dinner dance

plural dinner dances

1. A formal social event that includes a dinner, followed by dancing, typically held in the evening.

   With that, they surrendered to the ritual of the modern dinner-dance, returning to their table between dances to drink and smoke and exchange talk on an established key of intimacy, with the peculiar sense of privacy that two people may maintain in a crowd by rejecting all communion with it.

   1950, Norman Lindsay, Dust or Polish?, Sydney: Angus and Robertson, page 172