There was no doubt that the “sleepless night” referred to the old regime. The political significance of the jazz and the shimmy was to eradicate “any hint of dignity, correct bearing, trimness, and starched collars.” As one wag remarked, “If the kaiser had jazz-danced, none of this [war and defeat] would ever have happened.”180 Jazz dances were “the revolution, the expressionism, the Bolshevism of the ballroom.”
