Capering & Kickery

Revisiting the Highland Reel

• Era: 1850s, England

It is a truth that ought to be universally acknowledged that whenever I post about a dance on Kickery, I soon after turn up another source for the dance that offers a different spin on things.  In the case of the Highland Reel in its country dance figure form, that process took a few months, but I have indeed come across another source, Diprose’s ball room guide to the figures of the most fashionable dances by J. Albert Jarvis, published in London in 1857.  Looking at Jarvis does not make me change anything about my original two interpretations of the dance, but he offers an unusual enough variation of the Highland Reel that it is perhaps just as well that it has ended up in a separate post.

His description:

This dance is arranged by parties of three, in double lines -- a lady between each two gentlemen.  They advance and retire; each lady performs the reel with the gentleman on her right hand, the opposite gentlemen remain in their places; hands three round and back; all six advance and retire, then lead through to the next trio, and continue the figure to the end of the room.

My interpretation of these instructions is much like those for the other versions of the Highland Reel, except for that pesky reel itself:

The Highland Reel (version three)
(formation: a column of trios of one lady between two gentlemen)
8b    Trios forward and back twice
8b    Each lady reels with the gentleman to her right (see below for details)
8b    Each lady hands three around and back with her right-hand partner and the opposite gentleman
8b    Trios forward and back, then forward and pass right shoulders through the opposite trio

The directions for the reel baffled me briefly: how could a lady reel with only one gentleman?  The minimum for a reel is three, but Jarvis is quite specific that the other gentlemen remain in their places.  But three is not, as I eventually recalled, the maximum for a reel.  I believe Jarvis is actually suggesting a reel of four diagonally across the two trios with the two ladies and their right-hand partners.  Each lady moves into the set to pass right shoulders with the gentleman on her right.  A diagram of the reel as it begins, with the two gentlemen who are not part of the reel marked (G).

 G=>                      (G)
          <=L
                    L=>
(G)                      <=G

The sequence for dancing a reel for four is as follows:

Each lady passes her partner by the right shoulder, then loops around to the right on the ends as the gentlemen pass left shoulders in the center.  The ladies then pass the other gentlemen by the right shoulder, then pass each other by left shoulders in the center while the two gentlemen loop around to the right at the ends.  Ladies pass their partners by the right shoulder, then loop around to the right again while the gentlemen pass left shoulders in the center.  There is one further pass of the ladies by the right shoulder with the gentleman not their partner, then the ladies pass each other in the center by left shoulders heading as the gentlemen loop to the right, the ladies heading toward opposite ends of the set for the hands three round with her right hand partner and the gentleman opposite.  

This is much easier to do than to describe verbally; in essence, it is a figure eight with three loops instead of two, as in this diagram:

For the loops at the ends, dancers should look over their right shoulder and follow their noses, taking a generous curving path rather than turning sharply.  Passes are always right shoulders at the ends (with two consecutive passes by right shoulders at each end) and left in the center, or by right shoulders with the opposite sex and left shoulders with the same sex.  If all the dancers employ the chassé  or Kemshoole step -- in modern terms, a skip-change, performed as (hop) step-close-step -- as suggested in some contemporary descriptions of the Highland Reel, they will be able to complete the reel more easily than by walking.

For the other figures:

As with other descriptions of the Highland Reel, advancing and retiring twice to start is not specified but is necessary to fill the music.

Also as usual, the personnel for the hands three round and back are not specified, but I’ve left it at hands three on the “ends” of the set, each lady circling with her right-hand partner and the gentleman directly opposite him who was left out of the reel.  For the two dancers who were already moving, this flows nicely.  Each lady has just passed the other lady by the left shoulder, and the active gentlemen has just looped around his own right shoulder.  These two can just keep moving counter-clockwise in a curved line as if they were going to continue the reel.  Instead, they simply take hands (her right to his left) and pick up the extra gentleman in order to flow directly into the hands three circling to the left (counter-clockwise)

I actually prefer this variant to either of the more common versions described in my original post on the Highland Reel since it lets each lady interact with both gentlemen in the facing trio (during the reel with one and during the hands three with the other).  While I would not use a variation found solely in an English manual for an American Civil War-themed ball, for any other mid- to late nineteenth-century ball I would be strongly tempted to do the dance “Jarvis style”.

 

Bricklayer's Hornpipe

• Era: 1850s-1890s, America (New England)

Here’s an easy American contra dance of the Civil War era found in three Boston sources.  Two are manuals by Elias Howe: Howe's Complete Ballroom Handbook (Boston, 1858), and American Dancing Master and Ball-Room Prompter (Boston, 1862); the third is Professor L.H. Elmwell’s Prompter’s Pocket Instruction Book (Boston, 1892).

The figures for the dance, as given by Elmwell:

First couple cross over inside below second couple (4); Up on the outside and turn partners to places (4); First couple down the centre, back and cast off (8); First lady swing second gent (4); First gent swing second lady (4); Right and left (8).

The earlier instructions from the two manuals by Howe are virtually identical except that he describes the second move as “up on the outside swing partner to place”, a distinction I will address below, and the swings of the first lady/second gentleman and first gentleman/second lady as “quite round”.

The Swedish Dances, Part Seven: After Mr. Chivers

(Seventh in a series of posts discussing and analyzing the Swedish dances.  The first post may be found here.)

While never a prominent format, the Swedish dances became enough of a success to outlast their originator.  In the second edition of his Companion to La Terpsichore Moderne (London, c1830), dancing master J. S. Pollock, “Professor of Dancing, late of Paris” gives figures for many of the unusual country dance formats originating in the late 1810s and early 1820s, among them three different sets of figures for Swedish dances.  

Pollock describes the Swedish dances as being suited to either a lady between two gentlemen or a gentleman between two ladies, though his instructions are invariably for the latter configuration.  His diagram suggests a set of trios all of the same configuration.  Interestingly, Pollock explicitly states that “no change of places is to be made either at the top or bottom of the same,” meaning at the ends of the set.  This means that a right-hand dancer going down the set would become a left-hand dancer coming back up, a minor complication which Pollock was either indifferent to or regarded as a feature.

Pollock’s three dances, each thirty-two bars in length, are not given associated tune-names, only numbers, consistent with his descriptions of other types of dances.  Any tune of the proper length might be used.  My reconstructions are as follows:

No. 1
8b    Hands six round and back again

8b    The two top ladies and opposite gentleman cross right hands around then left hands back
8b    The other three the same

8b    All six advance and retire and pass through

No. 2
8b    All six advance and retire twice
8b    The top two ladies and opposite gentlemen hands three round and back

8b    The other three the same
8b    All six advance and retire and pass through

No. 3
8b    Hands six round and back again
8b    Top gentleman swing the lady opposite on the right with his right hand, then the lady opposite on the left with his left

8b    Bottom gentleman the same with the top ladies

8b    All six advance and retire and pass through

Reconstruction notes
The issues of reconstructing passing through in Chivers’ Swedish dances were discussed in my second post in this series.  For Pollock’s Swedish dances, one could use either version, but I lean toward the simpler one without the taking hands or the setting after passing through.  Those details appear to have faded with Chivers; I have never seen them elsewhere, and they seem a bit elaborate to be simply assumed.

Pollock opens his second dance with “All six advance and retire”, but to fit the music, it must be done twice.  Chivers was also inconsistent about mentioning this in his instructions.

A notable characteristic of Pollock’s dances is their use of figures which distinguish between the top trio (nearest the head of the set) and bottom trio, a distinction never made by Chivers.  His third dance is also the earliest appearance I have found of the center dancer interacting with diagonal opposites in sequence (right-hand opposite then left-hand opposite).

The next appearance of a Swedish dance that I have found is in manuscript form in Scotland about a decade later, in Frederick Hill’s Book of Quadrilles & Country Dances &c &c., dated March 22, 1841.  Hill gives both a small diagram and the note “Requires two Gentlemen to one Lady”, followed by a single set of dance instructions:

The first Lady turns the Gentleman opposite on her right with her right, & then the Gent on her left with her left.  The second or opposite L turns the Gent opposite in the same manner and retires to her place. Six hands full round _ advance & retire change sides.

The instructions appear to be simply a slight variation on Pollock’s third dance above, with the genders reversed and the hands six round altered to move only one direction then placed later in the dance:

8b    First (top) lady turns right-hand opposite gent by right hands, then left-hand opposite gent by left hands
8b    Second (bottom) lady does the same

8b    Hands six and circle completely around to the left
8b    All six advance and retire, then pass through

This produces a thirty-two bar dance.  For the pass through (“change sides” in the mansucript), I would have the dancers simply pass through by right shoulders.

It’s also possible to interpret Hill’s instructions as implying that the two ladies move simultaneously rather than sequentially, producing a twenty-four bar dance as follows:

4b    Each lady turns the right-hand opposite gentleman by right hands

4b    Each lady turns the left-hand opposite gentleman by left hands

8b    Hands six and circle completely around to the left
8b    All six advance and retire, then pass through

This is noticeably livelier, with four dancers moving at any given moment during the first eight bars of the dance, and suggests an interesting choreographic link with another dance.  Variations on the idea of both center dancers interacting simultaneously with their right and then left opposite diagonals are also the most characteristic figure of the mid-century American dance called the Rustic Reel (as described in a previous Kickery article), a twenty-four-bar trio-facing-trio dance found in American dance manuals as early as 1841.  While the Rustic Reel’s descent from the Swedish dances was always suggested by its unusual trio format, Pollock and Hill’s instructions provide the most compelling evidence yet that the American dance is a very close descendent of the earlier English genre of Swedish dances.

Harvest Home

• Era: American, late 1850s-early 1860s

In commemoration of the American Thanksgiving holiday, here’s a seasonally appropriate dance from the American Civil War era, a country dance for a set of six couples.

While I have not done a comprehensive search, I appear to have instructions for "Harvest Home" only in a pair of dance manuals by Elias Howe: Howe's Complete Ballroom Handbook (Boston, 1858) and American Dancing Master and Ball-Room Prompter (Boston, 1862), which include far more country dances than is typical of other dance manuals of the time period.  New England to this day retains a stronger country dance tradition, in the form of modern contra dance, than most other parts of the United States.

The Swedish Dances, Part Three: Characteristic Setting Figures

(Third in a series of posts discussing and analyzing the Swedish dances.  Links to the full series are at the end.) 

As mentioned in my introductory post in this series, there are distinct sequences of figures involving setting for dances suited only to a majority of one gender or the other and for dances suited to either an equal number of each or a majority.  In this post I'll take a look at the characteristic setting figures for each type of dance.

The Swedish Dances, Part Two: A Trio of Swedish Dances

(Second in a series of posts discussing and analyzing the Swedish dances.  The first post may be found here.)

To introduce some of the typical Swedish dance figures, here are a three simple thirty-two-bar figure combinations, as given by Chivers in his various manuals, which are a nice mix of standard country dance figures with ones that are particularly characteristic of Swedish dances.  For information about the specific sources of these dances, please see the introductory post in this series.

Gothic Ancestry: A Country Dance Gallopade

• Era: 1830s, England

A year or so ago I published a discussion and reconstruction of the 1862 country dance gallopade known as The Gothic Dance and mentioned that there was a very similar dance in London dancing master J. S. Pollock's c1830 manual, A Companion to La Terpsichore Moderne (Second Edition).  I've taught this dance at the few 1830s events I've had an opportunity to run, but have not previously published a reconstruction.

The original instructions for the dance, one of a pair of country dance gallopades with numbers but no titles, are as follows:

No. 2.     (4 parts) 

    All advance, retire, and cross over, changing places with partners -- advance, retire, and cross over back again -- first and second couples right and left -- first couple gallopade down the middle to the bottom of the dance, and remain at the bottom.

The formation is a long line of couples, gentlemen on one side (with their left side toward the top of the set, or orchestra) and ladies on the other, in two facing lines.  While not specified, I'd have the dancers take hands along those lines.  The reconstruction is fairly straightforward:

4b    All advance and retire in lines
4b    All cross over, passing right shoulders and turning to the right to form facing lines again
8b    Repeat all of the above to original places
8b    First two couples right and left
8b    First couple gallopade down the center to the end, remaining there

(repeat until all couples have gone down the dance)

The similarity to the Gothic Dance as well as to the traditional English Galopede, which this appears to be an early version of, is obvious in the advance/retire/cross over pattern and final gallopade, though the Gothic Dance is far more creative in its figures.  This dance is simple and rather sedate by comparison!

The Swedish Dances, Part One: Introduction

(First in a series of posts discussing and analyzing the Swedish dances.)

I’ve recently spent some time focusing on a trio of early sources for the unusual form of country dance known as “Swedish Dances,” which originated in the very late 1810s or early 1820s and after their early burst of popularity continued to turn up occasionally in dance manuals throughout the nineteenth century.  Their distinguishing feature is that instead of the usual long column of couples, the dancers form a column of trios with either one lady between two gentlemen, one gentleman between two ladies, or a mixture of the two.  The Swedish dances were created in the wake of the quadrille’s introduction into the London ballroom in the mid-1810s, which spurred a great deal of choreographic innovation as dancing masters adopted figures and formations from the quadrille and merged them into the old-fashioned country dances, which had become increasingly formulaic.  Along with the Swedish dances, this burst of creativity resulted in, most notably, the Spanish dances, Mescolanzes, and Circassian circles. 

Highland Reel (country dance figure)

    •    Era: 1840s-1890s

While researching nineteenth-century Scottish reels, I was surprised to come across a dance labeled “Highland Reel” that was not the usual sort of Highland Reel, a simple mix of setting and heying for three or four dancers, but rather two slightly different versions of a progressive longways dance for trios of one lady between two gentlemen, formed as in the illustration at left (click to enlarge), taken from Elias Howe’s American Dancing Master and Ball-Room Prompter (Boston, 1862). 

Ironically, I have only one, very late, Scottish source for the dance; most of the sources I’ve found it in are actually American!  One version made its way all the way to Australia and is found in an 1875 manual from that country.  That version, with the dancers’ genders reversed to one gentleman between two ladies, is still extant in the modern Scottish Country Dance community, where it may be found in the Royal Scottish Country Dance Society's Book 13.

The Sultan Polka (a polka contra dance)

Here's an easy mid-nineteenth century American contra dance well-suited to a Civil War-era ball.  I haven't looked extensively, but the only sources I seem to have it in are two manuals attributed to Elias Howe: Howe's Complete Ballroom Handbook (Boston, 1858) and American Dancing Master and Ball-Room Prompter (Boston, 1862).

The dance is given as part of a list of "polka contra dances", and the instructions are identical in both:

First lady followed by first gentleman (with arms akimbo) polka down the centre and up the outside to place--first gentleman down the centre followed by first lady, up the outside to place--first couple down the centre, back and cast off--right and left.

My reconstruction:

8b    First lady polkas down center and up outside on gents' side to place, followed by first gent
8b    First gent polkas down center and up outside on ladies' side to place, followed by first lady
8b    First couple down the center, turn individually & back, cast off to second place
8b    Rights and lefts

The gentleman at least has his arms "akimbo", meaning hands on hips, palms outward.  The lady might as well, or be holding her skirt lightly with her fingertips.

Howe suggests that the dance could end with "all Polk round the Hall" -- break the sets and all couple polka until the end of the music.

The Gothic Dance

• Era: 1860s, America (New England)

The Gothic Dance seems at first glance to be an oddity among mid-century dances, appearing in only one manual that I have ever found, and unusual in format within the lengthy collection of contra dances in Elias Howe’s American Dancing Master and Ball-Room Prompter (Boston, 1862).  The dance was first reconstructed by my late mentor and friend, Patri Pugliese, whose reconstruction appears online in the companion dance notes to the CD The Civil War Ballroom.  The dance is a particularly easy one, energetic and fun for beginners and experienced dancers alike, and thus a good choice for balls with a large percentage of new dancers.

What did Regency-era dancers dance?

I combine the two as a category because people who are interested in the one are often interested in the other, but what was danced by Jane Austen (1775-1817) and what was danced during the English Regency era (1811-1820) are actually questions with slightly different answers.  Austen's dancing days were more of the late 18th century, and the Regency era was a time of rapid change in social dance, mostly emanating from Paris and London.  Austen would have missed out on much of this by being country gentry and by her death just as things were starting to get really interesting dancewise.

Having addressed dance in Jane Austen's lifetime in my previous post, which I recommend reading first for background, let me now talk a little bit about the 1810s.  What did they dance during the Regency era?  Around 1810, people probably weren't doing much that was different from the previous two or three decades: country dances and reels, with a cotillion perhaps still making an appearance now and then, and occasionally an oddity like the Boulanger, Sir Roger de Coverley, or (in Scotland) the Bumpkin.  But change was coming.  The upper classes and the residents of London would soon find themselves with a much wider set of options.

What Did Jane Austen Dance?

Since early 19th century ("Regency") dance is one of my particular specialties, I get many questions that boil down to either "what did Jane Austen dance?" or "did Jane Austen dance _____?"  So let's see what I can do for a general answer. 

I can divide things loosely into three categories: what we know she danced, what she might have danced, and what she didn't dance.

A Regency "Sir Roger de Coverley"

In honor of the season...

In his Complete System of English Country Dancing, published circa 1815, Regency-era dancing master Thomas Wilson proclaimed of the dance "Sir Roger De Coverley" that it was

composed expressly for a finishing Country Dance, about 100 years ago, and derived its name from Addison's Sir Roger De Coverley; so frequently mentioned by him in his popular Essays in the Spectator, and is the only whole Dance given in this System. The Figures of which it is composed being permanent and unalterable, and thereby differing in its construction from all other Country Dances.

and explained its use as the final dance of the evening (or early morning, given the length of balls of the era):

At all Balls properly regulated, this Dance should be the finishing one, as it is calculated from the sociality of its construction, to promote the good humour of the company, and causing them to separate in evincing a pleasing satisfaction with each other.

Light Dragoon

• Era: 1850s-1860s America

"Light Dragoon" is an easy mid-19th century American country (contra) dance, one of a lengthy list of contra/country dances given in two manuals attributed to Elias Howe.  In one of the two, it is cryptically labeled "Pinkerton;" possibly this is the name of the choreographer of the dance.  It is performed in a longways set of any length, though four to six couples is easiest.  All couples are "proper," with the men standing to the left of their partners when all are facing the top of the room.

The Regency-Era Pas de Basque

In his 1818 dance manual, The Quadrille and Cotillion Panorama, Thomas Wilson provides a list of the ten essential steps for quadrilles (image at left from the second edition, 1822).  The last of these is the "PAS DE BASQUÉ."  Almack's orchestra leader James Paine (or his ghostwriter), in Paine of Almack's Quadrilles, Set I (n.d., probably late 1810s), agrees that:

"Every Lady and Gentleman desirous of Dancing Quadrilles should be Acquainted with the following Steps, which are but few in Quantity and Extremely facile in their performance."

Last on the list given is "Pas des Basques et Emboité en àrriere." 

"A very old established Figure" -- Reconstructing "Lead outsides"

In the comment thread on an earlier Kickery post, How Do You Cast Off?, Ukrainian reader Oleksiy asked whether I reconstructed the country dance figure, "lead outsides."  I haven't used this figure in my own teaching because I've been hesitant to establish a definitive reconstruction in the absence of definitive source material.  But I've since revisited the figure and more thoroughly reviewed my sources and am now ready to offer a reconstruction which I consider to be fairly solid.

Holly Berry

• Era: late 1850s onward

“Mrs. Henderson has introduced this dance in compliance with the request of pupils and friends, who were at a loss for a cheerful country dance in which all might join without previous instruction in the fashionable dances.”

Holly Berry is a short set dance apparently composed by London dance teacher Mrs. Nicholas Henderson in the 1850s.  Its first known appearance is in the second edition of her Etiquette for Dancing, published in the 1850s.  The dance was also included in Elias Howe's American dancing master and ball-room prompter, published in Boston in 1862, which appears on the Library of Congress website here.  Howe's manual, unusually, includes a specific credit to Mrs. Henderson.

The dance is reminiscent of the galopade country dances of the 1830s and was perhaps seen as too old-fashioned in style by the mid-19th century.  It does not appear to have been commonly reprinted and probably was not wildly popular.  But it makes an interesting change of pace in a Victorian or American Civil War-era reenactment ballroom.

Pop Goes the Weasel

• Era: 1850s through early 1900s, England and America

No, it isn't just a children's rhyme!  The tune is older, but in the mid-nineteenth century a rather silly dance began appearing both on sheet music and in dance manuals.  It seems to have been hugely popular, which reminds me that (1) dancing was a pastime for young adults and (2) most nineteenth-century punch recipes involved significant amounts of alcohol.

Rustic Reel

• Era: mid-19th century America

The Rustic Reel is a simple contra dance found in mid-19th century American manuals, primarily during the Civil War era of the1860s, though it appears as early as 1841 and as late as the 1880s.  Some sources note that it is particularly well suited to being the last dance in an evening:

...this dance is continued until the master of the ceremonies thinks it has been gone equally through, and generally finishes the evening's festivity, and ought not to be used at any other time.
        --- The ball-room instructer [sic], 1841.

Note that the lines of three make it awkward to put on a dance card, since each dancer needs two partners.

Any lively twenty-four bar piece of music can be used; one source specifies 6/8 time, while another suggests a Scotch reel tune.  The dance is formed by lines of three (a gentleman between two ladies) facing three down the room or in a circle, as in the diagram below.  All dancers commence at the same time.

How Do You Cast Off?

Trick question, right?  Everyone who does any form of country dancing knows how to cast off.  But if it were that simple, I wouldn't be writing about it.  Not only did country dances as a whole evolve over time, individual figures also underwent some changes.

Country Dances, Two by Two

In the comments to a previous post of mine on the realities of Austen-era country dancing, alison[sic] asked about a scene in Pride and Prejudice:

...when describing the ball to Mr Bennet, Mrs Bennet refers to the dances by what I assumed were the time signatures: "Then the two third he danced with Miss King, and the two fourth with Maria Lucas, and the two fifths with Jane again, and the two sixth with Lizzy, and the Boulanger---"  Or does this indicate some sort of dance configuration?

The short answer is that this is the way dances were organized at that time: with each partner, you would perform two dances in series before taking a rest and changing partners.  Thomas Wilson, a noted dancing master (and prolific author) in London during the first quarter of the 19th century, wrote that:

"When the Ball commences, the company should not leave their places, or rest, till after the second Dance.  Should the sets be short, they may Dance three Dances before they rest." 
-- A Companion to the Ball Room, 1816

Real Regency Dancers Don't Turn Single: Ten Tips for Judging Authenticity

As a specialist in early 19th century dance, I regularly get asked what I think of the dancing in the various films of Jane Austen's novels and how to tell if the dancing in the films or being taught by someone or other is authentic to the Regency era (1810-1820).  Sadly, the answer is usually "no."  Here's a little checklist you can use to judge for yourself, either when watching a film or listening to someone teach "just like it was in the Regency" or "the same way Jane Austen danced":

How Many Times Do We Play That Tune?

One of those questions I get asked all the time by musicians and others is "how many times through the tune for this dance?"  The reference is to progressive longways country dances, which were the dominant social dance form in Europe and America from the mid-17th century through the early 19th century and are still enjoying widespread popularity in various living tradition and revival forms.

Modern English country dance and contra practice is for all couples to start the dance simultaneously, and the modern answer to the repeats question would be as many times as needed for everyone to enjoy the dance and fewer times than it would take for people to get bored.  Modern Scottish (RSCDS) practice differs in that their dances are generally performed in short sets and have a fixed number of repeats.  But if you truly wish to perform country dances in the historical style, it's a bit more complex!