The Embrace, the Close Embrace and Variations

" George Bernard Shaw famously wrote in 1962, in an article in the Spectator magazine, that dancing was "the perpendicular expression of a horizontal desire". El Chino tells me that the great tango teacher Carlos Copes said this many times too, but Shaw gets the credit in the Dictionary of Quotations. I wonder who said it first? Whatever the truth, there is no doubt that tango and sex have long been linked. It is salutary to remember, however, how aggressive the pope of the day was when the waltz first saw the light of day. This was because, for the first time, members of polite society danced in an embrace. Peasants had been enjoying such things long before that; the waltz was born of the ländler, an Austrian folk dance. History is funny like that. Some things have to be acceptable to the ruling classes before they seem to matter much. I’m told that in 1816, when the waltz was first aired in polite society at Carlton House in London, it caused quite a sensation. The assembled company included the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Wellington, but history does not record what they thought of it. I would guess that their very presence stamped a seal of approval on the dance. Other notables were less accepting of the new fashion. Lord Byron, for example, was outraged at the sight of people dancing in an embrace. He wrote that it was like watching "two cockchafers spitted on the one bodkin"! I would love to see a discussion between Byron and Billy Connelly, who said: "Dancin’ is foreplay!"

The tango was, of course, also denounced as lewd and unseemly, and I suspect that, human nature being what it is, this must have contributed greatly to its popularity. I would be surprised if very many people nowadays think of waltz in those terms, but tango still has its reputation. When you experience close embrace the reason is abundantly clear, but even in more open embraces the ‘chemistry’ of the dance is obvious. "