ABSTRACT
The dances are a gigantic screen on which we can throw public projections of our private fantasies. Havelock Ellis' beautiful metaphor of "the dance of life" reminds us that the dance once symbolized man-woman interaction, leading to the core of life and human society itself. The essentially protective, defensive attitude of the urban man or woman taking care of himself or herself first in a hard-edged, independent way is built right into the dance. The man took over so much of the woman's role that he danced with a handkerchief in his hand, in contrast to the rhumba in which a woman pulled a shawl across her buttocks as though stimulating and warming herself up for the man. The male falsetto appeals on several levels of musical taste, judging from its success in classical music during the last decade. Art today, with its succession of trivia and novelties, is an artichoke that has too many leaves and not enough heart.
