Not really. The word social itself, in the strict sense of the word — dance, social or socializing — was coined in England in 1826, the year the first dances were made in the form we know today. The word social, as we would understand today, was not invented by the dancers or the composers in London, but by the first professional ballerina in London — Emily Chapman, in 1835. “Social dance,” according to the Dictionary of National Biography, “dresses as dance rather than as a formal artistic expression. Social dance does not attempt to create, but to provide a context for artistic expression.”
Today, the word “social” is in the English dictionary to mean — in more popular use — “social event.” However, when it comes down to the practical terms, that’s not what we mean by it. So, if a dancer or a composer is performing a social dance in a ballroom or on a floor of a restaurant or a theater, you’ll probably hear someone tell you it’s a “social dance,” not a real dance.
That’s why ballet is so hard to understand. It isn’t a social dance, but it isn’t even a social event. And it’s a dance whose very purpose is for dancing. It is not a show. And by any definition, the dancer will be performing an artistic performance — as in an artistic ballet, or as a singer or guitarist.
The word social actually dates back to an era when people believed social dance was an “art form,” but not in a social and artistic sense. That is, social dancing was a more formal and formalized dance that was usually performed for entertainment or for some other purpose. There was no reason to think that dance in a group setting meant anything more than the “workmanlike” or “trad” type social dance that the stage was designed for — as was being the stage in the orchestra. In “social dancing,” the dancer was performing a specific social role.
To get an idea of what social dancing looks like at an event like the Met Ball, I attended a ball dance by a group of dancers in 2012 in New York at the Met Ball. I was standing at the back of the dance floor; I didn’t even see any of the dancers. The dancers I saw that night at the Met in 2012 all looked like dancers I had seen in previous ballrooms, but at a social dance from a few years earlier, in the 19th century.
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