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Okay,

0:38

we are ready. Jordan Armstead lives

0:40

in New York City. I am 16 years old.

0:43

I called her up to pick her brain about a topic

0:45

I'd gotten curious about. When

0:48

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.

0:58

She also imagines scenes from movies

1:00

and television. Do you

1:02

want to dance? Dance with

1:04

me? Can I have the last dance? These

1:08

scenes present the slow dance as a rite of

1:10

passage, a pinnacle of connection,

1:12

the perfect moment. And Jordan

1:14

can only picture them because she's never

1:17

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 kissed.

1:35

It was a whole stereotypical teen

1:37

slow dance thing. My hands on his shoulders,

1:40

his hands on my waist, close together, awkwardly

1:43

rocking back and forth. And way

1:45

more than the swaying itself, I remember

1:48

looking around, watching

1:49

everyone, my eyes darting

1:52

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.

1:59

But it did make me feel like I'd checked off some

2:02

teenage life experience box.

2:05

And Jordan's never had that opportunity. I've

2:07

been to dances. The schools still

2:10

do dances, but they don't just

2:12

slow dances. It's a lot of grinding.

2:13

It's a lot of twerking.

2:16

Put your right leg up, left leg up, sit down,

2:18

like you're sitting on the court. Look to the left, look

2:21

to the right, look back, get a booty and stand up. Whoa,

2:23

whoa, whoa.

2:25

There's not even a train for slow,

2:27

slow because it'll ruin the mood. The

2:29

entire party is fast music,

2:31

sweet 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. And

2:43

it's not like her intel about slow dancing only

2:45

comes from those shmoopy movie scenes.

2:48

My sister, she's 29 right now. She

2:52

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

3:02

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'm very much a romantic. I

3:13

think it's wonderful to slow dance. But

3:15

she's not

3:15

expecting it to happen anytime soon.

3:18

My generation does not slow

3:20

dance. We don't slow dance.

3:30

This is Decodering. I'm Willa Paskin.

3:33

To judge from the teen programming on Netflix,

3:36

the slow dance is alive and well.

3:38

But when you look a little closer, it's a tradition

3:40

on life support. In this episode,

3:43

we're gonna figure out what happened. We're

3:45

gonna pull way back to trace the history

3:48

of dancing

3:48

slowly from the waltz to

3:50

the prom to the movies.

3:52

And you'll also hear nostalgia

3:54

drenched personal testimonials from

3:56

slow dancers themselves. Put

3:59

it all together and we're- We're going to show you how an

4:01

intimate and provocative dance became

4:03

traditionalized and Hollywoodized

4:06

and lost its

4:06

vitality and currency among

4:09

young people,

4:10

even if some of us wish it hadn't.

4:13

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 try

4:20

and understand why is

4:22

the slow dance dying?

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5:29

So if you don't dance anywhere but weddings and

5:31

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

5:38

have been articles in Billboard and Time magazine

5:41

and elsewhere, and it's not just today's

5:43

teens who will tell you its decline

5:44

is real. Herbert

5:51

Holler is a DJ and event producer.

5:54

Start to finish you want everyone's hands and faces

5:57

and sweaty armpits on full

5:59

display.

5:59

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

6:02

he does not

6:03

mince words. It doesn't

6:05

exist anymore. Herbert

6:06

does a lot of private events, weddings

6:09

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

6:17

that's been running for 20 years. The

6:19

set lists are usually pretty fast paced, but

6:22

one night he thought he'd try something different.

6:25

You

6:25

know, one time I had this idea from an

6:27

old school dance party, I was going to bring back the slow dance.

6:30

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 going to bring this to the club. I'm

6:41

going to ask the sound guys to turn off

6:43

all the lights and I'm going to plug

6:45

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

6:47

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

6:49

dance.

6:50

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

6:52

on this slow song. Picture

6:55

John Cusack holding up

6:56

a boombox.

7:00

And I remember trying it

7:04

and it failed miserably.

7:07

The floor completely cleared.

7:09

Slow songs will clear a crowd

7:11

easily.

7:12

Rosie Q DJ's largely for the queer community

7:15

in New York and New Jersey. I

7:16

DJ for Stonewall. Stonewall

7:18

is a mixed bag of people that come in anywhere

7:21

from 21 to, you

7:23

know, I've seen people in their 60s.

7:24

I half played

7:27

careless whisper, but then it becomes

7:29

more of a singing

7:32

karaoke.

7:36

So no matter what age now, everyone's

7:39

mostly just going to sing or walk away.

7:44

There are

7:44

exceptions. When Rosie plays for a largely

7:47

Latinx audience, she can spin a slower

7:49

song and the crowd will happily do the bachata,

7:52

a slow partner dance that started in the Dominican

7:54

Republic. And there are events like R&B

7:57

nights catering to adults who still

7:59

want to.

7:59

to slow dance, but even

8:02

these exceptions can

8:03

be revealing about the slow

8:05

dances state.

8:07

Jabari Johnson is the founder of a company

8:09

that puts on R&B only, a

8:11

live event that's exactly

8:13

what it sounds like. I host a lot

8:15

of the shows and I'm on stage and I'm, you

8:17

know, for three hours looking at the crowd.

8:20

And he sees a lot of adults

8:22

dancing together slowly, but

8:24

front to back. I almost

8:26

never see people face to

8:28

face, you know, with like a forehead

8:31

leaning up against another forehead and

8:33

gazing in each other's eyes.

8:35

Instead, couples are typically

8:37

snuggled up, but to groin. So

8:40

the person in the back has their arms

8:42

wrapped around their partner's waist and

8:44

they're both swaying sensually

8:46

to the beat. When

8:47

he does see people dancing face to

8:49

face, he notices.

8:52

It's just so rare that videographers

8:55

and photographers try to capture that

8:57

because it makes for like an incredible

9:00

picture and a moment.

9:02

It's like the face to face slow

9:04

dance is an adorable endangered

9:07

species. And you should take a picture

9:09

of it before it vanishes from the face

9:12

of the earth. And to figure out how

9:14

things got so dire for the slow

9:16

dance, we have to go back to

9:18

when it was thriving in the wild.

9:22

But before we do that, we're

9:25

gonna dim the lights and

9:27

slow things down with the first

9:29

of a number of reminiscences

9:31

about when the slow dance

9:33

still reigned supreme.

9:37

My name is Julie Clousner. In

9:40

seventh grade, I went

9:43

to

9:43

about 50 bar bat mitzvahs

9:46

and people

9:48

would link up and they would slow dance,

9:50

but so like, you

9:52

know, stiffening your arms, Frankenstein's

9:55

monster style, and then

9:57

just doing like a

9:58

slow touch step to...

9:59

soft rock hits

10:02

that were popular in the early 90s.

10:13

So I was at the gym

10:16

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

10:26

to dance with me. If there had been

10:28

scientific tongs to hold

10:31

me further away, he would have made use

10:33

of them. So we were just sort of dancing

10:36

to the song Lady in Red. I

10:45

was wearing this

10:48

very loud button-down

10:50

silky shirt

10:53

where every panel was a different

10:56

pattern. So we're talking about

10:58

like oranges next to pinks

11:01

and certainly reds. At

11:04

one point he made eye contact and there was

11:06

just an awkward pause

11:07

and he decided to say, hey,

11:10

you're 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

11:21

that he had not completely

11:23

disassociated

11:23

from the experience.

11:26

In retrospect, I looked back and I was like,

11:28

oh my God, what a silly thing to say. But at the

11:31

time I was thrilled. I was

11:32

really into him

11:35

having

11:35

noticed me and also being

11:38

called a lady. Hello. That's

11:40

great, right?

11:50

More dancing when we come back.

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November 10. Tickets on sale now. So

12:56

when I said

12:59

we were going to go back to the

13:01

heyday of

13:04

the slow dance, I meant like

13:11

we

13:16

were going to go all the way back. If

13:18

you were going to start

13:20

a history of the slow dance, where

13:23

would you start? I would begin

13:25

slow dancing with 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

13:36

in Paris and London around 1815.

13:39

This was the first time that

13:42

you saw in society a couple

13:44

in and embrace facing

13:46

each other.

13:51

Before the Waltz, formal dancing was

13:53

much more chaste. Think of a ball in

13:55

a Jane Austen adaptation. The

13:57

dancers take one another's hand, touch

13:59

finger-tapping.

15:57

day.

16:00

We only did that lying down. But

16:02

Richard says the tango was not that different

16:04

from a number of other dances at the time,

16:07

except for this

16:08

one thing. The

16:10

difference is tango would come to

16:12

a full stop at the end of most tango

16:15

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,

16:26

the pause, the stillness

16:28

that's so scandalous

16:30

and appealing.

16:32

So you can see this is heading towards slow

16:35

dancing. In fact

16:36

a kind of pared down version of a

16:38

walking dance was the dominant

16:40

dance

16:41

of the early 20th century. It was

16:43

called the one step. It was simply

16:45

walking with a partner in your arm one

16:47

step per beat. Walk, walk,

16:50

walk to slow dancing. Is

16:52

that as boring as it sounds? No,

16:55

no because you're holding somebody in your arms.

16:57

Okay. Legally. Dancing was

16:59

so arousing that

17:00

from

17:06

the 1910s through the 1930s

17:08

establishments

17:13

called taxi dance halls flourished.

17:16

These were places where men would pay women

17:19

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.

17:33

But these were grown

17:36

men and in the post-war era

17:38

the slow dance would come out of the dark corners

17:41

of taxi halls and shimmy its way

17:43

into the spot-lit high school gymnasium

17:46

where horny gawky teens

17:49

would make it their own. Before

17:54

we get to that though let's dim those

17:57

lights again and

17:58

hear another.

17:59

Slow Dance Reminiscence.

18:02

My name is Naeema Cochran. So

18:05

I remember my very first time slow

18:08

dancing

18:09

with a boy at a dance in middle

18:11

school. I had just transferred

18:13

from a predominantly white school to

18:15

a predominantly black school. So

18:18

my version of the slow dance was

18:19

kind of like, and his two,

18:22

hands on shoulders, hands on waist, but like

18:24

a big gap in between. And you're kind

18:26

of just like

18:28

going from foot

18:29

to foot. There's no knee bend, there's

18:31

no sway. It's kind of like a teeter

18:33

totter situation.

18:35

And I remember the older kids making

18:37

fun of us, right? Like, look at these two

18:40

nerds over here.

18:43

The next like really

18:44

big slow dance moment that I remember

18:47

was my freshman year. One

18:52

of my neighbors had a sweet 16 and like

18:54

everybody from school was there.

18:56

And I danced with a senior

18:59

who I had a massive crush on. And

19:01

that moment, like I was ready. Like

19:04

I was ready for that one, right? Like

19:06

I was ready, it was right. I was prepared,

19:09

it was good. It was a whole

19:12

moment. And that's the version

19:15

through which I was navigating

19:17

feelings like, oh, this feels really

19:19

nice. You know, you're nuggled in so closely

19:22

that your head is resting on a shoulder. You

19:24

know, it's that close. And that

19:26

for me, in my mind now, I liken it to

19:29

like going from JB to Varsity. Like now I'm

19:31

ready to play Varsity. We'll

19:44

be back out on the dance floor in a minute.

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advice sometimes.

20:31

Right? Someone to say, I get

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But often it's hard to know where to turn,

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wherever you listen to podcasts.

21:31

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

21:33

and one steps and taxi dances, were done by,

21:35

among others, young people, folks

21:38

trying to mate and marry and have

21:40

a good time. And in the postwar

21:43

era, some of those

21:44

young people got a new

21:46

name. The early teens

21:49

are years of upheaval and turmoil.

21:51

Their years of physical and granular change,

21:54

new and wider relationships with people, and

21:56

new inner feelings in the early adolescence.

21:59

Teenager.

22:00

as a term, was first popularized

22:02

in the 1940s. It crystallized

22:04

the existence of this new, not quite

22:07

kids, not quite adults demographic.

22:10

And already high school dances

22:12

were a staple of this experience.

22:15

The junior prom, semi-formal, is

22:17

the best dance of the year and is announced early.

22:20

This is from a 1946 etiquette

22:22

film. It's a 21-minute proto-PSA

22:25

showing teenagers how they ought to dress,

22:27

behave, converse, and yes,

22:30

dance

22:30

at the junior prom. Now that they

22:33

have gotten to dancing, let's hope that

22:35

their troubles are over and that the evening

22:37

will work out the way they have hoped. In

22:39

it, you can see two

22:40

young white couples slow dancing, or

22:42

rather dancing to slower music.

22:45

They're not doing what we think of as

22:48

the teen slow dance today.

22:50

Neither the awkward teeter-totter nor

22:53

the slinky adolescent groove. It's

22:55

more a classic partner dance. The boy

22:57

is leading, so he's holding the girl's hand,

23:00

but those hands are plastered up

23:02

with elbows bent at chest height

23:05

as they two-step across the dance floor

23:07

to the sound of a big-band piano.

23:12

But just a few years later, this is not

23:14

the sort

23:14

of music or dancing teens

23:17

would be doing if given a choice.

23:25

In the early 1950s, adolescents

23:28

alienated by the child-centric baby

23:30

boom but flush on cash started

23:33

listening to what they wanted

23:35

to, a new sound created by

23:37

black musicians mixing rhythm and blues

23:39

and country with guitar licks and lyrics

23:42

about cars and sex and other things

23:44

teenagers

23:44

cared about.

23:46

As rock and roll took off, white

23:48

musicians started making it too, and it became

23:50

the sound of a generation.

23:57

with

24:00

black culture freaked some white adults

24:03

out. And it wasn't just the music. It

24:05

was the whole rebellious attitude.

24:08

This rock and roll is the musical

24:10

noise symptomatic of a decadent

24:13

and irresponsible youth.

24:15

And the slow dance in the 1950s could

24:17

be rebellious, too. You can

24:19

see in documentary footage from this time that

24:21

it's starting to look more familiar.

24:24

That leading arm is sometimes

24:26

starting to drop, leaving teen couples

24:29

pressed really close together in nothing

24:31

but an embrace. One that

24:34

like the waltz

24:35

and the tango could irk

24:38

adults.

24:39

All of those etiquette books of the

24:41

time and the prohibitions that

24:43

schools and educators and teachers put

24:45

on social dance, that made it even

24:48

more enticing.

24:50

Julie Malnig is a professor of theater and dance

24:52

studies at NYU and the author of Dancing

24:54

Black, Dancing White, rock and

24:57

roll, race, and youth culture. We

24:59

couldn't get too close. Couldn't

25:01

be too

25:02

slow, right? We couldn't start

25:04

hugging each other

25:05

and kissing on the dance

25:07

floor. So it really, it had this aura,

25:10

I think, of the forbidden.

25:12

What teenager could possibly

25:15

resist? All over the country,

25:18

they were doing this. Something we know

25:20

thanks to television. TV

25:22

stations looking at the rock and roll craze started

25:25

filming kids dancing, creating

25:27

cheap, popular afterschool programming.

25:30

There were hundreds of these televised

25:33

teen dance shows around the country in local

25:35

markets.

25:36

The most famous of these programs started

25:38

in Philadelphia. ["Dance

25:40

of the Sugar Plum Fairy"]

25:43

American Bandstand, hosted by Dick

25:45

Clark, made the jump to national TV in 1957 and

25:48

would run for the next 30 years. A

25:50

proto-TikTok introducing kids at

25:53

home to the dancing of their peers.

25:59

dances, faster rock and

26:02

roll dances, it really didn't matter. They

26:04

were kind of teaching the

26:07

teenage

26:08

viewers what was

26:11

hip, what was in,

26:12

what was popular.

26:13

These shows created nationalized

26:16

dance trends, many of which were

26:18

fast,

26:19

but not all of them.

26:20

See if you remember this one.

26:27

Here you see couples, boys in

26:29

tweed suits

26:29

and girls in knee-length plaid

26:32

skirts with bobbed hair holding one

26:34

another. Some

26:39

look a little skittish and uncomfortable. Others

26:42

are close, with a chin pressed to

26:44

a chest or cheek to cheek. They're

26:47

on TV so that leading hand,

26:49

the one that says this is a dance, not

26:52

a hug, is still up,

26:54

but it otherwise has the hallmarks

26:56

of the teen slow dance as we know

26:59

it. It can be full of intimacy

27:01

and awkwardness depending on the person,

27:04

the couple, the minute. And

27:06

now kids were watching other kids

27:09

doing this, a feedback loop

27:11

that was further amplified

27:14

by another dance craze you could

27:16

watch on television. The

27:18

hottest dance sensation in the last four years,

27:20

a thing called the twist.

27:21

Ladies and gentlemen, here's Chubby Techers.

27:23

Hey,

27:26

Chubby. The

27:35

inside professor, Julie Malnig said that dance

27:37

like the

27:37

twist was actually a huge

27:40

departure from what had come before.

27:42

The current generation is always

27:44

sort of rebelling against what happened previously.

27:48

I mean, what's more rebellious than getting

27:50

rid of what had been the bedrock of

27:52

social dance to this point?

27:55

The partner. By the time you get

27:57

to 1959 and 1960, I mean, I'm not sure what happened.

27:59

with

28:01

dances like the Twist

28:03

and the Horse and the Frug and the Pony

28:06

and the Watusi. These were all

28:08

solo-oriented dances.

28:10

Think about the Twist. You can do

28:13

it in someone's direction, but you

28:15

aren't touching them

28:16

while you do. You don't

28:19

need a partner.

28:20

You can do it by yourself.

28:23

The idea of the dance couple really

28:25

becomes passé.

28:28

This eroding of the dance couple

28:30

would have larger implications, but

28:32

in the short term, it made slow dancing

28:35

special. Now the slow dance was

28:37

the only time teenagers would

28:39

definitely touch another person's

28:42

body. And this body contact,

28:44

in all its glory and awkwardness,

28:47

was very compelling for adolescents.

28:50

And it was very compelling in the

28:52

movies about them, too.

29:10

When it comes to the slow dance, the feedback

29:12

loop between kids and screams

29:14

didn't end with American bandstands.

29:17

Instead, the slow dance also became

29:19

a trope of fictional teen films

29:21

and television. This dramatic

29:24

or comedic

29:24

moment when two kids

29:26

just had to touch. Some

29:32

of the first movies to make a big deal of

29:34

the slow dance are from the 1970s, but

29:37

they're set in the 1950s.

29:38

Movies like American Graffiti,

29:40

which you've been hearing, Coolie High,

29:42

Grease, and Back to the Future. And

29:45

this time gap isn't a coincidence.

29:48

These movies were made by filmmakers

29:50

and intended for audiences who had

29:52

grown up slow dancing

29:55

and were already nostalgic

29:57

about it. And as scenes of teen

29:59

slow dancing... dancing began proliferating, something

30:02

was happening to the slow dance

30:04

for grownups.

30:07

Remember what Julie Malnick said about

30:09

how the twist and other dances of the 1960s started

30:13

to make the dance couple feel

30:15

passé? I

30:16

think there's just been this sort of inexorable

30:19

move away from the idea

30:21

of the couple.

30:22

Well, she thinks this is the key to understanding

30:24

the decline of the slow dance, the beginning

30:27

of a long trajectory away

30:29

from couples dancing everywhere except

30:31

highly traditional locations like

30:34

weddings. And already by the

30:36

1980s, you could see the ramifications

30:38

of this. This is all about, it's

30:42

actually a very romantic song here, thank

30:44

you.

30:44

This is the singer Joe Jackson,

30:47

best known for the song, Is She Really Going

30:49

Out With Him?, doing a little

30:50

patter at a show back

30:53

in 1983. The right

30:55

song to have a slow

30:57

dance to. One of the winner DJ

30:59

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

31:03

I didn't seem to do it anymore.

31:05

But if the slow dance was already in

31:08

trouble with adults, this was not yet

31:10

the case

31:10

for teenagers.

31:12

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

31:14

lights again and venture back to

31:17

a time when the slow dance still

31:19

dominated the teen scene.

31:25

Slow dancing for me probably started in middle

31:29

school. The writer Joel Stein grew

31:31

up slow dancing in the 1980s and

31:33

he remembers the heart palpitating mental

31:36

and physical gymnastics of the whole ritual.

31:39

You'd be at some kind of dance, which

31:42

even in the 80s felt insane. Like

31:44

you were traveling in time, like Back to the

31:46

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

31:49

dance? And

31:52

they play some kind of slow

31:54

song, which every album

31:55

had, you know? There'd

31:58

be slow songs played at the ro-

31:59

So the

32:02

place was clear because it's panic time

32:04

because you have to find a partner. So

32:06

maybe a girl would ask you or maybe you

32:09

would ask a girl or maybe

32:12

your friends would push you into someone

32:14

and then you would both kind of go and and

32:17

you had to like put your arms around

32:19

their neck or maybe even their waist and

32:22

move. It was so awkward

32:25

that you wanted to talk to

32:28

kind of break the tension maybe

32:30

even make a joke and you would

32:33

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

32:36

your heads are just too close for a lot of that and

32:39

then sometimes people would kiss I mean because your heads

32:41

are so close. There

32:42

were other more embarrassing

32:44

possibilities though. I

32:46

remember being at a dance

32:49

and I was wearing parachute pants which

32:52

were a popular

32:54

80s item and

32:55

it was literally what it sounds like it was pants made

32:58

out of parachute material which is

33:01

great for a slow descent

33:04

but not great for a quick ascent.

33:06

What Joel is saying is that while he and his

33:09

parachute pants were pressed up against his

33:11

partner

33:12

he got a boner.

33:14

I was mortified but probably not

33:16

as mortified as I should have been in retrospect.

33:19

I think I thought she didn't know

33:22

and I've

33:25

later in life learned that that

33:27

was stupid.

33:28

All of this was sweaty and humiliating

33:31

but it wasn't only those things.

33:34

So slow dancing was an excuse

33:37

to touch but it was also you had

33:39

to figure out how to touch someone. It

33:41

is romantic and it is sexual. I

33:44

mean I can

33:46

remember where my

33:48

hands were or where someone I was slow dancing's

33:51

hands were on me and the shock

33:53

of it. The pure electricity

33:56

of that was very real.

33:59

All of this is peak teen

34:02

slow dance, a moment when adolescent

34:04

and pop-cultural understandings

34:07

of this ritual aligned.

34:10

It was a heady concoction of hormones

34:12

and crushes, smooth moves,

34:14

misplaced hands, humiliation,

34:17

status anxiety, excitement, requirement,

34:21

romance, teen movies, boys

34:23

to men slow jams, and the early

34:25

stages of teenage sexual development,

34:28

including, yes, inadvertent

34:31

boners. And it's co-signed

34:33

by adults who are encouraging

34:35

teens to dance,

34:37

but not too close.

34:39

And all of this, this

34:41

mess of stuff,

34:43

is making the slow dance

34:45

vital.

34:48

But something was coming for the slow

34:50

dance, just as it came for

34:53

all the slow dances before it. Think

34:56

back to the waltz, to the tango,

34:59

and the two-step, and the taxi dance.

35:01

Just about any dance we once

35:04

thought of as edgy, because it chipped

35:06

away at the rules about touching

35:09

in public, loses that

35:11

edge as those rules get more

35:14

permissive, and another

35:16

dance comes along

35:19

to step over the line.

35:22

I wonder if she could tell my heart right

35:24

now. By the

35:26

late 1990s, that

35:29

dance had arrived.

35:38

Grinding, which also comes out

35:40

of black social dance, is not typically face-to-face.

35:43

It's groin to butt, but it also involves lots

35:46

of body touching, physical intimacy,

35:48

and arousal. It's just not necessarily

35:51

to slow music.

35:53

A popular dance among teenagers has several

35:55

local high schools taking drastic

35:57

steps to stop it. When it started spreading, it started

35:59

to stop.

35:59

to high schools across the country in

36:02

the 2000s and 2010s, grinding had another capability

36:06

the slow dance had lost. It

36:09

could absolutely flip out

36:11

school administrators. The school

36:13

has announced that aside from next

36:15

spring's prom, it will no longer

36:17

sponsor any dances. Canceling

36:20

dances was not the

36:21

only recourse.

36:22

Try to change it up. Every one in

36:25

four songs is a slow song, which

36:27

I don't know, people still tried to dance to the or

36:30

grind to the slow songs, which made it even

36:32

more sort of awkward. And kids responded

36:34

to those restrictions just about how

36:37

you'd expect.

36:38

I don't really like grinding. I

36:40

just think it's kind of annoying how they

36:42

try to tell us how we can and can't dance. The

36:45

teens I spoke with also had seen

36:47

more grinding than slow dancing,

36:49

but not necessarily because

36:52

they do it. Like the slow dance,

36:54

grinding isn't happening on every song.

36:57

Lots of teen dancing involves doing so

36:59

with a group of your friends in a circle,

37:01

in a mash. You don't have to wait to be asked.

37:04

You don't have to exclude anyone. But

37:06

what grinding did do when it became

37:09

even a possibility is

37:11

push the envelope

37:13

and make the slow dance seem, yes,

37:17

passé in comparison.

37:19

It's not a thing. It's not. You don't even think

37:21

about it, honestly.

37:23

Bess Hort is 19. She's also my second

37:25

cousin. And she's only encountered

37:27

the slow dance in one place. When I

37:29

went to sleep boy camp, we had socials

37:31

with the boys camp and it would

37:34

be very like mosh pit vibes.

37:36

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

37:38

down with a cold play song.

37:46

I'm sure there was like two kids

37:48

who ended up doing a slow dance together. But

37:51

if anything, it was more like the girls would slow dance with each other

37:53

and the boys would slow dance with each other and like taunting,

37:56

making fun of it and dancing with

37:58

our friends.

38:01

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

38:04

nail in the slow dance's coffin. But

38:06

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

38:08

layered than that. The slow dance is

38:11

in its way still here. Kids

38:13

know about it, and they're playing with

38:15

it. They're being ironic about

38:17

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

38:20

excluding each other, fixated on hetero-pairings,

38:22

or stressing out no one asks them. They're

38:25

swaying with their friends. Having

38:28

fun was something that used to be so

38:30

monumental. And the only

38:33

people really ruining this change,

38:35

fretting about the slow dance's irrelevance,

38:37

are the people

38:39

it was monumental for.

38:43

Us. The grownups.

38:48

My name is James Bennett II. Thinking

38:52

back to my high school, those dances revolved

38:54

around like

38:55

a lot of fast hip-hop and Baltimore

38:58

club and grinding. That

39:00

to me seemed far more insurmountable

39:03

than doing a slow dance.

39:06

Slow dancing and not having

39:08

it be awkward requires, I

39:10

think, just a level of personal comfort

39:13

with yourself.

39:15

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

39:17

all the time,

39:19

especially if you're not going like, you know,

39:21

single, that's when

39:23

I think slow dancing becomes like a kind

39:26

of more integrated into like

39:28

your dance arsenal. It's something

39:30

that I feel is a very adult thing. Like quiet

39:34

slow dance is like in the living room of like

39:37

a partner. You know, it's

39:39

tender.

39:45

I spoke with a lot of adults about slow

39:48

dancing for this piece and it was really

39:50

fun to talk about. Like I highly

39:52

recommend it as a topic of conversation

39:55

because people have feelings about

39:57

it. They remember slow dancing vividly.

40:00

and they are alarmed the kids are

40:02

not doing it.

40:03

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

40:06

it. This

40:06

is just part of the disaster

40:09

that's making children anxious.

40:11

They also have theories about what's happened.

40:14

The number one suspect, as it is

40:16

with everything else, is phones and social

40:18

media, which has helped make kids over-sexualized

40:21

and yet intimacy-phobic.

40:23

That's a really intimate moment. And maybe

40:26

people in this day and age with

40:28

social media, a lot of screen time, they're even

40:30

less comfortable actually having

40:32

to look at someone in the eye and have a conversation

40:35

with them.

40:36

And music itself and the changes

40:38

to it have got to matter.

40:40

We are well into an R&B

40:42

resurgence, but for

40:44

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

40:46

of ballads or the same kind of vulnerability

40:49

that there were when I was coming up.

40:52

And then the last few years can't have helped. I

40:54

feel

40:56

like the social connection has

40:58

gotten a little more awkward and then forget it when COVID

41:00

happened. To

41:01

the adults I spoke with, it all

41:03

seems a shame. A sentiment

41:06

most succinctly summed up by another

41:08

DJ I talked

41:09

to, Rome Anderson, AKA

41:11

DJ Stylus.

41:13

Learning how to get

41:14

close to somebody and negotiate

41:17

shared space in a way that

41:19

is mutually enjoyable.

41:21

Yeah, you might want to learn how to do that. Every

41:24

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

41:27

important part of humaning.

41:29

There's something notable about the flavor

41:32

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

41:35

It's actually a little salacious and hard-nosed.

41:37

I'm not advocating for slow dances because

41:39

they're romantic and sweet. I'm arguing

41:42

that kids

41:44

need to

41:46

deal with each other

41:47

and deal with that anxiety and

41:49

suffer through the rejection

41:52

and the awkwardness of it.

41:59

to learn about their bodies and

42:02

what they like by interacting with

42:04

other bodies. But as right

42:07

on as this

42:07

concern may be, it only

42:09

goes so far.

42:11

A feature of a vibrant

42:13

slow dance, not just the teen

42:15

slow dance, but any of the ones people

42:17

have been doing for the last 200 years, is

42:21

that it unsettles

42:22

adults.

42:23

So we can't make the slow dance

42:26

come alive just because it

42:28

might have been alive for us. We

42:30

can't tell kids they ought to be rebelling

42:33

by doing what we say. We

42:35

can't insist upon the slow dance

42:38

any more than we could insist upon

42:40

the waltz. The

42:43

face-to-face slow dance has been around for

42:45

so long that it has become a deeply

42:47

entrenched tradition,

42:49

one that will linger in traditional

42:51

places like sleep-away camp socials

42:53

and weddings and proms and when DJs want

42:56

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

42:58

a slow dance is supposed to be more

43:01

than just

43:01

a tradition.

43:03

So long as it's out there in any

43:05

form, maybe a TikTok influencer

43:07

or Bachata star or someone dancing

43:10

to R&B or kids romanticizing

43:12

the slow dance or goofing on it will

43:14

find a way to make it come alive

43:17

again. But if they do, it won't

43:20

be the version I remember. It

43:22

will be a different version. It

43:24

will be their version. Because

43:27

that's the story of dancing slowly.

43:30

It's about finding a new way to

43:32

make a connection on the dance

43:34

floor. ["I'm Willa Paskin"]

43:52

This is Dakota Ring. I'm Willa

43:54

Paskin. You can find me on Twitter at

43:56

WillaPaskin. And if you have any cultural

43:59

mysteries you want us to...

43:59

to Decode, please email us at

44:02

Decodering at Slate.com.

44:05

Decodering is produced by me and Katie

44:07

Shepard. This episode was edited by

44:09

Zakia Gibbons. Derek John is Slate's

44:11

executive producer

44:12

of narrative podcasts. Merit

44:14

Jacob is senior technical director.

44:16

I'd

44:17

like to thank Joel Meyer, Benjamin Frisch,

44:19

and Carlos Pereja. I'd also

44:21

like to thank all the additional people who

44:23

shared their slow dancing experiences

44:26

and thoughts. Ralph Giordano,

44:28

Matt Baum, Meryl Bitzrutzik, Ari

44:30

Seldman, Ava Candade, Eileen

44:33

Zhang,

44:33

and Harper Coyce.

44:35

I'd also like to shout out an article in

44:37

Billboard that helped inspire this episode.

44:39

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

44:42

of the Slow Dance, How the One-Time

44:44

Rite of Passage Has Evolved for Gen Z.

44:46

We'll link to it on our show page, and you should

44:48

check it out. If you haven't yet,

44:51

please subscribe and rate our Feed an Apple podcast

44:53

or wherever you get your podcasts, and

44:56

even better, tell your friends. And

44:58

if you're a fan of the show, I'd also love for you to

45:00

sign up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus

45:02

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45:05

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45:06

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45:08

So please go to slate.com slash decoder

45:11

plus to join Slate Plus today.

45:14

We'll see you next week.

45:24

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Four. I'd like to personally invite you

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to listen to Office Hours Live with me and my

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