THEY
DO THE SAME IN ENGLAND
Albert Halper
I
WENT TO A COMPANY DANCE
here in London last night. I took with
me a girl who could speak eight languages. "Surely I will be able to get
something out of this," I told mysdf, buckling on my collar preparatory
to
calling on the young lady. Meaning the local scene, the company dance
locale in England, of course. The girl was a German emigre, large, plump
and
rather pleasant.
"Please come," she had phoned me, begging me to take her. "I want
to get your opinion, to see if company dances in England are the same as
all
over, the same as in America." And, hearing that magic word,
America,
which never fails to stir the heart of one of its natives, especially one who
has been away from its "democratic" shores for six or seven months,
I
said I'd take her. So, we went.
The dance was held in the Covent Garden Opera House, a huge
old pretentious place which has quite a dash of history behind her. During
the opera season it is used for opera, but in the intervals the place serves
as a public dance hall or a theater. It is situated up a narrow winding
street and has fat old pillars near the door.
As we entered, the German girl and I, we saw a sign in the lobby:
"Buy programs, threepence" (six cents) "Each program is numbered,
prizes will be given at the lucky draw.'' Well, this was like good old
America; who ever heard of a company dance or a company picnic back
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the States without a "draw?" I bought two programs, so that we would
have two chances, and we went in.
The interior! Try to imagine the old dance halls on the West Side
of Chicago, the bigger ones. Or the Midway Gardens, which was on the
South Side. These Chicago ballrooms, which were built about thirty or
forty years ago and often drew crowds of three or four thousand couples
who writhed across the floors were huge draughty affairs, badly lighted
so that one did not look too closely to see the bleak walls, and reminding
o~e,
when the crowds were small, of gigantic threshing floors. The Covent
Garden, however, has balconies. And what balconies! They perch there
like bird-cages, two or three tiers of them, and from their imperial heights
the departmental managers with their guests and women could look down
upon the plebian domes of the shop boys, girl clerks and other industrial
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