Articles

Irene and Vernon Castle are the first couple to make a living from ballroom dancing. They were wildly popular in the early 1900s when ballroom was young and cultural styles were progressing from Puritanical roots to the free flamboyance of the roaring 1920s. They starred in Vaudeville, on Broadway and in Hollywood, operated a dance studio, a nightclub, and wrote an instructional manual on the “Castle way” to ballroom dance. They innovated new styles and moves, as well as new fashions. Decades later Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers would portray the couple in the film The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle.