Endorsements

As it emerged from the First World War, Britain entered what was described by many as a dance 'craze', and over the next three decades dancing would remain one of the nation's most influential leisure practices. Dancing in the English styleprovides a comprehensive consideration of the evolution, experience and cultural representation of popular dance throughout this period. It describes the rise of modern ballroom dancing as Britain's predominant popular style, and explores the relationship between two emerging commercial producers - the dance profession and dance hall industry - and the consumers who formed the dancing public. Together these groups negotiated a 'national' dancing style, most evident in the re-creation of foreign dances such as the tango and the foxtrot as the English style of ballroom dancing, and in the themes of successful novelty dances like the Lambeth Walk. The book demonstrates that through these processes, popular dance created, circulated, embodied - and commodified - ideas about British national identity. Dancing in the English style thus illuminates the domestic creation of popular dance culture, but it also emphasises the global. It explores the impact of international cultural products on national identity construction, the complexities of Americanisation, and Britain's place in a transnational system of production and consumption that forged the dances of the Jazz Age. It will be of strong value to students and scholars of twentieth-century British history, cultural studies and dance studies, and to all of those with interests in the histories of popular culture, women and gender, or war and society.