The waltz is a very historic dance that never seems to go out of fashion. It is a dance that you can master once you have been shown how and practiced a bit. So just what is the history of the waltz and how do you do it. This hub has more about the waltz.

The WALTZ was a smash hit from the very start, mesmerizing its listeners into non-stop revelry. The waltz swept out of Germany in the middle of the eighteenth century to conquer all of Europe, inspiring an old German verse: "Whosoever the dance did discover/Had in mind each maid and lover/With all their burning ardor."

The name of the waltz is taken from the Italian ‘volver' - to turn, or revolve. It was an outgrowth of the ländler, a country dance in three-quarter time, and replaced the heavy hopping and jumping movements with more polished and graceful gliding.

It was, indeed, rural lads and lasses who first found these whirling steps so appealing. And so, the waltz originally was decidedly low-brow and provincial. In those days, there was something unsavory about a woman being gripped in a man's embrace while whirling in a frenzy around the dance floor.

The close contact with one's partners body contrasted sharply with the stately dances of the aristocracy - the minuets, polonaises, and quadrilles - in which one kept one's distance. A first-hand account of a village dance in the latter part of the eighteenth century read "The men dancers held up the dresses of their partners very high so that they should not trail and be stepped on, wrapped themselves both tightly in the covering, bringing their bodies as closely together as possible, and thus whirling about went on in the most indecent positions....

As they waltzed around on the darker side of the room, the kissing and the hugging became still bolder. It is the custom of the country, I know, and not as bad as it looks, but I can quite understand why the waltz has been banned in parts of Swabia and Switzerland."

Naturally, the scandalized upper classes could not endure to have the lower classes having all the fun, and so, in time, the waltz finally achieved a degree of legitimacy, yet not losing any of its basic appeal.