DANZ QUARTERLY - Issue No 9: October, November, December 2007

Book review:
Light Fantastic : Dance Floor Courtship in New Zealand
by Georgina White
Publisher: Harper Collins, 2007 $49.99.

Reviewed by Raewyn Thorburn

This book is a delight.  It has instant appeal through its eye-catching presentation; the cover with a jiving couple in motion with the woman’s 50s frothy full skirt fanning out around her.  It has a good lie-in-your-hand size (22x23cm) with the text in columns, personal quotes in colour, and lots of colourful photographs. This accessible and enchanting book covers our love affair with dancing.  It tracks social dancing and the place of courtship on the dance floor, from the first early settlers to Saturday night dances in local halls, to debutantes ‘coming out’, through to disco and contemporary school balls. 

We are taken on a, sometimes nostalgic, journey with swing and elegance where dance and social etiquette are linked to the radical changes that took place in the 20th century.  As we tread the floor boards of country halls and night clubs we also walk the history of New Zealand, as its culture developed further and a nation was formed.

The historic content and descriptions of the styles of dance make this a fitting text for high school students studying dance as part of the arts curriculum. The diary notes and letters of the early dancers in the beginning of the book are balanced with the personal account by Georgina’s own coming-of-age tales of Blue-Light disco and school balls of more recent times.

As a dancer I always wait with bated breath to see if a dance writer will describe in some detail, the joy of moving.  This is accomplished with the stories of the enjoyment ballroom couples felt of connecting and ‘dancing as one’.  Georgina equally touches on the sense of physicality of the freer, more individual, forms of the disco days and dance parties where improvisation and following your own impulses is the name of the game.

Return to Contents page of DANZ QUARTERLY N0 9 October 2007