorships banned public gatherings, followed by the popularity of Rock and Roll. The dance lived on in smaller venues until its revival in the 1980s following the opening in Paris of the show Tango Argentino and the Broadway musical Forever Tango.
Quickstep
The Quickstep evolved in the 1920s from a combination of the Foxtrot and the Charleston, as bands started to play music which was too quick to make large open leg movements which the Foxtrot required. The Quickstep now is quite separate from the Foxtrot. Unlike the Foxtrot, the man often closes his feet, and syncopated steps are regular occurrences. In some ways, the dance patterns are close to the Waltz, but are danced to 4/4 time rather than 3/4 time.
This dance gradually evolved into a very dynamic one with a lot of movement on the dance floor, many advanced patterns include hops, runs, quick steps with a lot of momentum, and rotation. The tempo of quickstep dance significantly increased, especially in ballroom competitions, due to the extensive use of steps with eighth note durations. While in older times quickstep patterns were counted with "quick" and "slow" steps, many advanced patterns today are cued with split beats, e.g., "quick-and-quick-and-quick-quick-slow".