Waltz Vs Cook Island Dance Essay

The 19th century marked the year European couple dances started with the Waltz. Cultures that had arranged marriages did not have a couple dances tradition. It is one of Europe's most sought after fantasies that everything is perfect as long as you are with your partner. Ballet and the Waltz have similar personas as the motions and steps are quite similar along with the gentle and soft style. Women wear flowy long pastel gowns, while the men wore tight legging styles pants with white calf high socks beneath them, along with dark shirts with tails down the back. The dance is filled with an array of skipping and turning in circles. This Waltz was classified as immoral, but cherished for its new intimacy regulated by public dance. People primarily

While the European Waltz is polished, stage performing soft dance, the Cook Island dance is much more up beat dance. The dance of the Cook Island is often performed on a beach while girls wear coconut bras, grass skirts, and flowers in their hair. The men wear spedoesque bottoms with a flat covering the front and back of their legs. While the European waltz is about structure, the Cook Island dance is a much more fluid, free flowing styled movement, with a ‘feel good’ style of music, centered around the emphasis of joy. This Polynesian style of dancing was performed in groups not couples. In the 19th century, Victorian evangelists destroyed all their god images to get rid of thier culture, since it was secually cented, which seemed to the missionaries like Satan manifested. Unlike the Waltz, the Cook Islanders dance was used as a tool to test partners as the dancers were never supposed to touch each other but get close enough to retain a certain amount of sexual intimacy. The guys dance quite fast and energetic while flapping their legs open and close, since this used to be a way to train warriors. The girls performed gracefully with their legs closed, swaying their legs and hips side to