Author laments death of dancing in shift from waltz to 'jerking frog'

Across the country on New Year's Eve, people took to dance floors to groove away the last hours of 2015. Photo / AP

Across the country on New Year's Eve, people took to dance floors to groove away the last hours of 2015.

But an eminent philosopher was not among the masses of humanity moving to a techno beat.

Roger Scruton, British author of more than 40 books and a noted authority on aesthetics, has used his latest work to offer a withering critique of much of modern dancing.

In Confessions of a Heretic, a collection of essays to be published in the northern spring, Scruton takes issue with the dancing witnessed in clubs and pubs, in which participants "jerk on to the floor in obedience to the puppet master at the desk".

Modern dancers, he notes, also "tend to avoid contact with each other, since there is no agreed convention as to what form their contact should take".

Scruton says he loves dancing but is "no good at it".

A conservative thinker, Scruton is naturally drawn to traditional forms of dance and formation dancing.

"I love Viennese waltzes and polkas, and especially ceilidhs and old-fashioned formation dancing," he said.

"I like rock 'n' roll, too. Young women especially love the idea of formation dancing ... Once it's on offer, people go for it. There's a kind of ignorance."

He appears to reserve particular scorn for dancing to techno-style music that is "loud enough to make conversation impossible and, provided the pulse is regular enough, to jerk the body into reflex motion, like the legs of a galvanised frog".

In the early days of rock, he claims, dance steps required a partner, and this allowed couples to "touch, swing around each other, move together in an attempt to recapture withness".

As an example of music to dance "properly" to, Scruton cites Elvis Presley's Heartbreak Hotel, in which the rhythm is generated by the melodic line and the voice.

The Beatles also get an honourable mention, starkly contrasted with today's "grotesque caricature of music in which rhythm is mere beat and melody mere repetition".

Asked if he would be attending a dance in the holidays, Scruton said: "At my age, 71, it rather depends on my knees."

- Guardian