The most popular of the round dances nowadays is a dance that is called a waltz, though it is no more like what we called a waltz twenty-five years ago, nor any more like the only dance the Europeans call a waltz now, than a minuet is like a country break-down. Its popularity is largely, if not wholly, due to the comparative ease with which it is learned. The dancing-masters say that the “old-fashioned” waltz, as it is now called, is too hard to learn; that there are few that can learn to dance it well; that the dancers nowadays care little for grace of movement; that if they are amused they are content, and so on. If the waltz--the genuine waltz--is the most difficult of all the round dances to learn, it is also the most fascinating of them all for the accomplished dancer, and the most pleasing to the looker-on, because of all the round dances its movements are made with the most grace, dignity, precision, and _bienséance_.
If for no other reason, the waltz--so called--of to-day cannot be danced gracefully on account of the backward movement it demands. He that has never had any æsthetic training in the movements of the body, and especially he that has no innate sense of the graceful may think differently, but this is true nevertheless. Another reason, and a very important one too, that the movements of this dance cannot be made gracefully is because they compel the dancer to carry himself with his shoulders thrown somewhat forward and with the knees a good deal bent--two things that are incompatible with graceful physical action. But perhaps the most serious objection to the waltz of nowadays is the habit of “reversing” that is indulged in by those that dance it. Reversing is simply a barbarism, as those that indulge in it do not and cannot avoid bumping against the other dancers. A man that dances the round dances well, and does not reverse, never runs against anybody; he goes just where he wants to go, and goes nowhere else, and he always wants to go straight around the sides of the hall. The plea of the reverser is that if he turns one way all the time, he gets dizzy. Nonsense! In the days when there was no reversing done, nobody complained of dizziness. If, at first, there is a tendency that way, it soon wears off. There is surely no pleasure in dancing, if one is continually jostled, and as long as reversing is practised, dancers will continue to jostle one another.