The death of Len Goodman at 78, the original head judge of Strictly Come Dancing 2004=2016 perhaps reminds that the image of ballroom dancing is rather different to what it was 50 years ago. Indeed Strictly’s predecessor Come Dancing which ran from 1950 to 2008 did look, certainly in the 1950s and 1960s like it was a gathering of members of the Tory Party (when the Tories actually had a mass membership of sorts).
Even then the image of dancing may have had some element of mild cultural subversion. The late socialist historian Raphael Samuel notes in the Lost World of British Communism that ballroom dancing was strongly discouraged by the Communist Party as being the sort of thing respectable working people got involved in. The same went for jazz music although Eric Hobsbawm evidently ignored the diktat (see Francis Newton- the Jazz Scene)
The best Len Goodman quote I have heard..”Your dancing is just like my cooking…I just throw everything in”