Capering & Kickery

The Twinkle Hesitation

The Twinkle Hesitation, attributed to S. Wallace Cortissoz, was published in Leslie Clendenen's collection, Dance Mad, in St. Louis in 1914.  I'd been looking at dances in that book that incorporated twinkle steps, and this one caught my eye as fun to dance.  The dance itself is a sixteen-bar, three-part sequence, but each part also makes a nifty independent addition to any hesitation waltz.

Another Note on the Early Foxtrot

While searching through a periodicals index I came across an interesting little article that neatly summarizes my previous three foxtrot posts.  "How to Dance the Fox Trot" was published in the Los Angeles Times on October 18, 1914.  It commends the dance as

the most simple of all the new dances.  If you were discouraged when you tackled the tango or maxixe, here is a dance that every one can dance and enjoy with practically no mental exertion.

Book Review: Vernon and Irene Castle's Ragtime Revolution

I recently enjoyed reading Vernon and Irene Castle's Ragtime Revolution, Eve Golden's 2007 biography of the most famous dance couple of the 1910s.  This is not the fantasy-romance of the 1939 Astaire & Rogers film, The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle, nor does it spend as much time on their actual dance accomplishments as I would have liked.  The author is a silent film aficionado, and the book focuses more on the Castles as celebrities and stars of theater and film than it does on the specifics of their influence on dancing.  (She devotes a fifteen-page appendix to a filmography, but dances are not even listed by name in the index!)  That said, it adds a great deal of interesting background and thoroughly debunks the entire misty romantic myth of the Castles in favor of a more realistic portrait of their marriage as affectionate but later primarily a business relationship.  From hints that Vernon might have been bisexual to Irene's affairs to their impending divorce at the time of Vernon's death (so that he could marry another woman), this book carefully puts back in as much as can be reconstructed of what Irene Castle left out of her own books, My Husband (1919) and Castles in the Air (1958).  Those interested in the off-the-dance-floor escapades and accomplishments of the Castles and their associates will find it absolutely fascinating.

The Mistletoe Hesitation

The Mistletoe Hesitation is a lovely little sixteen-bar hesitation waltz sequence originally published in F. Leslie Clendenen's Dance Mad, or the dances of the day (St. Louis, 1914), a collection of dances and dance moves borrowed liberally from other dance teachers and manuals.  The Mistletoe is attributed to M.W. Cain and is one of the earliest uses I have found of a twinkle step.

Fancy Little Foxtrot

This is a nifty little move from the short Bassett/Elliott film, "The Much Talked About 'Fox Trot' " (dated 1916) and is unlike anything else I've ever seen in a 1910s foxtrot: it actually has a hop.  A hop in the foxtrot!  That should startle anyone watching you.  The sequence isn't terribly difficult and should be accessible once a dancer is past the complete-novice stage.

The overall rhythm is SS QQQQ QQS QQQQ, starting gentleman's left foot/lady's right and stepped as follows:

SS QQQQ
Normal walk/trot sequence, backing the lady.

QQ
Step out into "Yale" position, right hip to right hip, starting to move into a clockwise turn.

S
Hop!  This is on the gentleman's right foot, lady's left and moves slightly forward with the turning momentum of the dancers.

QQQQ
Complete the clockwise turn, straightening out to return to backing the lady along the line of dance in normal ballroom hold.

Verbal mnemonic:
Walk, walk, trot-trot, trot-trot, step-out, HOP, turn-turn, turn-turn.

The move doesn't have a name as far as I know.  I call it the Bassett/Elliott turn or simply the hop-turn.  Give it a try!

The Castle Polka

In the October of 1914, in a fit of nostalgia, Vernon Castle promoted in the pages of The Ladies Home Journal the revival of one of the most popular dances of the previous century, the polka.  He noted that the polka involves a hop rather than sliding steps usual in the dances of the 1910s, but feels that "it should be revived and modernized - not to take the place of the other dances so popular now, but to add variety to all dance programs" as well as "because it is so easy to learn and so enjoyable to dance."  A polka likewise enlivens and varies the program on a modern ball in the style of the 1910s, and the "Castle Polka" gives the dance more of a ragtime feel than the polka of the Victorian era.

The illustration at left, courtesy of the New York Public Library's digital image gallery, shows Vernon and his wife Irene in a polka pose.  Vernon noted that they had "a leaning towards things old-fashioned" which extended to Irene's costume.  Click the image to go to the NYPL site and enlarge it, and you will see that she is actually wearing ankle-length drawers under her skirt, in a fanciful imitation of Victorian fashion.  The Castles were essentially acting as dance reconstructors and came up with their own interpretation of how to dance the polka.  A transcription of the entire original article with the original illustrative photos by Ira L. Hill is online at the Vintage Victorian website.  My reconstruction of the Castle Polka follows.

Quick-Quick-Slow: The Two-Step Infiltrates the Foxtrot

In my previous foxtrot post I covered the basic walking and trotting patterns of the early foxtrot of the 1910s.  These patterns are characterized by alternating series of slow (S) or quick (Q) steps, simple traveling interspersed with occasional sideways glides or half-turns, and consistently starting on the same foot (gentleman's left, lady's right).  This simple foxtrot was complicated almost immediately by variations of rhythm, most notably the "quick-quick-slow" (QQS, or "one-and-two (pause)") rhythm of the 19th-century two-step and polka.  This post will discuss some of the variations introduced in the pre-1920 foxtrot as described by dancing masters Maurice Mouvet (1915) and Charles Coll (1919) and demonstrated by Clay Bassett and Catherine Elliott on film (1916).

Basic Walking & Trotting Patterns in the 1910s Foxtrot

"What particular resemblance does the gait of a fox have to this dance?"
      -- spectator watching trotters, as quoted in Maurice's Art of Dancing, 1915

It's a reasonable question.  The foxtrot evolved so rapidly after its debut in 1913-1914 that it can be difficult to sort out the earliest versions of the dance and derive an accurate picture of the foxtrot as danced in the 1910s.

Directions for dancing the foxtrot first began appearing in print in 1914.  While it did not appear in Vernon and Irene Castle's 1914 work, Modern Dancing, the Castles did include it that year in the booklet Victor Records for Dancing.  Two brief descriptions were also published in F. L. Clenenden's compendium, Dance Mad, also published in 1914, in St. Louis.  In 1915, Maurice Mouvet published his description of the foxtrot in Maurice's Art of Dancing, followed in 1919 by Charles Coll in Dancing Made Easy (link is to the 1922 reprint).

In addition to these written sources, a brief silent film clip dated 1916 shows dance instructors Clay Bassett and Catherine Elliott demonstrating "The Much Talked About 'Fox Trot'."

The Half & Half: Basic Traveling Steps

• Era: 1910s

The half and half, a hesitation waltz danced in 5/4 time, was one of those novelties that appeared and vanished quickly in 1914.  There may be as many people alive now who know how to dance it as ever danced it in its own era!  It is also handicapped by having very few surviving pieces of music in the right time signature.  Today's experienced historical social dancers can probably hum the eponymous "Half and Half" from memory.  Sources describing the dance are equally difficult to come by; I have only three in my collection, though one of them, Dance Mad, generously provides four separate descriptions.

Click here to listen to a half and half tune in 5/4 time.

Hesitate, Hesitate, Hesitate!

• Era: 1910s
• Dance: One-Step

In his 1914 manual, Dances of To-day, Philadelphia dancing master Albert W. Newman describes three different hesitations suitable for the one-step or Castle walk.  In one description he notes that a hesitation is

...most practical, especially when one finds himself in a decidedly congested position, surrounded on all sides by merry dancers...it is the same as marking the time of the music, as the dancers execute the movement sur la place (on the spot).

Because of this practicality, hesitations are one of the first things I teach new dancers of the one-step.  Here are Newman's three hesitations for your dancing pleasure!