When the rock era ended, it was for some a fortunate return to normalcy. For others, it was the triumph of mediocrity and conformity. Critics announced the decline of political involvement and alternate life styles, which had been ritualized by rock music and dancing. The decline of rock coincided with the rise of the American disco. And the new music, the music of the discos, was not "live," but on discs, played loudly and repeatedly by disc jockeys with a mania for manipulating their audience. The sound satisfied nothing but the feet. The beat was a straight 4/4, without any of the subtle inner rhythms which made rock so sensual and complex and so typical of its era.
There were, however, some reasons to doubt that the world of the discos was as reactionary and mindless as its critics claimed. The disco was possibly the only public place where the major forces of the 1970s rebellion had been totally ritualized into an experience with real impact. Social historians often point out that only two motives of the 1960s retained any lasting influence: the sensibilities regarding race and sex. That was where the dance palaces of the 1970s got their essential character. Like the flowering of peasant identity in the folk dances of the Middle Ages, the popular dances of the twentieth century idealized and ritualized the values of a vast new middle class. The complicated social scheme of discos epitomized the sexual and racial ideas of that powerful group. The young disco dancers so completely assimilated novel forms of behavior that they were scarcely aware of doing so.
The dance hall has always been the most conspicuous testing ground for sexual manners — and discos provided a place where new attitudes about sex roles could be freely played out. In the 1970s the idea of couples was so casually treated that single women, for instance, could enjoy themselves in discos without the slightest stigma. Slow dancing to romantic music regained popularity, and the renewed interest in contact dancing brought about a renovation of the lindy and the jitterbug called the hustle, a.rather tame dance in which the partners hold hands and pace stridently (with almost no tarsal movement) through a succession of solo and duet turns. But none of the new contact dancing put an end to the unique improvisations of the 1960s: people still got up and danced alone or in small groups, and members of the same sex also danced together. Here, in the dancing of men with each other and of women with each other, the disco represented a really major change in convention and sexual attitudes, which affected all dancing, social and theatrical.
Some of the most popular discos in America and Europe were started as gay establishments, which began to open their doors to anyone who wanted to dance. The fact that some discos were gay or "mixed" was casually noted in night-life articles in major newspapers, which took for granted freedoms that until very recently were the basis of scandal.
Although sex has often been noted as the fundamental reality behind the existence of the ballroom, race has not. But there is no question that during the 1960s the attitude of Black people about dancing suddenly and completely reshaped the way white people danced. That sensualization of body movement was absolutely revolutionary, making a significant connection for them between dance, race, and sexuality.