Waltz

• 1. Introduction

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  The waltz arrived in polite English society in 1813, and according to the diarist Thomas Raikes, "No event ever produced so great a sensation in English society as the introduction of the waltz in 1813." That year, Lord Byron published a sardonic tribute to it anonymously. Almack's, the most exclusive club in London, permitted the dance, yet the Oxford English Dictionary still called it "riotous and indecent" as late as 1825. What was it about a triple-time dance in closed position that so unsettled the established order? And how did a peasant step from the hills of Bavaria travel to Viennese ballrooms, then to English drawing rooms, and eventually to every corner of the globe?

• 2. Peasant Origins

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  Around 1750, the lower classes in Bavaria, Tyrol, and Styria began dancing a couples dance they called Walzer. The word itself derives from a term meaning "to roll or revolve," and the movement was grounded in something practical: one observer noted that the vigorous peasant dancer used "his surplus energy to press all his strength into the proper beat of the bar," intensifying personal enjoyment. While the upper classes held to the minuet, in works by composers such as Mozart, Haydn, and Handel, bored noblemen were already slipping away to the balls of their servants. The Ländler, also known as the Schleifer, a country dance, spread from the Bohemian and Austrian countryside into the suburbs of cities, carrying with it the close physical contact that would later scandalize observers far beyond Central Europe. Traces of a sliding or gliding dance related to these forms appear even earlier, visible in the work of the printmaker Hans Sebald Beham in the sixteenth century.

• 3. Scandal and Spread

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  In 1580, the French philosopher Michel de Montaigne witnessed a dance in Augsburg where the partners held each other so closely that their faces touched. Kunz Haas, writing around the same period, described what he saw as "the godless Weller or Spinner." A 1771 German novel by Sophie von La Roche, Geschichte des Fräuleins von Sternheim, captures the moral alarm that continued to follow the waltz into aristocratic spaces: one character describes watching a man put his arm around a woman and cavort with her in "the shameless, indecent whirling-dance of the Germans," his "silent misery" turning into "burning rage." Yet the dance's momentum was unstoppable. Contemporary singer Michael Kelly recorded that it reached England in 1791. During the Napoleonic Wars, infantry soldiers of the King's German Legion brought it directly to the people of Bexhill in Sussex, starting in 1804. It was the endorsement of Dorothea Lieven, wife of the Russian ambassador, that finally made the waltz respectable in Britain during the Regency period.

• 4. The Codifiers

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  Don Curzio, writing of life in Vienna at either 1776 or 1786, observed that "the people were dancing mad" and that the ladies of Vienna were "particularly celebrated for their grace and movements of waltzing of which they never tire." That enthusiasm fueled innovation. A waltz appeared in the second act finale of the 1786 opera Una Cosa Rara by Martin y Soler, marked andante con moto, meaning "at a walking pace with motion." Viennese dancers accelerated the tempo, producing what became known as the Geschwindwalzer and the Galloppwalzer. On the written side, Thomas Wilson, an influential dance master and author of instruction manuals, published A Description of the Correct Method of Waltzing in 1816, giving the form a codified, teachable identity. By the 19th century the word "waltz" had acquired a broader meaning: to "waltz" in the polka meant rotating rather than moving straight forward, showing how the dance's name had become shorthand for turning itself. Anne Brontë captured the lingering resistance in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall: in a scene set in 1827, the Reverend Milward tolerates quadrilles and country dances but intervenes sharply when a waltz is called for, declaring "No, no, I don't allow that!"

• 5. A World of Variants

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  In the 1910s, Vernon and Irene Castle introduced the Hesitation Waltz, incorporating pauses called hesitations in which the moving foot was suspended or slowly dragged while danced to fast music. Figures derived from it, including the Hesitation Change, Drag Hesitation, and Cross Hesitation, survive today in the International Standard Waltz Syllabus. In California, Mission priests banned the waltz until 1834 specifically because of its closed position; what emerged afterward, the Spanish Waltz, combined closed-position movement around the room with a formation element involving two couples facing each other. Country Western Waltz took a different direction entirely: posture relaxed to what observers described as bordering on a slouch, couples shifted into the promenade position, and the dance moved counterclockwise around the floor. In France, the Valse Musette grew popular in the late 19th century, while the cross-step waltz, known as the French Valse Boston, developed in the early 20th century and remains a fixture in social waltz groups. In Ireland, travelling dancing masters taught the waltz during the 19th century to those who could afford their lessons; by century's end, traditional triple-tune tunes and songs were being altered to fit the waltz rhythm, and a distinctively Irish playing style emerged through Céilidh musicians.

• 6. Stage, Screen, and After

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  Waltzes became the staple of many American musicals and films, including "Waltz in Swing Time," sung by Fred Astaire. The division that eventually crystallized in competitive ballroom distinguishes the slow waltz from the Viennese waltz, which preserves the faster original tempo. International Standard Waltz holds exclusively to closed figures, never breaking the couple's embrace, while American Style Waltz, part of the American Smooth syllabus, permits figures where contact is almost entirely released. The Syncopated Side-by-Side with Spin gives both partners a free spin; open rolls send the follower alternating between the lead's left and right sides. Far from the Viennese ballrooms, folk traditions kept the waltz alive in their own meters: dances from the Alsace region use odd metres, and the Estonian Labajalavalss, meaning "flat of the foot waltz," is performed in its own distinct time. Even Ottoman Turkish music developed a related form, the Sama'i, composed in metres that are often confused with the Saz Semaisi, a separate instrumental form in 10/8 metre, underscoring how widely the waltz's rhythmic logic traveled. The Tsamikos, a traditional folk dance of Greece, uses a metre that shares the waltz's basic triple pulse, a reminder that the influence of a Bavarian peasant step can surface in places its originators never imagined.