Etiquette of “La Danza Mexicana”

“… In the best society of the Mexican capital, girls are not permitted to engage in the dance except with their brothers or nearest of kin, not even with the lovers to whom they are betrothed, and married ladies only with their husbands— very sensible etiquette, by the way, but would be bettered if unmarried folk were prohibited from dancing it at all.”

One Experience Sufficient for a Life-Time

How the Mexican Dance Affected a Dignified New Yorker 

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Bailes de Compadres

Congratulate me— for in the words of the immortal Webster, “I still live,” even after having participated in a Mexican dance! For an unmarried lady of social standing to attend a public ball of this description, though escorted by her father or brothers, is considered rather a daring thing to do yet last night's crowd attested that many do attend them. In the innocence of my heart, actuated by pure journalistic fervor in pursuit of information, I accepted the invitation— and now quite agree with that American who remarked, “A man may danza in the innocence of his heart just once.”

You ask, “What is la danza?” It is some thing impossible to define in cold black and white, to be read at long range amid prosaic surroundings; it could not occur any where but among these poetical passionate races of the tropics, and cannot even be understood by one of northern birth, unless he has lived here long enough to get something of the climate into his blood.

It is the most innocent looking dance in the world— no more harm in it, to merely look at, than in a champagne glass, or in the “unloaded pistol” which goes off at some unwary moment. And maybe murders your grandmother! The music is slow— so very slow that a Northern belle would re-belle at once; the quiet step is simply the balance of the dancing-master's quadrille, with the important addition that this is a “round dance.”

With this lazy step you move backward and forward, or gently turn around when ever the crowd gives you room, until you come face to face with another couple as sleepy as yourselves, with whom you execute that stupid “right hand across to cross over and back”— exactly as in our pinafore-and-pantalette days. Then the gentleman's arm encircles his partner's waist, she leans on his shoulder and gives her right hand to his left and in this little quadrille they balances until it is time to resume the tete-a-tete. This is all there is of it— and what could possibly appear more innocent?

But appearances are sometimes deceitful, and the dance depends altogether upon who dances it. Certainly, “the racquet” in a Northern ballroom (it wouldn't be possible here) looks fully as demoralizing but probably the vast difference lies in the fact that the participants in the dance are as unlike the dudes and debutantes of other climes as the lotus-flower differs from the hollyhock or the warmth of the tropic sun from the half glimmer of an aurora borealis. 

These creatures of impulse are no more to be judged by the same rules which apply to phlegmatic Anglo-Saxons than John Smith or Sarah Jones would enlist our sympathies if they behaved exactly as Romeo or Juliet. Therefore, it is that in the best society of the Mexican capital, girls are not permitted to engage in the dance except with their brothers or nearest of kin, not even with the lovers to whom they are betrothed, and married ladies only with their husbands— very sensible etiquette, by the way, but would be bettered if unmarried folk were prohibited from dancing it at all.—Special Record Union Correspondent, City of Mexico, June 29, 1887

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia