Waltz is over, and over, and over again. One, two, three, one two three that is, the importance of rhythm and harmony, or affinities that are more or less elective. The bodies barely touched but it was already a veritable sexual revolution. The body language was mainly a game of glances, but what an intensity emanated from those glances. A simmering of disruptive energy, barely restrained by the collars of those stiff shirts and in those corsets and girdles squeezed so tight as to take one’s breath away. Like Paris with its Moulin Rouge, or New York and Studio ’54 or Swinging London and the yé-yé, Vienna with its waltzes of Johann Strauss, the father, son and holy spirit, served as the soundtrack of a disco that was ahead of its time which started from there and came as far as Visconti’s Il Gattopardo (The Leopard) or Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate. One scene like another, very conducive for encounters of all types among people of all stripes. The ritual of good manners certainly did not stop the grand gestures or the swooning, or the handkerchiefs or notes accidentally left behind... The ball was a big, shining, glittering show of complete and utter pleasure, while the world was once again changing with the speed and absurdity of an airplane in a nosedive.
