Viennese Waltz is the genre of a
ballroom danceBallroom dance refers to a set of partner dances, which are enjoyed both socially and competitively around the globe. Its performance and entertainment aspects are also widely enjoyed on stage, in film, and on television....
. At least three different meanings are recognized. In the historically first sense, the name may refer to several versions of the
waltzThe waltz is a ballroom and folk dance in time, performed primarily in closed position.- History :There are several references to a sliding or gliding dance,- a waltz, from the 16th century including the representations of the printer H.S. Beheim...
, including the earliest waltzes done in ballroom dancing, danced to the music of Viennese Waltz.
What is now called the Viennese waltz is the original form of the waltz and the first ballroom dance in the closed hold or "waltz" position. The dance that is popularly known as the Waltz is actually the English or slow waltz, danced approximately at 90 beats per minute with 3 beats to the bar (the international standard of 30 measures per minute) while the Viennese Waltz is danced at about 180 beats (98-60 measures) a minute. To this day however, in Germany, Austria and France, the words "Walzer" (German for "waltz") and "valse" (French for "waltz") still implicitly refers to the original dance and not the slow waltz.
The Viennese Waltz is a rotary dance where the dancers are constantly turning either toward their right (natural) or toward their left (reverse), interspersed with non-rotating
change steps to switch between the direction of rotation. A true Viennese waltz consists only of turns and change steps. Other moves such as the fleckerls, American-style figures and side sway or underarm turns are modern inventions and are not normally danced at the annual balls in Vienna. Furthermore, in a properly danced Viennese Waltz, couples do not pass, but turn continuously left and right while travelling counterclockwise around the floor following each other.
As the Waltz evolved, some of the versions that were done at about the original fast tempo came to be called specifically "Viennese Waltz" to distinguish them from the slower waltzes. In the modern ballroom dance, two versions of Viennese Waltz are recognized: International Style and American Style.
Today the
Viennese Waltz is a
ballroomBallroom dance refers to a set of partner dances, which are enjoyed both socially and competitively around the globe. Its performance and entertainment aspects are also widely enjoyed on stage, in film, and on television....
and
partner dancePartner dances are dances whose basic choreography involves coordinated dancing of two partners, as opposed to individuals dancing alone or individually in a non-coordinated manner, and as opposed to groups of people dancing simultaneously in a coordinated manner.In the year 1023 the German poet...
that is part of the International Standard division of contemporary ballroom dance.
Early history
The
Viennese Waltz, so called to distinguish it from the
WaltzThe waltz is a ballroom and folk dance in time, performed primarily in closed position.- History :There are several references to a sliding or gliding dance,- a waltz, from the 16th century including the representations of the printer H.S. Beheim...
and the French Waltz, is the oldest of the current ballroom dances. It emerged in the second half of the 18th century from the
German danceA German Dance is a type of dance common in central Europe in the classical era.Franz Schubert, Ludwig van Beethoven, Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart have composed German Dances. Schubert , for example, composed under this tile D.643 and D. 945....
and the
LändlerThe ländler is a folk dance in 3/4 time which was popular in Austria, south Germany and German Switzerland at the end of the 18th century.It is a dance for couples which strongly features hopping and stamping...
in
AustriaAustria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.3 million people in Central Europe. It borders both Germany and the Czech Republic to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the west...
and was both popular, and subject to criticism. It gained ground due to the
Congress of ViennaThe Congress of Vienna was a conference of ambassadors of European states chaired by the Austrian statesman Klemens Wenzel von Metternich, and held in Vienna from November, 1814 to June, 1815. Its objective was to settle the many issues arising from the French Revolutionary Wars, the Napoleonic...
at the beginning of the 19th century and the famous compositions by
Josef LannerJoseph Franz Karl Lanner was an Austrian dance music composer. He was best remembered as one of the earliest Viennese composers to reform the waltz from a simple peasant dance to something that even the highest society could enjoy, either as an accompaniment to the dance, or for the music's own sake...
,
Johann Strauss IJohann Strauss I , born in Vienna, was an Austrian Romantic composer famous for his waltzes, and for popularizing them alongside Joseph Lanner, thereby setting the foundations for his sons to carry on his musical dynasty...
and his son,
Johann Strauss IIJohann Strauss II was an Austrian composer of light music, particularly dance music and operettas...
. It had spread to England sometime before 1812.
Initially, the waltz was significantly different from its form today. In the first place, the couples did not dance in the closed position as today. The illustrations and descriptions make it clear that the couples danced with arm positions similar to that of the precursor dances, the
LandlerThe ländler is a folk dance in 3/4 time which was popular in Austria, south Germany and German Switzerland at the end of the 18th century.It is a dance for couples which strongly features hopping and stamping...
and the
AllemandeAn allemande is one of the most popular instrumental dance forms in Baroque music, and a standard element of a suite...
. The hold was at times semi-closed, and at times side by side. Arms are intertwined and circling movements were made under raised arms. No couple in Wilson's plate are shown in close embrace, but some are in closed hold facing each other. There was another significant difference from our present technique. The feet were turned out and the rise of foot during the dance was much more pronounced than it is today. This can be seen quite clearly in the figure, and such a style imposes its limitations on how the dance can be performed.
To understand why Quirey says "The advent of the Waltz in polite society was quite simply the greatest change in dance form and dancing manners that has happened in our history" we need to realize that all European social dances before the waltz were communal sequence dances. Communal, because all the dancers on the floor took part in a pre-set pattern (often chosen by a Master of Ceremony). Dancers separately, and as couples, faced inwards to the spectators as much as they faced inwards. Thus all present took part as dancers or as onlookers. This was the way with the country dance and all previous popular dances. With the waltz, couples were independent of each other, and were turned towards each other (though not in close contact). Lord Byron wrote a furious letter, which precedes his poem
The Waltz, in which he decries the anti-social nature of the dance, with the couple "like two cockchafers spitted on the same bodkin."
Later history
In the 1920s in Germany the Viennese Waltz became outdated as more modern and dynamic dances emerged. In England the Viennese Waltz acclimatized, there
BostonBoston, in reference to a dance, may have one of the following meanings.*The Boston, an original name of the American Waltz.Arguably, the dances below are variations of The Boston.*Walking Boston*American Boston*French Boston*Philadelphia Boston...
and later
WaltzThe waltz is a ballroom and folk dance in time, performed primarily in closed position.- History :There are several references to a sliding or gliding dance,- a waltz, from the 16th century including the representations of the printer H.S. Beheim...
were preferred.
At the beginning of the 1930s the Viennese Waltz had its comeback as a
folk danceThe term folk dance describes a large number of dances that tend to share some or all of the following attributes:*They are dances performed at social functions by people with little or no professional training, often to traditional music or music based on traditional music.*They are not designed...
in
GermanyGermany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium,...
and Austria. The former military officer Karl von Mirkowitsch made it acceptable both for society and ballroom, since 1932 the Viennese Waltz has been present on ballroom dance floors. About the same time, the Viennese Waltz had its comeback also as a (folk dance) in The Greater Cleveland Ohio U.S.A. Area. It was because the greatest number of Slovenians (60,000 - 80,000) settled in that area.
SloveniaSlovenia , officially the Republic of Slovenia , is a country in Central Europe bordering Italy to the west, the Adriatic Sea to the southwest, Croatia to the south and east, Hungary to the northeast, and Austria to the north...
, situated south of
AustriaAustria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.3 million people in Central Europe. It borders both Germany and the Czech Republic to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the west...
, was influenced in their folk dance by the Viennese Waltz. Frankie Yankovic, Slovenian from Cleveland Ohio traveled the world playing his version ("Cleveland Style" as per Polka Hall of Fame, Euclid Ohio) of the Viennese Waltzes. His Blue Skirt Waltz went Platinum 1949. Even in 2007, there are several opportunities to waltz each week in The Greater Cleveland Area. In 1951 Paul Krebs, a dance teacher from Nürnberg, combined the traditional Austrian Waltz with the English style of waltzing and had great success at the dance festival in
BlackpoolBlackpool is a seaside town in Lancashire, England. Situated along the coast of the Irish Sea, it has a population of 142,900, making it the fourth-largest settlement in North West England behind Manchester, Liverpool and Warrington...
in the same year. Since then the Viennese Waltz is one of the five International Standard ballroom dances; in 1963 it was added to the Welttanzprogramm which is the fundament of European dancing schools.
The Viennese Waltz has always been a symbol of political and public sentiments. It was called the
Marseillaise of the heart (
Eduard HanslickEduard Hanslick was a Bohemian-Austrian writer on music.-Biography:Hanslick was born in Prague, the son of Joseph Adolph Hanslick, a bibliographer and music teacher from a German-speaking family, and one of his piano pupils, the daughter of a Jewish merchant from Vienna...
, a critic from Vienna in the past century) and was supposed to
have saved Vienna the revolutionA revolution is a fundamental change in power or organizational structures that takes place in a relatively short period of time.Aristotle described two types of political revolution:...
(sentence of a biographer of the composer
Johann Strauss IJohann Strauss I , born in Vienna, was an Austrian Romantic composer famous for his waltzes, and for popularizing them alongside Joseph Lanner, thereby setting the foundations for his sons to carry on his musical dynasty...
), while Strauss I himself was called the
Napoleon Autrichien (
Heinrich LaubeHeinrich Laube , German dramatist, novelist and theatre-director, was born at Sprottau in Prussian Silesia.-Life:He studied theology at Halle and Breslau , and settled in Leipzig in 1832...
, poet from the north of Germany).
International Style Viennese Waltz
International Style Viennese Waltz is danced in
closed positionIn partner dancing, closed position is a category of positions in which partners hold each other while facing at least approximately toward each other....
. The syllabus is limited to
natural and reverse turnsA Natural Turn is a dance step in which the partners turn around each other clockwise. Its near-mirror counterpart is the Reverse Turn, which is turning to the counterclockwise....
, Changes,
FleckerlA fleckerl is a dance step, most commonly found in the Viennese Waltz. Unlike the natural and reverse turns, the fleckerl does not move forwards along the dance floor but instead rotates on the spot....
s, Contra Check, Left Whisk, and canter time
PivotThe term pivot turn or simply pivot refers to certain turning dance steps which may differ in different dance styles, with common character that the turn is a rotational movement of the whole body around one's own vertical axis, as if around a pivot. During the turn the foot swivels on the floor...
s (Canter Pivots).
American Style Viennese Waltz
American Style Viennese Waltz has much more freedom, both in dance positions and syllabus.