The European influence on Cuba's later musical development is represented by danzón, an elegant musical form that was once the most popular music in Cuba. It is a descendent of the creollized Cuban contradanza. The danzón marks the change which took place from the communal sequence dance style of the late eighteenth century to the couple dances of later times. The stimulus for this was the success of the once-scandalous walz, where couples danced facing each other and independently from other couples, not as part of a pre-set structure. The danzón was the first Cuban dance to adopt such methods, though there is a difference between the two dances. The walz is a progressive ballroom dance where couples move round the floor in an anti-clockwise direction; the danzón is a 'pocket-handkerchief' dance where a couple stays within a small area of the floor.