From today’s Forgotten English page-a-day calendar (by Jeffrey Kacirk), we learn:
The Waltz was forbidden on about this date in 1799 in parts Switzerland and Germany.
Yes, it’s the Waltz … the Forbidden Dance!
Through the 18th century, Europeans were inclined toward complex dances, such as the gavotte, minuet, and quadrille, which maintained the appearance of sexual propriety. But by 1733 the waltz, the name derived from the Italian volver, to revolve, had become popular in Vienna. It was developed from the medieval weller, or turning dances of alpine Austrian and Bavarian peasants, whose ancient yodeling melodies formed their foundations.
Aha! Those lascivious Austrian yodelers! I knew they were behind this!
But many were adamantly opposed to this risqué dance, which encouraged couples to hold each other in unprecedented embrace.
Presumably unprecedented on the dance floor, and by “proper” people.
In July 1816 the London Times wrote scornfully on the waltz’s recent introduction at a royal ball: “So long as this obscene display was confined to prostitutes and adulteresses, we did not think it deserving of notice. But now that it is forced on the respectable classes of society, we feel it a duty to warn every parent against exposing his daughter to so fatal a contagion.”
Remember that next time someone is ranting about “kids and their crazy dances these days,” or bemoans the deterioration of popular culture into the morass of licentiousness and debauchery.