by Henry Alford
What’s interesting to me here is the grounds on which the dancer is being criticized: though the history of dance provides countless examples of people damning dance on the basis of wantonness and the ability of this particular branch of the arts to cause certain body parts to flap or rotate with an excessive vividness, the duchess and her criticism are decidedly bigger picture—she’s set her sights on honesty, compassion. We can almost see how, in the duchess’s eyes, Sir S. Garth is the type of dude who’ll step on a lot of toes, lie to the other dancers, and then ride home in his landau to not feed his kitten.
Other dancers, though, harness the moral gravitas they find in dance and use it to power a kind of sea change. Consider Jerome Robbins, who choreographed both for the ballet (Fancy Free, Afternoon of a Faun, Dances at a Gathering) and the theater (On the Town, Peter Pan, West Side Story). Robbins struggled for decades with his Judaism, at age thirteen chasing away schoolmates who peered into the Robbins family living room windows in Weehawken, New Jersey—they’d made faces while young Jerry Rabinowitz and a holy man from the local synagogue practiced reading the Torah. For the shame-filled young Robbins, ballet would have what he called a “civilizationizing” effect on his ancestral-tribal identity. “I affect a discipline over my body, and take on another language,” Robbins would write, “the language of court and Christianity—church and state—a completely artificial convention of movement—one that deforms and reforms the body and imposes a set of artificial conventions of beauty—a language not universal.”
* * *
One of the times that dance was a vehicle of entrée in my life, the idiom in question was neither ballroom nor ballet. In my junior year at the boarding school Hotchkiss, through the ministrations of a kindhearted high school pal, I was invited to the Gold and Silver Ball. Started in 1956, this New York City charity ball kicks off the winter breaks of teenage public and private schoolers in the Northeast, giving them an opportunity to swap stories about their parents’ divorce proceedings and to practice smuggling liquor into a non-stadium setting.
Back then the ball was held at the Plaza Hotel or the Waldorf Astoria, and featured the dulcet musical stylings of a society band like Lester Lanin’s, but in 1985 the ball moved downtown to the Ritz and later the Palladium, either because (according to the ball’s organizers) the Waldorf had become too expensive or because (according to high schoolers) a sofa had “slipped” out one of the Waldorf’s upstairs windows.
I remember how flattered I felt by the invitation. At my previous school, I’d been a storefront of overachievement, and, as a result, had had a series of nicknames leveled at me: Prez, Brain, Brownie, T.P. (for teacher’s pet), Toilet Paper. So when I got to Hotchkiss, I was anxious to be considered cool and not overly directed.
Also, at age sixteen, I was just starting to notice my attraction to men, but was embarrassed by same. My slightly desperate need to fit in lay at the heart of one of my more shameful acts from this period. A shy and soft-spoken guy who lived down the hall from me in my dorm—a social outlier, who was not in my clique—asked me one night if I wanted to get high. I said sure.
We followed the prescribed route for discreet pot-smoking: he’d rolled up one bath towel lengthwise and put it at the base of his door to prevent smoke from seeping into the hall, and he’d rolled one towel width-wise for us to exhale our hits into. He’d blasted the room with Ozium air sanitizer, and had put fresh water in his bong lest spilling stale water necessitate the ritualistic slaughter of an area rug.
But after we smoked up, he did something unexpected: he put his hand on my knee.
I immediately stood, mumbled thanks, and ran-walked to my room. My heart thudded like a stuffed animal being quickly dragged down a staircase; it seemed like the walls of the hallway engorged and contracted slightly with each hurried step I took.
Thereafter it took me three months to acknowledge this guy in public again, and sustained eye contact remained an impossibility for the rest of the year.
* * *
So, the invitation to the Gold and Silver. Given that many of Hotchkiss’s slightly intimidating coolios would be present at the ball, I thought, Why not? If I wanted to be cool myself, then I needed to log hours living amongst exemplars of that ethos; a burst of popularity, I thought, would smooth some of the tattered edges of my homophobia. The cost of the ball (more than $100) seemed exorbitant, and, moreover, I’d have to find a tuxedo somewhere, but: sure.
Back at my mom’s in Worcester over Thanksgiving break, I found an affordable tuxedo in a thrift shop. The jacket fit well, but the crotch of the pants sagged mid-distance between my knees and my fruit-and-veg. Only a haberdasher for dachshunds could imagine a world in which one’s genitals should fly so close to the sidewalk. I’ve never been noticeably well dressed—a WASPy wariness about caring too much about clothes runs in my family, and dovetailed nicely with my anxiety about appearing gay—but this was a new, uh, low. Once I’d brought my budget treasure back home, Mom laughingly pointed out that the waistband was a tad generous, too, so she nipped off an inch or so of it with her sewing machine. At last the pants made meaningful contact with my person.
Back at school, a month before the Gold and Silver, I had lots of time to feed my anxiety about mingling with my glittery friends while wearing pants that from certain angles still said “crotch goiter.” My classmates’ anxiety, meanwhile, was focused on where to drink before the ball—God forbid you should show up at the function not teetering on the brink of projectile vomiting. My high school memories are full of examples of trying to make the most of some tiny amount of some illegal substance; one Saturday we resorted to spiking a watermelon with half a bottle of dry vermouth. It’s a nice buzz, if you’re an ant.
Came the day of the ball. Let us summon up a cloud cover of empathy and indulgence over the next paragraph, as the author’s memories are, due to the ravages of alcohol and experiential fervor, somewhat impressionistic.
I don’t remember where I pre-gamed. I don’t remember where the ball was held. I do remember that the ball had a two-part construction: in one room, a society band played while girls in taffeta gowns and cocktail dresses touch-danced with their willing partners; in another room, rock boomed out of speakers. I gravitated, naturally, toward the latter.
The hours evanesced. No one mentioned my pants. I befriended no dachshunds.
But then, a few hours later that same night, something staggeringly, epically, supersonically groovy happened. Nine or so of us had ended up at our classmate Carl Sprague’s parents’ house for a nightcap. We were standing in the Spragues’ living room when someone informed me that we were all going to try to get into Studio 54. I laughed. My drunk had worn off by now, but, still: funny. We’d all heard about the illustrious nightclub—mostly stories about how impossible it was to get into. Each night a big crowd of people would mass in front of the velvet ropes in a pageant of ritual humiliation; over time, the people turned down by the bouncer would include Mick Jagger, Frank Sinatra, Warren Beatty, and Diane Keaton.
So my first reaction, on hearing the plan, was, Why bother? But then, given the jolliness of the evening, my second reaction was, What the hell?
I idly asked the group how many cabs we thought we’d need, and as my friends’ excited chirrups dissolved into more mundane mutterings related to coat retrieval and taxi logistics, I heard Carl say, “No, we don’t need cabs. I got a limo.”
That no one questioned or remarked upon this plot point—the surprise limo—says something about whimsical Carl, who had a bust of Byron in his dorm room and would grow up to be a production designer who’d work for Wes Anderson and Woody Allen.
Sure, I thought on hearing about the limo, we’ll be ignored or rejected by the bouncer, but the stretch will whisk us away in a glamorous storm cloud of slightly singed entitlement.
We piled into the vehicle.
After a drive across the gridded isle, the limo sidled up to the curb outside the club, where some sixty hopefuls were hudd
led on the sidewalk. As the nine of us tumbled out of the vehicle, I glanced at our group as if from the bouncer’s point of view: a knot of fifteen- and sixteen-year-olds in formal wear, their leader (Carl), six-foot-one and blond. We looked like the Norwegian cast of The Sound of Music.
Our bodies were somewhat smooshed together: it was cold, and we seemed to be unintentionally duplicating the crowded seating of the limo ride. The slick bottoms of my awful patent leather shoes were a slippery hell on the sidewalk; when I looked down, though, I noticed that no one else’s party shoes were faring much better.
Are you familiar with the Bob Fosse formation known as an amoeba? That’s when a very densely packed huddle of dancers moves cloud-like as one across the stage. Fosse got the idea from those people in Hieronymus Bosch paintings who are hatched from eggs and have multiple arms and legs.
Imagine a Fosse amoeba, but drunker, preppier.
The bouncer took one look at us, and waved us on in.
* * *
I’m intrigued that disco, a dance phenomenon originally promulgated in this country by minorities (blacks, Latins, gay men), partly in reaction to the dominance of rock and roll, would become so oppressively exclusive. Slightly antithetical, no? But I guess that when you build a shimmering island paradise out of body glitter and pairs of assless chaps, you can either say to the rest of the world “Come on in” or “You better be as decorative as we are.”
Studio 54 decidedly went with the latter, reordering the hierarchy by allowing admission only to those people fabulous enough not to be cowed by the club’s ninety-foot ceilings, its ceiling-suspended sculpture of a moon that snorted cocaine, the balcony bleachers covered with waterproof fabric that was hosed down daily. It was a bold clientele, a clientele unafraid to express itself via police whistle. (After President Carter’s mother, Lillian, went to Studio 54, she reported, “I’m not sure if it was heaven or hell. But it was wonderful.”) Outside on the sidewalk, co-owner Steve Rubell would stand on a fire hydrant to surveil the crowd of people trying to gain admission. “People would wait for hours in the freezing cold, knowing it was hopeless,” Johnny Morgan writes in Disco: The Music, the Times, the Era. “Sometimes someone would be allowed in if they took off their shirt, others if they stripped naked. [Doorman Marc Benecke] let in the male half of a honeymoon couple but not the wife. Limo drivers were let in, their hires not. Two girls arrived with a horse. Benecke had them strip naked, then said only the horse would be allowed in.” Donald Trump was a 54 regular, but would rarely dance; as one patron put it, Trump was there to cut the deal while others cut the coke.
For many of those admitted, the net effect of this stringent door policy was to make us fixate on the clubgoers. I managed to wiggle into Studio 54 three times over the years, and indeed, each time, people-watching was the draw. You might see the ectoplasmic Andy Warhol or the über-fabulous Grace Jones; you might see the transvestite roller skater in a wedding dress with the button that read “How Dare You Presume I’m Heterosexual”; you might see enough age-disparate male couples to suggest that the evening’s theme was Father-Son.
America.
2.
Implicit to the trope of social entrée is the trope of personal transformation: by entering a new milieu, you are made new—or, at least, can choose to present yourself as someone new. According to the American Dream, life in our nation should be rich and fruity for all people regardless of their class or the circumstances of their birth. “Homeless to Harvard” is not just the name of a turgid movie on Lifetime, it’s a national ethos that bespeaks our dynamic, if sometimes crippling, fascination with destiny and self-transformation. Fueled by the popularity of Benjamin Franklin and his rags-to-riches trajectory, Americans have long clung to the belief that, with enough hard work, no one need ever learn that your birth name is James Gatz.
Which puts me in mind of a certain dance pioneer. Since the late 1950s, my family has been friends with Phyllis McDowell and her family, who lived about a mile away from us in New Haven, where we lived before we moved to Worcester. Phyllis McDowell is one of Arthur Murray’s twin daughters.
At mid-century, Arthur Murray’s name was synonymous with ballroom. A dance instructor turned entrepreneur, he had several hundred dance studios bearing his name, many of which still exist; it’s been estimated that over 5 million people have learned to dance because of these studios. His students over time would come to include Eleanor Roosevelt, John D. Rockefeller, the Duke of Windsor, Margaret Bourke-White, Enrico Caruso, Elizabeth Arden, Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney, and Jack Dempsey. In the movie Dirty Dancing, Patrick Swayze plays an Arthur Murray instructor.
Though I never met Mr. Murray or his wife, Murray’s name was invoked often in our household because of our friendship with the McDowells. My parents met Arthur and Kathryn Murray—“Once at the McDowells’ house. Phyllis and Teddy used to have us over to watch the show,” my mother told me, referring to The Arthur Murray Party, a dance show that ran from 1950 to 1960 and was hosted by Kathryn. “TV was pretty new then so you’d all get together to watch stuff.”
At the time, I was wholly uninterested in the fact that Phyllis and her four foxy daughters were the progeny of famous people. It simply didn’t compute. However, two facts about the McDowells made the clan fascinating to me: (1) their house had a bomb shelter, and (2) Mr. McDowell was rumored to have a knife inside his car in case he ever needed to cut himself out of his seat belt. This was a period of my life when I was devoting a lot of time thinking about rocket jet packs, so you can imagine the swank that a bomb shelter and a concealed weapon held for me; at some deep level of consciousness I must have realized that the McDowells were as close as I was ever going to get to the James Bond lifestyle.
Indeed, as if these two spectacularly cool items weren’t freighted enough with danger and excitement, there was yet a heightener: Phyllis’s twin sister, Jane, had married the man who invented the Heimlich maneuver. Yes, Mrs. Maneuver.
The level of emergency preparation in this family practically caused my young brain to explode; you imagined that if you bumped your head or skinned your knee at the McDowells’, chopper blades would signal the airborne arrival of cat-suited Coast Guard ninjas.
* * *
Born Moses Teichman in 1895 to poor, Jewish, Austrian-born parents who ran a bakery in New York City’s Harlem, Arthur Murray was, as he would later say, a “tall, gawky, and extremely shy” child. At Morris High School in the Bronx, he would add, “my bashfulness and diffidence had become pernicious habits.” He stuttered; his mother belittled her children and told them they’d never succeed.
Murray dropped out of school and struggled to keep various jobs, but after receiving dancing instruction from two sources—a female friend and a settlement house called the Education Alliance—he returned to school, which he now found easier because the dancing had given him a modicum of poise.
A serious student of architecture, Murray would find his fortune in the dancing craze of the 1910s (as the new century dawned, many Americans had grown tired of dancing to their grandparents’ music and had started dancing in huge numbers to ragtime instead). By day Murray worked in an architect’s office, and by night he frequented various New York City dance halls, where the raging popularity of animal dances like the turkey trot (dancers took four hopping steps sideways, with their feet apart) and the grizzly bear (dancers would stagger from side to side in emulation of a dancing bear, sometimes helpfully yelling, “It’s a bear!”) was slowly being supplanted by the calmer one-step (with their weight on their toes, dancers would travel across a room taking one step for each beat).
“Arthur first turned to social dancing as a means of meeting girls and becoming more popular,” his wife, Kathryn, would write in her book, My Husband, Arthur Murray, cowritten with Betty Hannah Hoffman. “To practice dancing, Arthur used to crash wedding receptions which were held in public halls.”
Murray left his architecture job and took classes with instructors Irene and Vernon Cast
le. The most famous dancers of their day, the Castles helped “tame” the wildness of the animal dances and made social dancing respectable. The Castles soon hired Murray to work at their school, Castle House. Then, after a sojourn teaching at a hotel in North Carolina for an instructor named the Baroness de Kuttleston, Murray opened the first Arthur Murray dance studio, located in the Georgian Terrace Hotel in Atlanta. By the time Murray stepped down from the presidency of his company in 1964, his three hundred franchised studios were grossing over $25 million a year.
* * *
What I love about Arthur Murray is his notion that dancing is a kind of conversation set to music. In his book How to Become a Good Dancer, he writes about how a foreigner who has not learned English has difficulty making himself understood. “He is so busy trying to think of the right words that he stammers and hesitates. And so it is with dancing. . . . To be a good dancer you must be able to dance without having to concentrate on the steps.”
The metaphor of dance-as-conversation also nods to the ever-escalating, back-and-forth nature of what is called a “challenge dance,” a feature of many dance idioms (e.g., tap dancing has the hoofer’s line, hip-hop has battles). In Top Hat, for instance, when Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers dance on the bandstand to “Isn’t This a Lovely Day (to Be Caught in the Rain)?,” Fred does a step, Ginger copies it; Fred does another step, Ginger copies it but adds a little zing, etc.
But Murray’s story is equally interesting to me when seen in light of two themes that reoccur throughout the history of dance: humiliation and snobbery. Many dancers—Bob Fosse and Twyla Tharp among them—spend a part of their lives hiding from their friends and family and colleagues the fact that they dance. To admit that you’re a practitioner of the leaping arts is to open yourself to inspection on the fronts of economic status, carnality, taste, self-involvement, and body mass. For men, of course, the tendency to waft one’s person through space, be it for monetary gain or simply for enjoyment, is especially psychologically tender. Though typically the forces of antagonism here are bound up in notions of masculinity, sometimes they are more class-based: when in 1924 Kathryn introduced Arthur to her father on their first date, the father asked the young suitor what he did for a living. Murray chose not to mention that he had already put away $10,000 in the bank or that he drove a Rolls-Royce, but instead simply said that he danced. Kathryn’s father responded, “I do, too, but what do you do for a living?”
