Social Dance The history and influence
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After the French Revolution, the waltz swept across Europe; it was considered a "popular" democratic dance---the dance of the rising middle classes. Social dance moved out of the ballroom of the aristocratic court into public dance halls and "assembly rooms." Paris had, in the period after the revolution, over 700 dance halls. It was also the first dance of urban life. The waltz was the first example of the "closed couple" dance---the dance partners faced one another and were in intimate physical contact with one another. The waltz was introduced to the United States in the early nineteenth-century. The waltz remained the dominant form of social dance in Europe--where it culminated in the Viennese waltzes of Johann Strauss--and North America. Other dances that emerged rivaled it for short periods of time, but did not displace it until late in the nineteenth century. The waltz is a dance that I will always remember because it was the first dance that my father and I danced to. My father who is an extremely excelled dancer wisped me off my feet...