Ballroom Dancing Posters
for performance, language & visual arts, music, social studies classrooms, home schoolers.

Ballroom dancing is a “set of partner social dances ... done socially and competitively (dancesport) ... and displayed on stage, in film, and on television.”

Many ballroom dances evolved from folk dances, and as society changes, steps and styles go in and out of fashion.

FYI - Ballroom derives its name from the Latin ballare, “to dance”.

Ballroom dances include the waltz, tango, foxtrot, quickstep, samba, chachacha, rumba, paso doble, jive, swing, bolero, mambo, salsa, two-step.

The Cotillion, a popular social dance of the 18th and 19th centuries, was a forerunner of the quadrille and the square dance. The word cotillion is French and refers to petticoats that might be viewed as the women danced.

Leon James & Willa Mae Ricker Dancing the Lindy Hop, Photographic Print

The Lindy Hop is a swing dance based in African-American “Texas Tommy” and “Charleston” dances, with both solo and partner moves, that appeared in New York City in 1920s. Swing dances are also referred to as jitterbug. The noted musican and conductor Cab Calloway is associated with the term jitterbug.

Quote from African American poet Langston Hughes; “The lindy-hoppers at the Savoy even began to practice acrobatic routines, and to do absurd things for the entertainment of the whites, that probably never would have entered their heads to attempt for their own effortless amusement. Some of the lindy-hoppers had cards printed with their names on them and became dance professors teaching the tourists. Then Harlem nights became show nights for the Nordics.”
Langston Hughes, The Big Sea

Arthur Murray
née Moses Teichmann
b. 4-4-1895; Galicia, Austria-Hungary
d. 3-3-1991; Hawaii

Arthur Murray's name is most often associated with the chain of dance studios that he founded in 1938.