The Royal Lancers, Figure 5

The fifth and final figure of the Royal Lancers/Horse Guards quadrille for sixteen is actually not a very radical departure from the fifth figure of the usual Lancers.  The only real change is replacing the opening grand chain with a less elegant right hands across/left hands back done by all eight ladies together.  The only virtue of this change is that this figure fits the standard music, which a grand chain of sixteen people would not.  The rest of the figures are really no more than a typical fifth figure performed side by side but separately by two groups of four couples.

Please refer to the first post in this series, here, for the diagram showing the formation of the Royal Lancers, with each pair of numbered couples (first/first, second/second, etc.) being located diagonally across the set from each other.

The Royal Lancers: Fifth Figure (chord + 48bx4 +16b)
chord   Wait
8b        All ladies right hands across around, all salute partners
8b        All ladies left hands back to places, all salute partners
4b        First couple promenade around inside of set, end in starting place facing outward
4b        Right side (third) couples fall in behind (2b); left side (fourth) couples fall in behind (2b)
(couples are now in two parallel lines of couples extending from the first couples to the second couples, with the lines facing opposite directions; women should be slightly forward of their partners)
4b        All chassez across, women to the left in front and men to the right behind, and balancé forward and back (see illustration below for chassez across of a single line)
4b        All chassez back to places, women in front, and balancé forward and back
8b        March round: first couples separate and cast off down the outside of their lines and come back up the other side, staying in their half of the set, other couples following, opening out into two pairs of facing lines of men and women, holding hands
4b        Lines forward and back
4b        All turn partners to places
(coda figure done after all four repeats are complete)
8b        All ladies right hands across around, all salute partners (as at beginning)
8b        All ladies left hands back to places, all salute partners (as at beginning)

The figure is repeated three more times, each couple in turn promenading and leading the march round.  On the third and fourth repetitions, the lines form from side couple to side couple rather than head couple to head couple and the following figures are shifted ninety degrees.  The coda figure is performed only at the end.

The fifth figure traditionally begins with a chord rather than a full eight-bar introduction (but see the Reconstruction Notes, below).

The trick to dancing this figure successfully is to remember that after the ladies do the right hands across/left hands back, the dancers perform all the following figures on their own half of the set (though the dividing line is different depending on whether a head or side couple is leading) with no interaction with the four couples in the other half except briefly when the two sides interweave during the chassez across, which is a truly impressive figure when performed by sixteen dancers facing in two different directions!

After the first and third march-arounds, the lines of men will be back to back in the center of the set and after the second and fourth, the lines of women.  The center two people in the lines nearest the center of the set must move strongly forward when turning partners to places in order for the couples to end properly on the edges of the set rather than in the middle.

The right hands across/left hands back figure is ideally performed with opposite ladies taking hands (not modern contra-style wrist holds), but eight ladies wearing the hoop skirts appropriate to the time of the quadrille's composition will find it difficult to get close enough for this, so it tends to degenerate into simply holding the arms outstretched and aimed toward the center.  The salutes are more brief passing salutes than elaborate bows and courtesies, for which there is simply no time, though the final salute at the end of the coda should be held somewhat longer (with the music, hopefully) as the ending salute of the figure and the quadrille.

Reconstruction notes
Neither source mentions the opening chord; Hillgrove ignores the opening altogether while Koncen calls it a "pause" in the music.  Since Lancers music for the fifth figure generally (always?) begins with such a chord, I have added it to the instructions.

Hillgrove and Koncen differ on the final coda figure.  Hillgrove had a particular choreographic tic: ending quadrilles with an eight-bar figure called "all chassez" which consisted of all dancers facing partners and performing a chassez to their own right and back (four bars) followed by full bows and courtesies (four bars) before each gentleman conducts his partner to her seat.  Adding this at the very end, as he calls for, creates a 24-bar coda rather than the standard sixteen bars, which will not be found on recordings of the Lancers or sheet music for the dance.  Unless there is some specific reason to dance in Hillgrove's particular style, the easiest solution, which I have given above, is to simply ignore Hillgrove, follow Koncen, and do only the sixteen-bar coda.

Figures one through four of the Royal Lancers may be found here, here, here, and here.

Special thanks to the dancers of the December 2009 Quadrille Thing who dance-tested the Royal Lancers for me: Marc, Keira, Jan, Al, Irene, Franzo, Alex, Beth, Kat, Emily, Nora, Jessica, Juliette, Danny, Alexia, and Lynn.

Comments

[Elisabeth]

I posted this comment on an older entry, but I thought I should repost on a newer entry in case nobody reads the old one!
Does anyone know if there is a type of quadrille in which one of the figures is called the "visits" or "visitations"-- or something to that effect? In a scene in a novel I am translating, the characters are dancing a quadrille and that's the word (in the original language) used to describe one of the dance figures. I'm trying to find out what, if anything, that would correspond to in English terminology. Thanks for any help you can give!

[Susan de Guardiola]

Elisabeth: could I have some context, please? The name of the novel and the paragraph or at least the full sentence containing the reference, in the original language and English translation if it is something other than French, Spanish, or Italian, with the date and country of publication? I think the answer is fairly obvious but don't like depending on so little information.

[Elisabeth]

Thanks so much for your reply, Susan. It's a Greek novel published in 1937, though it's set sometime around 1910 or before. The sentence in question doesn't provide much context. Here's the relevant part of the sentence: "Οταν τελείωσαν τις επισκέψεις..." Literally, that would be "When they finished the visits..." The editor has footnoted the word "επισκέψεις" and indicated that it refers to a figure of the quadrille. The scene as a whole lasts for a few pages, and these other parts of the dance are mentioned, using the French terms: tourbillon, grand rond, promenade, chaîne, and the grand repos. The term "επισκέψεις" for which I am looking for a corresponding English term occurs in between the mention of the tourbillon and the grand rond.
I hope that gives a little more context. Thanks again for your help!