The Survey *

Over the past twenty years there have been a number of investigations ¹ into the leisure activities and interests of young people, some of which have touched, inter alia, on dancing. These studies indicate that, over the past fifteen years or so, there has been a marked increase of interest in dancing. M. Stewart, for example, who investigated the leisure activities of school-children in the same part of Essex in 1946 ² and in 1958 ³ has pointed out that, over the twelve years in question, dancing, like record-playing, had become a ‘regular pastime’ for large numbers of school-children. ⁴ Similarly, T. Veness, in an enquiry conducted in 1956 ⁵ into young peoples’ spare-time activities found that, in comparison with other social activities mentioned, interest in dancing was high for modern school and technical school girls, particularly the latter. She concludes that ‘it is probable that interest in dancing has risen considerably over the past decade (of which our investigation comes in the middle).’