From my limited contact with dance styles native to Asia and the Indian subcontinent, it seems like a lot of the classical dance forms involve a performer dancing alone, or sometimes several performers, but they all have their own ‘space’ and do not make contact or dance arm-in-arm like in some of the European and Latin American dances.
Do any Asian cultures have native, traditional dances (so not imported styles like Merengue or the walz or what-have-you) that involve partners dancing arm-in-arm?
In Korea, it was traditionally taboo for men and women to even be in the same room together unless they were family, or chaperoned. So any kind of dance that involved physical contact would have been absolutely scandalous.
Dance was a lower-class thing as well. Nobility never danced, unless maybe they were drunk.
Other than dancing which is part of a performance, the only traditional Japanese dancing is the Obon odori (Bon dance), but it’s done in a large circle with set moves.
Most Indian dances do not have touching. The most they will do is in a Radha-Krishna dance Krishna will catch Radha’s hand while she tries to get away.
Even in Bhangra, which can be touchy-feely, it is with the same gender only, mostly. Guys can link arms, or lift each other onto shoulders to dance, girls can hold hands, but it doesn’t cross gender.
Dancing is perfectly approved in Punjab, even mixing sexes, but you are not supposed to touch. PDAs, even between married couples, are rather frowned upon. Of course the rules are relaxed when you reach…oh say sixty or so. You can hold hands with your husband then.
I’ve never seen a “formal” dance form in which men and women dance together. There are casual dances, like dandiya and bhangra, in which men and women dance together, but there’s no pairing off and there’s no touching. In dandiya, the dancers hold sticks which they crack against each other, but the dancing is done in groups, not in pairs.
It’s really more of a “paired” line dance. There needs to be an even number of dancers in the group, you’re interacting with one other dancer at a time (although your partner keeps changing), and dancers need to enter and leave the group in pairs. Many a time have I ranted at people who ruined a rollicking raas line by dropping out by themselves.
I saw paired and apparently traditional (or at least, known to the participants) dances at a Nepalese wedding, but I have no idea what they were called, or if they’re a modern invention.
The Wikipedia article on partner dancing makes it sound like it’s all descended from European dances, and I have to say, I’ve never heard of a non-Western partner dance (although, being American, I’m most familiar with Western dancing anyhow). I know that some of the modern partner dances have spread worldwide; I came across a couple hundred Chinese people in Beijing swing dancing to directions by a fellow with a bullhorn once. But I don’t know if there are local-origin forms as well, or if it’s all Western dances.
Actually, it occurs to me that there have to be at least a few non-Western partner dance styles, even if they’re very local and not too different from Western stuff - think about some of the styles of swing, like Lindy or Balboa, that we can trace to specific local scenes, even specific clubs sometimes. There have to be cities in Asia where there’s a local style, just not one I’ve ever heard of (or that’s caught on enough to be named).
lots of asian indigenous dances involve heterosexual partners, whether to imply sex (like a tango,) love and courtship (rhumba) or even a simple peasant’s chore (woman mimicks cooking while the man mimics choppng wood.) these are mostly folk dances that suffer very little censure, whether from religion, nobility, or strict parents.