Dear Folks, Have any of you ever danced a minuet? Well I was taught how to dance to one and very properly, mind you. To jog your memory of what a minuet was, just picture the mid 1700s in this new country in Colonial Philadelphia or Virginia. Picture George Washington and all of the most elite society at the time gathered together in a grand ballroom, both men and women wearing powdered wigs. And then the minuet began. It was such a stately dance and such a delicate one. For a detailed discription check out the URL http://www.streetswing.com/histmain/z3minuet.htm. Just to keep you straight, I want to strongly emphasize that I am not THAT old! No I was taught the minuet in grammar school when I was in the fourth or fifth grade in the early 1940s in Niagara Falls. It was during WWII (not that the war had anything to do with it) but apparently once a day or week or so the music teacher would lead us kids outside our normal classroom at Ashland Avenue School and take us into an empty one without any desks in it. There she taught all of us gangly nine- or ten-year-old girls and boys the stately dance of the minuet. She lined the boys up on one side and the girls on the other. When the classical music started playing on the phonograph the boys and girls gracefully approached other (well at least as gracefully as they could manage). The boys bowed from the waist and the girls curtsied toward their partners. Then we all went through the elaborate steps of the minuet. In fact, they weren't all that elaborate but more of getting into the feeling of dancing the minuet to such beautiful and graceful music from a long, long time ago. And do you know what? I can't recall a single one of us giggling over it--not even the boys! Now why do I have the feeling that the kids nowadays aren't taught the minuet in music class??? vee