1920 Dance Moves (Clockwise Left to Right): The Black
Bottom, the Grizzly Bear, The Fox Trot and the Charleston.
Rather than vanish under its own
weight, the new jazz dancing only grew.
By the time the Charleston appeared in
the early 1920s, the dance’s shimmying
body movements and wild leg flings led to
an open public outcry. By 1923, Professor
Brownell was forced to call a halt to the
night dances at Gilroy HIgh School. He
complained that the parents were too busy
to come and help chaperone. He was left
to patrol the hallways and basement of the
gym alone, to flush out wayward youth that
had strayed off the dance floor. It became
particularly trying when young men with
cars took their dance partners out to the
parking lot to sit and neck. While her
parents thought she was safely chaperoned
inside the school gym, a foolish young girl
might actually slip away by 10:00 PM and
not arrive home until 1:00 AM, he noted.
In November 1924, the Gilroy City
Council responded, enacting an ordinance
restricting activities at public dances. Under
the new regulations, no one under age 18
could attend unless accompanied by a par-
ent or guardian. Dances were to end at
1:00 am, and no adult beverages would be
brought, or served, no matter what.
The new ordinance would also shut out
the undesirables who might come from out
of town. Thus the tone, Gilroyans were
assured, would be kept decorous. “Far be it
from us to be a censor of public dances, but
if the dear mothers and fathers could see
some of the things that have been pulled off
lately, they would organize a shotgun squad
and never let their daughters out without a
chaperone,” the local editor declared.
City Council regulations notwithstand-
ing, the dance craze continued in Gilroy
and elsewhere. After the Charleston came
the Black Bottom, a rage that had begun
in New Orleans in 1926 before spreading
across the country. The dance moves fea-
tured foot stamping, slapping the backside,
and hopping to and fro, while gyrating the
torso. Women’s panties made from black
silk or satin became a new fashion item
during the era. At-home piano sheet music
included dance step instructions so folks
GILROY • MORGAN HILL • SAN MARTIN
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2015
could practice before heading out. Another
fad dance, the Lindy Hop, was named for
celebrated aviator Charles Lindbergh. The
dance later evolved into the Jitterbug and
was a forerunner of Swing.
In little Gilroy, while the town’s moral
guardians kept watch on the young, most
of the era’s wilder dances passed into his-
tory. An exception was the Fox Trot, which
first appeared on the scene about 1913. The
dance became a standard that persists in
popularity today.
But the public was advised to never let
down its guard in supervising the local
dances. In 1912, the Editor’s stern warn-
ing struck a common chord, “Another
thing that should never be allowed is the
extinguishing of lights while the dance is in
progress. That also savors too much of the
shady side of life.”
To the pure minded who prided them-
selves in being part of decent society, that
slippery slope, even dancing in the dark to
the gramophone at home, was probably
best avoided by all.
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