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0:35

Okay,

0:37

we are ready. Jordan Armstead lives

0:39

in New York City. I am 16 years

0:42

old. I called her up to pick her brain

0:44

about a topic I'd gotten curious about.

0:47

When I say like slow dance to you, what

0:50

do you imagine? I imagine like a

0:52

very old-fashioned, like, I'm

0:55

gonna marry this man slow dance.

0:57

She also imagines scenes from movies

0:59

and television. Do you

1:02

wanna dance? Dance with

1:04

me? Can I have the last dance? These

1:07

scenes present the slow dance as a rite of

1:09

passage, a pinnacle of connection,

1:12

the perfect moment. And Jordan

1:14

can only picture them because she's never

1:16

slow danced herself.

1:18

So, unfortunately,

1:20

I am a slow dance virgin. I've

1:23

never been asked to dance

1:25

before. I really am exposing

1:28

myself here. When I was Jordan's age,

1:30

I'd only slow danced a few times. Once was

1:32

at summer camp with the first boy I ever

1:34

kissed. It was a whole stereotypical

1:37

teen slow dance thing. My hands

1:39

on his shoulders, his hands on my waist, close

1:41

together, awkwardly rocking back

1:43

and forth. And way more than

1:46

the swaying itself, I remember looking

1:48

around, watching

1:49

everyone, my eyes darting

1:51

completely outside whatever

1:54

magical moment I was supposed to

1:56

be having. I can't

1:58

say that I loved it, but it did.

1:59

It did make me feel like I'd checked off some teenage

2:02

life experience box. And

2:04

Jordan's never had that opportunity. I've

2:07

been to dances. The schools still

2:09

do dances, but they don't just

2:11

slow dances. It's a lot of grinding.

2:14

It's a lot of twerking.

2:15

Like me, put your right leg down, left leg,

2:18

sit down like you're sitting on the stairs. Look

2:20

to the left, look to the right, look back, get a booty or

2:22

stand up. Whoa, whoa, whoa.

2:24

There's not even a triangle, slow,

2:27

slow, because it will ruin the mood. The

2:29

entire party is fast music,

2:31

rap music, you know, it's

2:34

quick with it. In general, Jordan doesn't

2:36

mind. I love some fast

2:39

music. I love to

2:41

whine and do all of that.

2:43

And it's not like her intel about slow dancing only

2:45

comes from those schmoopy movie scenes.

2:48

My sister, she's 29 right now.

2:52

She got the slow dance experience and she said,

2:54

you know,

2:55

it was very awkward for me because he

2:57

didn't know where to put his hands. I didn't

2:59

know where to put my hands. Sometimes he would put the hands

3:01

where he wasn't supposed to put the hands and

3:04

it ruined the entire vibe, right?

3:06

Even so,

3:07

she'd like to experience a slow dance for herself.

3:10

I am very much a romantic. I

3:12

think it's wonderful to slow dance,

3:15

but she's not

3:15

expecting it to happen anytime soon.

3:18

My generation does not slow

3:20

dance.

3:21

We don't slow dance.

3:30

This is Decodering. I'm Willa Paskin.

3:33

To judge from the teen programming on Netflix,

3:35

the slow dance is alive and well.

3:37

But when you look a little closer, it's

3:39

a tradition on life support. In

3:42

this episode, we're going to figure out what happened.

3:44

We're going to pull way back

3:46

to trace the history of dancing

3:48

slowly from the waltz to the

3:50

prom to the movies.

3:52

And you'll also hear nostalgia

3:54

drenched personal testimonials from

3:56

slow dancers

3:57

themselves.

3:58

Put it all together and we're going to show you.

3:59

show you how an intimate and provocative

4:02

dance became traditionalized and

4:04

Hollywoodized and lost

4:06

its vitality and currency among

4:08

young people,

4:10

even if some of us wish it hadn't.

4:12

So today on Decodering, we're going to wrap

4:15

our arms around the slow dance and bring

4:17

it really close to

4:19

try and understand, why

4:21

is the slow dance dying?

4:50

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5:28

So if you don't dance anywhere but weddings and

5:30

have no teenagers in your life, maybe talking

5:33

about the death of the slow dance sounds a little overheated.

5:36

But I'm not the first person to notice it. There have

5:38

been articles in Billboard and Time Magazine

5:40

and elsewhere. And it's not just today's

5:42

teens who will tell you its

5:44

decline is real. You know, as

5:46

a DJ, you just want to keep everyone going

5:48

yah, yah, crazy until the end. Herbert

5:51

Holler is a DJ and event producer.

5:53

Start to finish, you want everyone's hands and

5:56

faces and sweaty armpits on

5:58

full display.

5:59

And if you ask him how the slow dance is doing, he

6:02

does not

6:02

mince words. It doesn't

6:05

exist anymore. Herbert

6:06

does a lot of private events, weddings

6:08

and bar mitzvahs, where he rarely gets requests

6:11

for slow dances. He also does

6:13

club sets. He hosts an old school hip

6:15

hop dance party in New York and Philly that's been

6:17

running for 20 years. The set

6:19

lists are usually pretty fast paced, but one

6:22

night he thought he'd try something different.

6:25

You know, one time I had this idea from

6:27

an old school dance party, I was gonna bring back the slow

6:29

dance.

6:29

He had this red siren light, like

6:32

the kind that volunteer firefighters put on their

6:34

cars in emergencies.

6:35

And he thought he might be able to use it as a prop.

6:38

So you know what, I'm gonna bring this to the club.

6:40

I'm gonna ask the sound guys to turn off

6:42

all the lights and I'm gonna plug

6:44

this sucker in and I'm gonna be like, you know

6:46

what this light means? It's time for the slow

6:49

dance.

6:50

So he did all of that and then he dropped the needle

6:52

on this slow song. Picture

6:54

John Cusack holding up

6:56

a boombox.

6:57

And I remember trying it

7:00

and it failed

7:00

miserably.

7:07

The floor completely cleared.

7:09

Slow songs will clear a crowd

7:11

easily.

7:12

Rosie Q DJs largely for the queer

7:14

community in New York and New Jersey. I

7:16

DJ

7:16

for Stonewall. Stonewall

7:18

is a mixed bag of people that come in anywhere

7:20

from 21 to, you know, I've

7:23

seen people in their

7:24

60s. I half played

7:27

careless whisper but then it becomes

7:30

more of a singing karaoke.

7:36

So no matter what age now, everyone's

7:38

mostly just gonna sing. Or walk away.

7:43

There are

7:44

exceptions. When Rosie plays for a largely

7:46

Latinx audience, she can spin a slower

7:49

song and the crowd will happily do the bachata,

7:51

a slow partner dance that started in the Dominican

7:54

Republic. And there are events like R&B

7:56

nights catering to adults who still

7:59

want to. dance. But even

8:01

these exceptions

8:03

can be revealing about the slow

8:05

dances state.

8:06

Jabari Johnson is the founder of a company

8:09

that puts on R&B only,

8:11

a live event that's exactly

8:12

what it sounds like. I host

8:15

a lot of the shows and I'm on stage and I'm

8:17

you know for three hours looking at the crowd.

8:19

And he sees a lot of adults

8:21

dancing together slowly, but

8:23

front to back. I almost

8:26

never see people face to

8:28

face you know with like a forehead

8:30

leaning up against another forehead and

8:33

gazing in each other's eyes.

8:35

Instead couples are typically

8:37

snuggled up butt to groin so

8:39

the person in the back has their arms

8:42

wrapped around their partner's waist and

8:44

they're both swaying sensually

8:45

to the beat. When

8:47

he does see people dancing face to

8:49

face he notices. It's

8:51

just so rare that videographers

8:55

and photographers try to capture

8:57

that because it makes for like an incredible

9:00

picture and a moment.

9:02

It's like

9:03

the face to face slow dance is an adorable

9:06

endangered species and you should take

9:08

a picture of it before it vanishes

9:10

from the face of the earth. And

9:13

to figure out how things got so dire

9:15

for the slow dance we have to go

9:17

back to when it was thriving in

9:20

the wild.

9:22

But before we do that

9:24

we're gonna dim the lights and

9:27

slow things down with the first

9:29

of a number of reminiscences about

9:32

when the slow dance

9:33

still reigned supreme.

9:37

My name is Julie Clousner. In

9:40

seventh grade I went

9:42

to about 50 bar

9:44

bat mitzvahs and people

9:47

would link up and they would slow dance

9:50

but so like you know stiffening

9:52

your arms Frankenstein's

9:55

monster style and then

9:57

just doing like a slow touch step to

10:00

soft rock hits that were popular

10:02

in the early 90s.

10:12

So I was at the gym

10:15

at my Hebrew school, and I remember

10:18

being really excited

10:20

that this guy that I

10:22

had a crush on agreed to dance

10:24

with me. If

10:27

there had been like scientific

10:29

tongs, like to hold me further

10:31

away, he would have made use of them. So

10:33

we were just sort of dancing

10:35

to the song Lady in Red.

10:44

I was wearing this

10:47

very loud button

10:49

down

10:50

silky shirt

10:53

where every panel was a different

10:55

pattern. So we're talking

10:58

about like oranges next to

11:00

pinks and certainly reds.

11:03

At one point he made eye contact and

11:05

there was just an awkward pause

11:07

and he decided to say, hey, you're

11:10

wearing red, right? And

11:13

it was something I had absolutely

11:15

no response to, but I appreciated

11:18

it because it acknowledged

11:20

that he had not completely

11:23

disassociated

11:23

from the experience.

11:26

In retrospect, I look back and I was like,

11:28

oh my God, what is silly thing to say? But at the time

11:30

I was thrilled. I

11:32

was really into him

11:35

having noticed me and also

11:37

being called a lady. Hello, that's

11:39

great, right?

11:50

More dancing when we come back.

11:56

Thank you.

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13:20

I

13:24

would begin slow dancing with

13:26

the Waltz. Richard

13:29

Powers is a dance historian at Stanford,

13:31

and the Waltz is a dramatic folk dance

13:34

that became extremely popular in

13:36

Paris and London around 1850.

13:39

This was the first time that

13:41

you saw in society a couple

13:44

in and embrace facing each other.

13:50

Before the Waltz, formal dancing was

13:52

much more chaste. Think of a ball in a Jane Austen

13:54

adaptation. The dancers take one another's hand, touch fingertips, and then

13:57

they're ready to dance. swirl

14:00

together, but only momentarily. The

14:02

contact is not continuous. But

14:05

it was with the waltz.

14:09

And that was shocking for many

14:11

at the time. So okay, so the

14:14

waltz, which we now think of as

14:17

proper, was like a sexy,

14:19

provocative dance. Let

14:22

me read you a quote here.

14:24

It's from a July 1816 issue

14:26

of the London Times about a ball given

14:28

by the Prince

14:29

Regent. We remarked

14:31

with pain that the indecent foreign

14:33

dance called the waltz was introduced

14:36

at the English court on Friday last.

14:39

So long as this obscene display

14:42

was confined to prostitutes and

14:44

adultresses, we did

14:46

not think of it deserving of notice. But

14:49

now that it is attempted to be forced

14:51

on the respectable classes of society,

14:54

we feel it a duty to warn

14:56

every parent against exposing

14:59

his daughter to so fatal a

15:01

contagion.

15:02

In America, the waltz was deemed inappropriate

15:04

for marriageable girls for the

15:06

next 30 years.

15:09

And it established a recurring theme

15:11

for many popular dances and

15:14

slow dances in particular. The

15:17

ones that catch on are often intimate

15:20

and provocative, romantic and

15:23

sexy. They are about the connection

15:25

between two people, and yet they can

15:27

make other people watching

15:30

kind of mad.

15:31

And that's part of the allure too.

15:34

You see the same dynamic in the next

15:36

dance that Richard sees as part

15:39

of the slow dances origin story.

15:48

The tango originated

15:49

in the lower class dance halls of Buenos Aires

15:51

and by the early 1900s had migrated

15:53

to Europe. It was also considered

15:56

an unseemly dance. A French prime minister

15:58

once said of it in my dance. We only did

16:00

that lying down. But Richard says the

16:02

tango was not that different from a number

16:05

of other dances at the time, except

16:07

for this one

16:08

thing. The

16:10

difference is tango would come to

16:12

a full stop at the end of most tango

16:14

steps, and there you are stopped without

16:17

moving.

16:19

And we think that was the main

16:22

objection to the tango.

16:24

It's the not moving, the

16:26

pause, the stillness that's

16:28

so scandalous and

16:31

appealing.

16:32

So you can see this is heading towards slow

16:35

dancing.

16:35

In fact, a kind of pared down version

16:38

of a walking dance was the dominant

16:40

dance of

16:41

the early 20th century. It was called

16:43

the one step. It was simply walking

16:45

with a partner in your arm, one step per

16:47

beat. Walk, walk, walk

16:50

to slow dancing.

16:51

Is that as boring as it sounds? No,

16:54

no, because you're holding somebody in your arms.

16:57

Okay. Legally. Who you

16:59

want to be with.

17:07

Dancing was so arousing that

17:10

from the 1910s through the 1930s, establishments called taxi dance

17:14

halls flourished. These

17:16

were places where men would pay wibbit

17:18

for a close dance. The women were called

17:21

taxi girls and they had some adjacency

17:23

to sex workers. And the practice inspired

17:25

this hit song in 1930.

17:27

Come on,

17:29

big boy, can't dance

17:31

the dance.

17:33

But these were grown

17:35

men. And in the post-war era,

17:38

the slow dance would come out of the dark corners

17:40

of taxi halls and shimmy its way

17:43

into the spotlit high school gymnasium

17:46

where horny,

17:47

gawky teens would make it

17:50

their own.

17:53

Before we get to that though, let's

17:56

dim those lights again and hear

17:58

another slow dance. My name is Naeema

18:00

Cochran. So

18:03

I remember my very first time slow dancing

18:05

with a boy at

18:08

a dance in middle school. I had just transferred

18:10

from a predominantly white school

18:13

to a predominantly black school. So

18:16

my version of the slow dance was

18:18

kind of like, and his too, hands on shoulders, hands

18:21

on waist, but like a big gap

18:23

in between. And you're kind of just

18:25

like going from foot to foot.

18:28

There's no knee bend, there's no sway.

18:31

It's kind of like a teeter totter situation.

18:34

And I remember the older

18:36

kids making fun of us, right? Like,

18:39

look at these two nerds over

18:41

here.

18:42

The next like really

18:43

big slow dance moment that I remember

18:46

was my freshman year. Make

18:50

it last.

18:51

One of my neighbors had a sweet 16, and

18:53

like everybody from school was there.

18:57

And I danced with a senior who I had

18:59

a massive crush on. And that

19:01

moment, like I was ready. Like I

19:04

was ready for that one, right? Like I

19:06

was ready. It was right. I was

19:08

prepared. It was good. It was a

19:10

whole moment. And that's

19:13

the version

19:14

through which I was navigating feelings.

19:16

Like, oh, this feels really nice. You

19:19

know, you're nuggled in so closely that

19:22

your head is resting on a shoulder. You know, it's that close.

19:25

And that for me, in

19:27

my mind now, I liken it to like going from JB

19:29

to Varsity. Like now I'm ready to play Varsity.

19:43

We'll be back out on the dance floor in

19:45

a minute.

19:56

Sergeant

19:58

and Mrs. Smith, you're going to... I love

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20:44

So all the dancing we've been talking about, waltzes

20:46

and one-steps and taxi dances, were done by,

20:49

among others, young people, folks

20:51

trying to mate and marry and have

20:53

a good time. And in the post-war

20:56

era,

20:57

some of those young

20:58

people got a new

21:00

name.

21:01

The early teens are years of upheaval

21:03

and turmoil.

21:05

They're years of physical and glandular change,

21:07

new and wider relationships with people, and

21:10

new inner feelings in the early adolescent.

21:12

Teenager, as a term, was

21:14

first popularized in the 1940s. It

21:17

crystallized the existence of this new

21:19

not quite kids, not quite

21:21

adults demographic. And

21:24

already, high school dances were

21:26

a staple of this experience.

21:29

The Junior Prom, semi-formal, is

21:31

the best dance of the year and is announced early.

21:33

This is from a 1946 etiquette film. It's

21:37

a 21-minute proto-PSA showing teenagers

21:39

how they ought to dress, behave, converse,

21:43

and yes, dance at the Junior

21:45

Prom. Now that they have gotten to dancing,

21:47

let's hope that their troubles are over and

21:50

that the evening will work out the way they have hoped.

21:52

In it, you can see two young white couples

21:55

slow dancing, or rather, dancing

21:57

to slower music. what

22:00

we think of as the teen slow

22:02

dance today. Neither the awkward

22:04

teeter-totter nor the slinky

22:07

adolescent groove. It's more a classic

22:10

partner dance. The boy is leading so he's holding

22:12

the girl's hand, but those hands are

22:14

clasped up with elbows

22:16

bent at chest height as they two-step

22:19

across the dance floor to the sound

22:21

of a big band piano.

22:25

But just a few years later, this is not

22:27

the sort of music or dancing

22:30

teens

22:30

would be doing if given.

22:39

In the early 1950s, adolescents

22:42

alienated by the child-centric baby

22:44

boom but flush on cash started

22:46

listening to what they wanted

22:48

to. A new sound created by

22:50

black musicians mixing rhythm and blues

22:53

and country with guitar licks and lyrics

22:55

about cars and sex and other things

22:57

teenagers

22:57

cared about.

22:59

As rock and roll took off, white

23:01

musicians started making it too and it became

23:03

the sound of a generation.

23:10

Rock and roll's syncopated

23:11

rhythms and associations with black

23:14

culture freaked

23:14

some white adults out.

23:17

And it wasn't just the music, it was the whole

23:19

rebellious attitude.

23:21

This rock and roll is the musical

23:24

noise symptomatic of a

23:26

decadent and irresponsible youth.

23:28

And the slow dance in the 1950s could

23:30

be rebellious too. You can

23:32

see in documentary footage from this time

23:34

that it's starting to look more familiar.

23:37

That leading arm is sometimes

23:40

starting to drop leaving teen couples

23:42

pressed really close together in nothing

23:45

but an embrace. One that

23:47

liked the waltz and the tango

23:49

could irk adults.

23:59

that made it even more

24:02

enticing.

24:03

Julie Malnick is a professor of theater and dance

24:06

studies at NYU and the author of Dancing

24:08

Black, Dancing White, rock and

24:10

roll, race and youth culture. We

24:12

couldn't get too close. Couldn't

24:15

be

24:15

too slow, right? We couldn't

24:17

start, you know, hugging

24:19

each other and kissing on the dance floor. So

24:21

it really, it had this aura,

24:23

I think, of the forbidden.

24:26

What teenager could possibly

24:29

resist? All over the country,

24:31

they were doing this, something we know

24:34

thanks to television. TV

24:36

stations looking at the rock and roll craze started

24:38

filming kids dancing, creating

24:40

cheap, popular after-school programming.

24:44

There were hundreds of these televised

24:46

teen dance shows around the country in local

24:48

markets.

24:49

The most famous of these programs started

24:52

in Philadelphia.

24:56

American Bandstand, hosted by

24:58

Dick Clark, made the jump to national TV

25:00

in 1957 and would run for the next 30

25:02

years. A proto-TikTok

25:05

introducing kids at home to the dancing

25:07

of

25:07

their peers.

25:10

So whether they were doing slow dances, group

25:13

dances, faster rock

25:15

and roll dances, it really didn't matter, right?

25:17

They were kind of teaching

25:20

the teenage

25:21

viewers what was

25:24

hip,

25:24

what was in, what was popular.

25:27

These shows created nationalized

25:29

dance trends, many of which were fast,

25:32

but not all of them.

25:34

See if you remember this one. Ooh.

25:39

Ooh.

25:40

Here you see couples, boys

25:42

in tweed suits and girls in knee-length

25:45

plaid skirts with bobbed

25:46

hair holding one another. Ooh.

25:50

Some

25:52

look a little skittish and uncomfortable. Others

25:55

are close, with a chin pressed to

25:57

a chest or cheek

25:58

to cheek.

25:59

They're on TV, so that leading

26:02

hand, the one that says this is a

26:04

dance, not a hug, is

26:06

still up. But it otherwise

26:09

has the hallmarks of the teen slow

26:11

dance as we know it. It can

26:13

be full of intimacy and awkwardness

26:16

depending on the person, the couple,

26:18

the minute. And now kids

26:20

were watching other kids doing

26:23

this. A feedback loop that

26:25

was further amplified by

26:27

another dance craze you could watch

26:30

on television.

26:31

Hottest dance sensation in the last four years,

26:33

a thing called the twist.

26:35

Ladies and gentlemen, here's Chubby Checkers.

26:48

Dance Studies professor Julie Malnig said

26:50

the dance like the twist was actually a

26:52

huge departure from what had come

26:54

before. The current generation

26:57

is always sort of rebelling against

26:59

what happened

26:59

previously.

27:01

And what's more rebellious than getting

27:03

rid of what had been the bedrock of

27:06

social dance to this point?

27:08

The partner. By the time you

27:10

get to 1959 and 1960, with dances like the twist and the horse

27:13

and the frug

27:18

and the pony and the what you see, these

27:21

were all solo oriented

27:23

dances. Think

27:24

about the twist. You can do

27:26

it in someone's direction, but you

27:28

aren't touching them

27:29

while you do. You don't

27:32

need a partner.

27:34

You can do it by yourself.

27:36

The idea of the dance couple really

27:38

becomes passé.

27:41

This eroding of the dance couple

27:43

would have larger implications. But

27:46

in the short term, it made slow dancing

27:48

special. Now the slow dance was

27:50

the only time teenagers would

27:53

definitely touch another person's

27:55

body. And this body contact

27:57

in all its glory and awkward was

28:00

very compelling for adolescents.

28:03

And it was very compelling in the

28:06

movies about them too.

28:23

When it comes to the slow dance, the feedback

28:25

loop between kids and screams didn't

28:28

end with American bandstands.

28:30

Instead, the slow dance also became

28:32

a trope of fictional teen films

28:35

and television, this dramatic

28:37

or comedic moment when two

28:39

kids just had to touch.

28:45

Some of the first movies to make a big deal

28:47

of the slow dance are from the 1970s, but

28:50

they're set in the 1950s, movies

28:52

like American Graffiti, which you've been hearing,

28:55

Coolie High, Grease, and Back to the

28:57

Future. And this time gap

28:59

isn't a coincidence. These movies

29:02

were made by filmmakers and intended

29:04

for audiences who had grown up

29:07

slow dancing and were already

29:09

nostalgic about it. And as

29:11

scenes of teen slow dancing began

29:14

proliferating, something was happening

29:16

to the slow dance

29:17

for grownups.

29:20

Remember what Julie Malnick said about

29:22

how the twist and other dances of the

29:25

1960s started to make the dance

29:27

couple feel passé?

29:29

I think there's just been this sort of inexorable

29:32

move away from the idea

29:34

of the couple.

29:36

Well, she thinks this is the key to understanding

29:38

the decline of the slow dance, the beginning

29:40

of a long trajectory away

29:42

from couples dancing everywhere except

29:45

highly traditional locations like

29:47

weddings. And already by the

29:50

1980s, you could see the ramifications

29:52

of this. This is all about, it's

29:55

actually a very romantic song here.

29:57

Thank you.

29:58

This is the singer Joe Jack.

29:59

Jackson, best known for the song, Is She

30:02

Really Going Out With Him, doing a

30:04

little

30:04

patter at a show back

30:06

in 1983. The right

30:08

song to have a slow

30:11

dance to. You remember when the DJ

30:13

at the end of the evening used to play a slow song, you know? I

30:16

didn't seem to do it anymore.

30:19

But if the slow dance was already in

30:21

trouble with adults, this was not yet

30:23

the

30:23

case for teenagers.

30:25

And to prove our point, we're going to dim the

30:28

lights again. Venture back to

30:30

a time when the slow dance still

30:32

dominated

30:33

the teen scene. Slow

30:39

dancing for me probably started in middle

30:42

school.

30:43

The writer Joel Stein grew up slow dancing

30:45

in the 1980s and he remembers

30:47

the heart-palpitating mental and physical

30:50

gymnastics of the whole ritual. You'd

30:53

be at some kind of dance, which

30:55

even in the 80s felt insane, like

30:57

you were traveling in time, like Back to the

30:59

Future, Back to the 50s, like we're at a what? A

31:03

dance? And they

31:06

play some kind of slow

31:08

song, which every album had, you

31:10

know? There'd be slow songs

31:12

played at the roller rink too. So the

31:15

place would clear because it's panic time

31:17

because you have to find a partner. So

31:20

maybe a girl would ask you or maybe you

31:22

would ask a girl or

31:25

maybe your friends would push you into someone

31:27

and then you would both kind of go

31:30

and you had to like put your arms around

31:32

their neck or maybe even their waist and

31:35

move. It

31:37

was so awkward that you wanted

31:39

to talk to kind

31:42

of break the tension, maybe

31:44

even make a joke and you would,

31:47

but you can only do so much of that when you really,

31:49

because your heads are just too close for

31:51

a lot of that. And then sometimes people would

31:53

kiss. I mean, because your heads are so close.

31:55

There were other, more embarrassing possibilities

31:58

though.

31:59

I remember.

31:59

being at a dance

32:02

and I was wearing parachute pants which

32:05

were a popular

32:07

80s item and it

32:09

was literally what it sounds like it was pants made out of

32:11

parachute material which is

32:14

great for a slow descent

32:17

but not great for a quick asset.

32:20

What Joel is saying is that while he

32:21

and his parachute pants were pressed up

32:24

against his partner he got a boner.

32:28

I was mortified but probably not

32:30

as mortified as I should have been in retrospect.

32:33

I think I thought she didn't know

32:36

and I've later

32:38

in life learned that that was stupid.

32:42

All of this was sweaty and humiliating

32:45

but it wasn't only those things.

32:48

So slow dancing was an excuse

32:50

to touch but it was also you had

32:52

to figure out how to touch someone. It

32:55

is romantic and it is sexual. I

32:57

mean I can

32:59

remember where my

33:02

hands were or where someone I was slow dancing's

33:04

hands were on me and the shock

33:06

of it. The pure electricity

33:09

of that was very real.

33:13

All of this is peak teen

33:15

slow dance. A moment when adolescent

33:18

and pop cultural understandings

33:20

of this ritual aligned.

33:23

It was a heady concoction of hormones

33:26

and crushes, smooth moves,

33:28

misplaced hands, humiliation,

33:30

status anxiety, excitement, requirement,

33:34

romance, teen movies, boys

33:36

to men, slow jams and the early

33:38

stages of teenage sexual development

33:41

including yes, inadvertent

33:44

boners and it's co-signed

33:46

by adults who are encouraging

33:49

teens to dance

33:49

but not too close.

33:53

And all of this, this

33:55

mess of stuff

33:57

is making the slow dance

33:59

vital.

34:01

But something was coming for the slow

34:03

dance, just as it came for

34:06

all the slow dances before it.

34:09

Think back to the waltz, to

34:11

the tango and the two-step and

34:13

the taxi dance. Just about

34:16

any dance we once thought of

34:18

as edgy because it chipped away

34:20

at the rules about touching in public

34:24

loses that edge as those

34:26

rules get more permissive and another

34:30

dance comes along to

34:32

snip over the line.

34:36

By

34:40

the late 1990s, that

34:42

dance had arrived.

34:52

Grinding, which also comes out of black social

34:54

dance, is not typically

34:55

face-to-face. It's groin-to-butt,

34:57

but it also involves lots of

34:59

body-touching, physical intimacy,

35:01

and arousal. It's

35:03

just not necessarily

35:04

to slow music.

35:06

A popular dance among teenagers has several

35:08

local high schools taking drastic

35:11

steps to stop it.

35:12

When it started spreading to high schools across

35:14

the country in the 2000s and 2010s, grinding

35:18

had another capability the slow

35:20

dance had lost. It could

35:23

absolutely flip out school administrators.

35:26

The school has announced that aside from

35:28

next spring's prom, it will no

35:30

longer sponsor

35:31

any dances. But

35:33

the dance was not the only recourse.

35:36

Try to change it up. Maybe like one in four

35:38

songs is a slow song, which I

35:41

don't know, people still tried to dance or

35:43

grind to the slow songs, which made it even

35:45

more sort of awkward. And kids responded

35:48

to those restrictions just about how

35:50

you'd expect. I don't

35:52

really like grinding. I just think it's kind of

35:55

annoying how they try to tell us how

35:57

we can and can't dance. The teens I

35:59

spoke with all

35:59

had seen more grinding than

36:02

slow dancing, but not necessarily

36:04

because they do it. Like

36:07

the slow dance, grinding isn't happening on every

36:09

song. Lots of teen dancing involves

36:12

doing so with a group of your friends in

36:14

a circle, in a mash. You don't have to

36:16

wait to be asked. You don't have to exclude

36:19

anyone. But what grinding did

36:21

do when it became even a possibility

36:24

is push the envelope and

36:27

make the slow dance seem, yes,

36:30

passé in comparison. It's

36:33

not a thing. You don't even think

36:35

about it, honestly. Bess

36:36

Hort is 19. She's also my second

36:38

cousin, and she's only encountered

36:40

the slow dance in one place. When

36:42

I went to sleep away camp, we had socials

36:45

with the boys camp, and it

36:47

would be very like mosh pit vibes.

36:49

But then at the end of the night, they would slow things

36:52

down with a Coldplay song.

36:59

I'm sure there

37:01

was like two kids who ended up doing a slow

37:03

dance together, but if anything,

37:05

it was more like the girls would slow dance with each other and the boys

37:07

would slow dance with each other, and like taunting,

37:10

making fun of it and dancing with

37:11

our friends.

37:15

The first time I heard the story, it seemed like another

37:17

nail in the slow dance's coffin. But

37:20

as I've listened to it, I think it's a bit more

37:22

layered than that. The slow dance is

37:24

in its way still here. Kids

37:26

know about it, and they're playing with it.

37:28

They're being ironic about

37:31

it. They're not waiting to be asked to dance,

37:33

excluding each other. Fixated on hetero

37:35

pairings, they're stressing out no one asks

37:37

them. They're swaying with their

37:40

friends, having fun with

37:42

something that used to be so monumental.

37:46

And the only people really ruining

37:48

this change, fretting about the slow

37:50

dance's irrelevance,

37:51

are the people

37:53

it was monumental for.

37:57

Us. The Grown Ups.

38:02

My name is James Bennett II. Thinking

38:05

back to my high school, those dances revolved

38:08

around like a lot of fast

38:10

hip-hop and Baltimore in a club and

38:12

like grinding. That to me seemed far

38:15

more insurmountable than

38:17

doing like a slow dance.

38:20

Slow dancing and not having it be awkward

38:22

like requires like I think just a level of

38:24

like personal comfort with

38:27

yourself.

38:28

When you're 20s, when you start going to weddings

38:30

all the time,

38:32

especially if you're not going like you know

38:35

single, that's when

38:37

I think slow dancing becomes like a kind of

38:40

more integrated into like your

38:42

dance arsenal. It's something that

38:44

I feel is a very adult thing like quiet

38:47

slow dance is like in the living room. It's

38:50

like a partner. You know

38:52

it's tender.

38:59

I spoke with a lot of adults about slow

39:01

dancing for this piece and it was really

39:03

fun to talk about like I highly

39:06

recommend it as a topic of conversation

39:09

because people have feelings about

39:11

it. They remember slow dancing vividly

39:13

and they are alarmed the kids are

39:15

not doing it.

39:17

Once you know they've been told the kids are not doing

39:19

it. This

39:20

is just part of the disaster

39:22

that's making children anxious.

39:24

They also have theories about what's happened.

39:27

The number one suspect as it

39:29

is with everything else is phones and

39:31

social media which has helped make kids over

39:34

sexualized and yet intimacy

39:36

phobic.

39:37

That's a really intimate moment and maybe

39:39

people in this day and age with

39:41

social media and a lot of screen time they're not they're

39:43

even less comfortable actually having

39:46

to look at someone in the eye and have a conversation

39:48

with them.

39:49

And music itself and the changes

39:51

to it have got to matter.

39:53

We are well into an R&B

39:55

resurgence but for

39:58

a very long time they simply weren't the same kind

40:00

of valid or the same kind of vulnerability

40:03

that there were when I was coming up. And then the last

40:06

few years can't have helped. I feel

40:09

like the social connection has

40:11

gotten a little more awkward and then forget it when COVID

40:14

happened.

40:15

To the adults I spoke with, it all

40:17

seems a shame. A sentiment

40:19

most succinctly summed up by another

40:21

DJ I talked to, Rome Anderson,

40:24

aka DJ Stylus.

40:26

Learn how to get

40:28

close to somebody and negotiate

40:30

shared space in a way that

40:32

is mutually enjoyable.

40:34

You might want to learn how to do that. Whatever

40:37

generation you're in, you might want to learn how to do that. That's

40:40

important

40:40

part of humaning.

40:43

There's something notable about the flavor

40:45

of adult concern. It's not fuddy-duddy.

40:48

It's actually a little salacious

40:49

and hard-nosed.

40:51

I'm not advocating for slow dances because

40:53

they're romantic and sweet. I'm arguing

40:55

that kids need

40:58

to deal with each other

41:01

and deal with that anxiety and suffer

41:03

through the rejection and

41:05

the awkwardness of it.

41:08

We want kids to be braver, hornier,

41:10

to take more risks, to let themselves be

41:12

uncomfortable, to learn about their bodies

41:15

and what they like by interacting

41:17

with other bodies. But

41:19

as right on as this concern

41:21

may be, it only goes so far.

41:24

A feature of a vibrant

41:26

slow dance, not just the teen slow

41:29

dance, but any of the ones people have

41:31

been doing for the last 200 years

41:34

is that it unsettles

41:35

adults.

41:37

So we can't make the slow dance

41:39

come alive just because it

41:41

might have been alive for us. We

41:43

can't tell kids they ought to be rebelling

41:46

by doing what we say. We

41:49

can't insist upon the slow dance

41:51

any more than we could insist upon

41:54

the

41:54

waltz.

41:56

The face-to-face slow dance has been around

41:58

for so long that it has become

41:59

become a deeply entrenched tradition,

42:02

one that will linger in traditional

42:04

places like sleepaway camp socials

42:07

and weddings and proms and when DJs

42:09

want people to go home at the end of the night.

42:12

But a slow dance is supposed to be more

42:14

than just

42:15

a tradition.

42:16

So long as it's out there in any

42:18

form, maybe a TikTok influencer

42:21

or bachata star or someone dancing

42:23

to R&B or kids romanticizing

42:26

the slow dance or goofing on it will

42:28

find a way to make it come alive

42:30

again. But if they do, it won't

42:33

be the version I remember. It

42:35

will be a different version. It

42:38

will be their version. Because

42:40

that's the story of dancing slowly.

42:43

It's about finding a new way to

42:45

make a connection on the dance

42:47

floor.

43:05

This

43:06

is Decoder Ring. I'm Willa Paskin.

43:08

You can find me on Twitter at willapaskin

43:11

and if you have any cultural mysteries you want

43:13

us to decode, please email us at

43:15

decoderring at

43:16

slate.com. Decoder

43:19

Ring is produced by me and Katie Shepherd. This

43:21

episode was edited by Zakia Gibbons.

43:24

Derek John is Slate's executive producer

43:25

of narrative podcasts. Merit

43:28

Jacob is senior technical director.

43:30

I'd like to thank Joel Meyer, Benjamin Frisch,

43:32

and Carlos Pareja. I'd also like

43:35

to thank all the additional people who shared

43:37

their slow dancing experiences and

43:39

thoughts. Ralph Giordano, Matt

43:42

Baum, Meryl Betrucek, Ari Seldman,

43:44

Eva Kandare, Eileen Zhang,

43:46

and Harper Coyce.

43:48

I'd also like to shout out an article in

43:50

Billboard that helped inspire this episode.

43:53

It's by Kyle Dennis and it's called The Death

43:55

of the Slow Dance. How the one time

43:57

rite of passage has evolved for Gen Z. We'll

44:00

link to it on our show page

44:01

and you should check it out.

44:03

If you haven't yet, please subscribe and rate

44:05

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44:07

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44:09

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44:12

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44:21

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44:26

Plus today. We'll see you next week.

44:37

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