"Custom has made dancing necessary for man and woman over the past two centuries, whether one is young or old. For hundreds of years, dancing has acted as an introduction to meeting romance and being introduced to the man/woman you may one day marry. Whether it was carried out by ladies of high society in the mansion house-balls of the 18th/19th century, or the ballroom of Blackpool Tower in the 1950s/60s, or in the rock and roll dance halls of the 1950s onwards, most people met their earlier loves or significant partner on the dance floor.
My mother, who always wanted to dance, never had the pleasure of doing so with my father. I can't say that dad had two left feet, as he certainly hadn't; being good enough to play soccer for County Kilkenny, followed by playing for the Irish National soccer squad. He had too hard an upbringing as a young man bringing the bread home instead of learning to dance.
I was different to my dad, however, and very early on in life, dancing became very important to my advancement in both the romantic and the mobility stakes. The four activities that moved me most in life between childhood and manhood were playing football, singing, dancing, and romancing.
I could never be without song or dance in my life. Without dance, I cannot feel my soul, hear my heart, or see my dreams. Having my arms around a beautiful woman's waist has always enabled me to embrace life full on. I have never considered dancing as being anything other than moving to the words of one's heart and following the hidden intentions of one's dreams. It represents no less than the poetry of the feet, and as the evocation of emotional output, it is the perpendicular expression of horizontal desire.
Dancing first entered my life at the age of ten years, when I became a regular attendee at an Old Time Dancing School in Milnsbridge, Liversedge. Dancing became a legitimate means of putting one's arms publicly around the waist of an attractive girl while keeping private one's inner thoughts of romantic innocence as I moved around the floor.
My dancing career kicked off well and I even won an award for Old Time Dancing at the age of eleven years. My favourite dance was the Square Tango. I can still recall the first young girl, Hazel Hawthorn, as we moved around the ‘Keir Hardie Dance Hall’. The dance instructor was urging the group of dancers to put more passion into the movement of our bodies to the tune of 'Jealousy', but even at that young age, I could not prevent a sense of passion entering my mind. This must surely have been the first sign of the 'bad boy' inside me that still had to come out and be given full expression to.
My early football and dancing career was suddenly cut off after I incurred a serious traffic accident just before my 12th birthday, which left me a hospital patient for almost one year, and unable to walk for three years. I was left with one leg shorter than the other by three inches after my left leg had been operated on over fifty times. From all the exercises I did to help restore my balance, I found Indian Dance to be the most helpful.
By the time I had regained my mobility, I longed to get back to the dance floor. I soon discovered, however, that the disparity in length between my left and right leg would never allow me to regain that grace of movement I was previously the proud owner of. My previous effortless glide across the dance floor had become an ungainly movement of unsteady and uncertain step.
Fortunately, the era of ‘Rock and Roll’ had just arrived on the scene, and Bopping was the new dancing craze of the young as the mid-50s burst into the lives of anyone who wasn't seen as being 'square'. Luckily for me, it was the individual movement of the whole body that now mattered: less a symmetry in movement and more a shaking in synchronisation was now required by the initiated.
Formality of foot went out the window as the young developed a war dance that enabled the peacocks on the floor to parade their finest feathers of Teddy Boy suits and Duck’s Arse haircuts, smoothed back in lashings of Brillcream. Not to be outdone by the male Boppers, however cockily they strutted the dance floor in their coats of many colours and blue-suede shoes, the peahens were determined to do better in commanding admiring and fixated eyes.
Whereas the males seemly displayed their plumage to each other in their flashy coats that touched their knees and their blue bouncy footwear, their drainpipe trousers were narrow enough in the leg to enable urination in an emergency without a visit to the toilets! The peahens on the dance floor were prepared to show off everything they had to offer to admiring eyes; and in the process, provide tantalising sights that turned male breathing into a panting frenzy. The breath-taking spins and turns of dancing peahens raised their frocks, along with the pulsating blood pressure of the peacocks to fever pitch levels as the eyes of male onlookers stared enviously at the fleeting glimpses of stocking tops and garters around the long lean legs of female dancers wearing the whitest of knickers that adorned and covered their thighs and morning glory. Their dresses were wide and flowing, freeing up all movement constraint of the dancer. It was like the Christmases of every testosterone-driven young man had come all at once for no higher cost than a raised temperature and the price of an entrance ticket to the dance!
No longer was it required to wait until the courtship of more adult years in a young man’s life to catch a glimpse of an attractive female's undergarments. It was like advancing from the excitement of dodgem cars in the fairground to the thrill of the spinning waltzer, and the breathlessness of the Big Dipper as you dived into the bowels of anticipated excitement.
It took me a while to develop my own Bopping technique, but I learned to rock and roll at home with my sister Mary who was 18 months younger. She even used to practise by tying a cord to the doorknob and fastening around her waist as she turned with the beat of the record player. When I was 18 years old, I started going to the Ben Riley in Dewsbury with our Mary, which was the best dancehall for miles around. My sister Eileen would always want to come with us, but being 18 months younger than Mary, and not as wise to the world as we were, we used to dress in secret and run out the door before a tearful Eileen knew we'd gone. Once at the Ben Riley, Mary and I would separate, and we'd make our own way back home. As it happened, Eileen's worldly wisdom must have come on leaps and bounds in our absence, as she was the first of my siblings to be married at the early age of 18 years.
Until I became a proficient Bopper on the dance floor, whenever I momentarily lost my balance in a fast spin or lost my fancy footing and stumbled, I simply learned to disguise it by making it part of my dance.
Even in the days of ‘Rock and Roll’, the night always ended in a slow dance which became known as a ‘Smooch’, where the arms of both partners embraced, their bodies moved as close as public decency allowed and a bit of necking and kissing was permissible. Everyone whose luck was in always managed to get ‘the last dance' with the woman/man of their choice. When a young man had the ‘Smooch at the end of the night with someone they really fancied and wanted to walk them home, the couple would dance slowly around the floor as if they were secretly communicating to their dancing partner, 'I want to dance through life with you forever'.
Being both a 'gentleman' and a 'bad boy', with no intention of settling down before my thirties, I'd always walk the young woman I'd been smooching with to her doorstep after the last dance; and though I might dance with her again, I'd never walk out with her anymore until after my 21st year of life.
In my mid-sixties, following my divorce, I returned to my weekly attendance at the ‘Batley Rock and Roll Club’. The dancing seemed to turn back the clock on my ageing body and immediately returned me to my youth and back into the full enjoyment of life. When I met Sheila in 2010, we used to go rock and rolling weekly at Batley and seeing her in the rock and roll dresses of the time which a good friend called Julie made for her, instantly made me want to spin her off her feet. She was, without a doubt the most attractive looking woman I ever saw there in the four years we attended.
After I developed a terminal blood cancer in 2012/13, and my leg mobility quickly worsened, we had to stop going rock and rolling. We went a few times before I finally had to admit defeat. I was finding it too hurtful wanting to get up and dance without being able to any longer.
I will end this post with something my mother used to tell me as a teenager when she saw me get dressed up on a Friday night to go dancing in Dewsbury. 'Billy, you will always leave your options open if you are prepared to dance anytime, anywhere; even in the kitchen. Life is too short to sit it out; there is always dirty dishes to wash'.
Mum was right as usual. We should all dance in the rain at some time in our lives, but as she reminded me, ‘Billy, never dance in a puddle when there's a hole in your shoe unless you take your shoes off first! ‘
On our wedding night on the 10/11/12, we put on a do at the ‘Batley Rock and Roll Club’ for all those people we could not invite to our wedding reception due to the venue only holding one hundred maximum. We had a smashing time and my lovely wife was able to don her yellow rock and roll dress that Julia had made her to wear at the evening dance." William Forde: February 17th, 2018.
https://youtu.be/jNrpAgTXiC4