Dance hall

Dance hall in its general meaning is a hall for dancing. From the earliest years of the twentieth century until the early 1960s, the dance hall was the popular forerunner of the disco or nightclub. The majority of towns and cities in the West had at least one dance hall, and almost always featured live musicians playing a range of music from strict tempo ballroom dance music to big band, swing and jazz. The early days of rock n' roll were briefly played out in dance halls before nightclubs took over.

One of the most famous dance hall musicians was Glenn Miller.

Other forms of dance halls include the dance pavilion which has a roof but no walls, and the open-air platform which has no roof or walls. The open air nature of the dance pavilion was both a feature and a drawback.

Texas Dance Halls

Texas has a high concentration of community dance halls, the largest number of them built by German and Czech immigrants. ^{[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]}

References

1. ^ Texas Dance Halls: History, Culture, and Community, Journal of Texas Music History Volume 6, Issue 1 2006 Article 5 Journal of Texas Music History, [Vol. 6, No. 1] ( 2006) Gail Folkins
2. ^ Whitson, Krista. Alter, Kevin, ed. Dance Halls of Central Texas: Pre-World War II Wooden Structures. Austin, 2005 First in-depth survey of the dance halls populating central Texas. Documents 72 of these structures within a 150-mile radius of Austin through photographs and drawings.
3. ^ Dance Halls and Last Calls: A History of Texas Country Music, Geronimo Treviño, III, Republic of Texas Press 2002 www.geronimotrevino.com
4. ^ Early Czech dance halls in Texas, by Roger Henry Kolar 1975
5. ^ Austin County Historical Commission, ed., Dance Halls of Austin County, (Bellville: Austin County Historical Commission, 1993)

See also

• Ballroom
• Dance club, the successor of the dance hall

External links

• Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture - Dance Halls

This dance-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. v • d • e