This book focuses on the socio-cultural and economic circumstances in which the Viennese waltz developed at the turn of the 19th century. Through an examination of the production, dissemination and consumption of the waltz in Vienna and Europe during the period of 1780?1825, the book shows that the Viennese waltz became one of the first commodities of the culture industry. In the late 18th century, the early forms of the waltz were danced in the dance halls of the European elite from where they spread into Vienna through dancingmasters, dance manuals and printed dance scores. Then these dances, first adopted by the Viennese elite, were taught to the lower classes in the suburban dance schools and dance halls.

Reveals how the culture and repertoire of the early Viennese ballroom permeated and intersected with other areas of musical life.

Describes the history of ballroom dancing; presents photo-illustrated instructions for the waltz, foxtrot, tango, Viennese waltz, rumba, merengue, samba, cha-cha, mambo, East Coast swing, and hustle; discusses such topics as timing, rhythm, practice, and expectations; and includes an eleven-track audio CD.

The music of the Strauss family – Johann and his three sons, Johann, Josef and Eduard – enjoys enormous popular appeal. Yet existing biographies have failed to do justice to the family's true significance in nineteenth and early twentieth-century musical history. David Wyn Jones addresses this deficiency, engagingly showing that – from Johann's first engagements in the mid-1820s to the death of Eduard in 1916 – the music making of the family was at the centre of Habsburg Viennese society as it moved between dance hall, concert hall and theatre. The Strauss industry at its height was, he demonstrates, greater than any one of the individuals, with serious personal and domestic consequences including affairs, illness, rivalry and fraud. This zesty biography, spanning over a hundred years of history, brings the dynasty brilliantly to life across a large canvas as it offers fresh and revealing insights into the cultural life of Vienna as a whole.

Dancer-choreographer-directors Fred Astaire, George Balanchine and Gene Kelly and their colleagues helped to develop a distinctively modern American film-dance style and recurring dance genres for the songs and stories of the American musical. Freely crossing stylistic and class boundaries, their dances were rooted in the diverse dance and music cultures of European immigrants and African-American migrants who mingled in jazz age America. The new technology of sound cinema let them choreograph and fuse camera movement, light, and color with dance and music. Preserved intact for the largest audiences in dance history, their works continue to influence dance and film around the world. This book centers them and their colleagues within the history of dance (where their work has been marginalized) as well as film tracing their development from Broadway to Hollywood (1924-58) and contextualizing them within the American history and culture of their era. This modern style, like the nation in which it developed, was pluralist and populist. It drew from aspects of the old world and new, "high" and "low", theatrical and social dance forms, creating new sites for dance from the living room to the street. A definitive ingredient was the freer more informal movement and behavior of their jazz-age generation, which fit with song lyrics that poeticized slangy American English. The Gershwins, Rodgers and Hart, and others wrote not only songs but extended dance-driven scores tailored to their choreography, giving a new prominence to the choreographer and dancer-actor. This book discuss how these choreographers collaborated with directors like Vincente Minnelli and Stanley Donen and cinematographers like Gregg Toland, musicians, dancers, designers and technicians to synergize music and moving image in new ways. Eventually, concepts and visual-musical devices derived from dance-making would give entire films the rhythmic flow and feeling of dance. Dancing Americans came to be seen around the world as archetypal embodiments of the free-spirited optimism and energy of America itself.