A few days ago on March 1st 2025 the painter Jack Vettriano died aged 73. I’m sure to a younger generation, his name won’t mean much, but to those who’s ‘back in the day’ was the nineteen nineties, Jack’s paintings were ubiquitous. It seemed that every coffee shop had a print of his hanging somewhere.
His most famous painting was ‘The Singing Butler’ (1992). I’m confident that this picture of a couple dancing on a beach while a butler and a maid hold umbrellas against the wind and rain, is one the most well known images of dance.
My wife and I still have a small print of The Singing Butler in our bedroom. For the thirty years I’ve taught Salsa it has followed us from the kitchen of one flat, to the bedroom of our current house. It’s a print that connects us with our journey in dance and in life. I often gaze at it as I lay in bed pondering what it means to me.
The wind swept beach reminds me of childhood holidays in North Wales and teenage years living a stone's throw from Camber Sands in East Sussex. Why are the couple dancing on the beach? Perhaps to enjoy the sunset or sunrise? Perhaps they'd been dancing and didn't want the evening to end? Maybe Jack is suggesting that as love and desire embraces us, everything else becomes meaningless and as nondescript as sand on a beach.
Much of Jack’s work provokes a sense of anticipation and subversion through elicit sexual tension. The couples dance of intimacy anticipates an even more intimate encounter after the sun sets. The acceptable norms of the social elite dancing in a respectable ballroom surrounded by their peers is subverted as they dance outside, exposed to the elemental forces of nature, on the verge of allowing their instinct to overrule their self control. And yet the social hierarchy is preserved: As the rich play, their servants shiver in the wind as they work.
Perhaps the most notable observation of the picture is that the man is not leading. In typical partner hold, also known as the ‘embrace’ in Ballroom and Latin, is danced with the leaders left hand high. Partner hold has been around for centuries. A German painting from the thirteenth century shows a couple dancing in partner hold. It has become an iconic position, recycled into every partner dance since. It serves to allow dancers to touch, transcending the normal social prohibitions of acceptable society. It draws them close and brings them to the edge of intimacy, creating tension, risk and thrill.
If you didn’t spot the lady leading straight away you’re in good company. It took me about fifteen years to work out where that sense that something was wrong with the picture was coming from. Then an article was published stating that Jack copied the image of a couple dancing from a sketch from a ‘How to paint’ book. To improve the overall composition he reversed the image.
When an image is reversed, the left becomes right and vice versa. Like a reflection in a pool of water we, like our ancient ancestors, can contemplate its meaning. To the ancients, pools of water became portals through which we could see our shadow selves in a shadow world. Where spirits could travel through to our world or steal us into theirs.
In the Singing Butler the lady leads and our assumptions that the man has power, control and the wealth is inverted. Any assumption that the butler and maid work for him is also reversed as they become her staff. She has the wealth and power and chooses to dance where and when she wishes; the man subservient to her whims. Perhaps he is the suitor of meager means using his charm to advance himself through marriage. Her transgression must remain out of the public gaze, on a deserted beach.
Transgression is at the core of social dance. Whether it’s Salsa, Bachata, Samba or Tango, there’s a back story of the powerful dancing with status hungry swarthy/dusky skinned peasantry. Serfs or slaves, the peasantry was always swarthy and tanned from working the fields compared to the whiter elite.
Trump’s wealthy elite, desperate to keep the Mexicans at bay, or Strictly Come Dancing’s disproportionate number of Italian/ Mediterranean professionals, complete with flashing smiles and natural tan straight from a bottle marked ‘nature tan’ complement today's celebrity establishment.
Social dances today such as Salsa are still considered lesser forms of dance by the elite. Propper dance conservatoires are supported in part by grants from the great and good; while salsa gets the back room of bars. Propper dances are taught by propper dance teachers who are trained and certified. Salsa is taught by maveric salsa dancers. Jack was an artistic maverik, he didn’t go to art college and never found acceptance by the art community.
Sandy Moffat, head of drawing and painting at Glasgow School of Art, said: "He can't paint, he just colours in."
The Guardian's art critic Jonathan Jones, described Vettriano's paintings as "brainless" and said Vettriano "is not even an artist."
Later in his career he was awarded an OBE but by then his work was selling for tens of thousands and he was earning half a million per year in royalties from his prints. Not bad for a son of a miner from Fife who left school at fifteen.
Like dance, Jack's work navigates the respectable establishment and elicit transgression. Our formal steps and moves create a space for empathetic communication including the ancient human flirtation ritual. He puts the sexual tension and excitement on our walls as we dance it on the floor. His career and success breaks the mold of established art, just as Salsa and the like break the establishment's grip of propper dance.
Mambalsa's a maverik dance. It aims to disrupt much of accepted dance teaching practice and drags it into a space of self-development and creativity. In Mambalsa everyone learns to lead and follow. Perhaps in the future Mambalsa dancers will see Jack's The Singing Butler as the first image of equality with the dance relationship, the first painting of Mambalsa!
In memoriam Jack Vettriano 1951 - 2025
