In the early twentieth century, American ragtime and the Parisian tango fuelled a dancing craze in Britain. Public ballrooms were built throughout the country, providing a glamorous setting for dancing. The new English style, defined in the 1920s and followed by the films of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in the 1930s, ensured that ballroom dancing continued to be the most popular British pastime until the 1960s, rivalled only by cinema.
This book explores the vibrant history of ballroom and Latin dancing: the dances, lavish venues, competitions and influential instructors. It also traces the decline of couple dancing and its resurgence in recent years with the hugely popular TV shows Strictly Come Dancing and Dancing with the Stars.

- English
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eBook - ePub
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Table of contents
- Front Cover
- Half Title
- Title Page
- Copyright
- CONTENTS
- Introduction
- ONE ‘A Flood of Splendour’: Blackpool’s New Ballrooms
- TWO Jazz, Ragtime and Tangoitis
- THREE The Democratization of Dancing
- FOUR Basic Technique Takes Shape
- FIVE Dancing in Public
- SIX Nightlife and Private Clubs
- SEVEN Hollywood Glamour
- EIGHT Everyday Glamour
- NINE Togetherness: Holiday Camps and Sequence Dancing
- TEN Jitterbug, Rock’n’Roll and Jive
- ELEVEN Latin, the 1960s and Change
- TWELVE Television, Come Dancing and Peggy Spencer
- THIRTEEN The End of an Era
- FOURTEEN Twenty-First-Century Ballroom
- APPENDIX: The Ten International Style Ballroom and Latin DANCES
- REFERENCES
- SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
- ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
- ILLUSTRATION ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
- INDEX
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Yes, you can access Ballroom by Hilary French in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in History & Modern British History. We have over 1.5 million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.