Dances and balls appear throughout world literature as places for young people to meet, flirt, and form relationships. The popularity of social dance transcends class, gender, and ethnic and national boundaries. In the context of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Jewish culture, dance offers crucial insights into debates about emancipation and acculturation. In this presentation, Sonia Gollance will trace the history of the Jewish taboo on mixed-sex dancing and share some of the main arguments from her new book, It Could Lead to Dancing: Mixed-Sex Dancing and Jewish Modernity. The first book to focus on European Jewish social dance, It Could Lead to Dancing was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Awards (USA).