From the Ballroom to Hell

Equally a sin for both sexes

by T.A. Falconer
Ex-Dancing Master

The most accomplished and most perfect dancers are to be found among the abandoned women. Why? Because they are graduates of dancing schools.
If any should wish to ascertain the truth of this, let him ask the girls themselves.
I have for several months been working in a Mission of Los Angeles, and where I have before seen causes at work, I have now had ample opportunity of seeing the effect, and I have often heard some of these unfortunate ones cry out in bitter anguish: “Would to God that I had never entered a dancing school.”
The following 200 were cases of girls who are today inmates of the brothel whom I talked with personally. They were frank to answer to my questions in regard to the direct cause of their downfall, and I gathered that these were ruined by

Dancing school and ball-rooms 163
Drink given by parents 20
Willful choice 10
Poverty and abuse 200

I know of a select dancing school where in a course of three months eleven of its victims are brothel inmates today.
I have, in preceding chapters, spoken chiefly of the harm that comes to women from dancing, and have shown how vile men make use of the privileges the waltz and its surroundings afford to lead once pure girls to impurity and often to crime. But do not think for a moment that because I have here thus spoken, that I hold the women blameless or the dance to the man harmless.
While the woman is more often disgraced in the sight of man, I believe that in the sight of God the sin o dancing is equally a sin for both sexes.
A girl is often ensnared into intoxication and thus into greater sin by vile men, but she is not wholly excusable. If she goes to a ball she must take the consequences. Every woman has a God-given instinct which teaches her right from wrong, and she cannot but know that to indulge in such emotions as the modern waltz fosters is wrong.
It is a horrible fact, but a fact none the less, that it is absolutely necessary that a woman shall be able and willing to reciprocate the feelings of her partner before she can graduate a perfect dancer.
So even if it be allowed that a woman may waltz virtuously, she cannot, in that case, waltz well.
It matters not how perfectly she knows and takes the steps, she must yield herself entirely to her partner’s embrace and also to his emotions. Until a girl can and will do this, she is regarded a scrub by the male experts.
I would that young women who dance could just once be “behind the scenes” when young men meet after an evening’s dance to discuss it together, and hear such remarks as “that Miss ….. is a perfect stick. I would not give a fig to dance with her. You can’t arouse any more passion in her than you could in a putty man. To waltz with such as she is not what I go for.”
Or, another says: “Ah, but that beautiful Miss Smith is a daisy. She is posted. This waltzing is the greatest thing in the world. While you are whirling one of these deer creatures, if you do the thing correctly, you can whisper in her ear things she would shoot you for saying at any other time, but she likes it all the same. They take to it naturally enough if they are properly taught. If you don’t know just how it is done, go to a dancing master, or any professional dancer. They know, and they will soon let you know. You will soon become a waltzer, and this find out what there is in it.”
Such remarks, and worse than these (remarks unfit to publish in this plainly written book) are made, my fair young ladies, after the ball, about you by the very young men who, at the dance, you thought so nice and who are so considered. I am ashamed to say in by-gone days, I have been among these young men myself, and I know that to hear them give free expression, loose-tongued, to the lewd emotions and sensual pleasures in which they indulge while in your embrace is almost as common as the waltz itself.
I repeat what I have said before, that I do not refer to rough, uncultured men, but to those who are looked upon by society as most polished, refined and desirable young men.
If it be true that a woman, however innocent in thought, is the subject of such vile comment, if there is the barest possibility that it may be true, is it not also true that if she is possessed of a remnant of delicacy, she will shrink from exposing herself to such comment, and flee from places of dancing, as from a den of vipers?