Capering & Kickery

The Newport

A new waltz or redowa variation pops up in a few of the manuals of the very late nineteenth century.  Presumably named after the wealthy resort town, the Newport appears in slightly different versions in different manuals, but the common element appears to be a series of quick sliding steps.

The Invention of the York?

A couple of months ago I described the late 19th-century waltz-time move known as the York, which incorporated mazurka-style heel-clicks and was considered a variation of the polka mazurka.  At the time, the earliest source I had located was M.B. Gilbert's Round Dancing, published in 1890, where the dance was included "by permission of E.W. Masters," possibly its creator.  An interesting article from The New York Times, dated September 9, 1885, both brings the date of the dance back a few years and provides an amusing anecdote about the dance's possible origin.

The Yale University York

• Era: 1890s-very early 1900s

The Yale University York is one of those dance variations that probably had a short to nonexistent life outside the studio of its creator and a few other dancing masters.  Unlike the original York (described here), it seems to appear only in two sources: Melvin Gilbert's Round Dancing (Portland, Maine, 1890) and George Washington Lopp's, La Danse (Paris, 1903), much of which is merely a direct translation of Gilbert.  Both Gilbert and Lopp attribute it to A.M. Loomis.  Despite its obscurity and probable lack of popularity in its own time, I am devoting a post to it primarily because as a Yale alumna I am charmed whenever anyone names a dance after my alma mater.

The York

• Era: 1890s-very early 1900s

The York is a waltz variation which appeared in several American dance manuals in the last decade of the 19th century.  The earliest reference I have located is in Melvin Gilbert's Round Dancing (Portland, Maine, 1890), where he includes it "by permission of E.W. Masters," possibly the creator.  George Washington Lopp, who reprinted much of Gilbert in La Danse (Paris, 1903) directly attributes it to Masters. 

Unlike many of the variations included in Gilbert, the York seems to have enjoyed some minor success.  Allen Dodworth did not include it in the first (1885) edition of his substantial tome, Dancing, but it appears in the 1900 edition in an appendix of recently developed dances which appear to be have been copied in large part from Marguerite Wilson's Dancing (Philadelphia, 1899).  Wilson's fellow Philadelphian, dancing master Albert Newman, included it as "Yorke (Mazurka)" in his 1903 A Complete Practical Guide to Modern Society Dancing, and Wisconsin dancing master A.C. Wirth has "The Yorke" in his 1902 Complete Quadrille Call Book and Dancing Master.  It also appears with identical language to Wirth's in D.F. Jay's  A.B.C. Guide to Ballroom Dancing, published in Chicago around 1900, and M.I. Quick's Complete Guide to Dancing, also Chicago, 1903.  All three midwestern manuals were probably plagiarized from a common source.

The Mazourka Valse, commonly called the Cellarius Valse

• Era: 1840s-1870s

La valse mazurka, dite la Cellarius.  The Waltze-Mazurka, called the Cellarius.  The Mazourka Valse, commonly called the Cellarius Valse. La Cellarius.  The dance is described repeatedly and variously in dance manuals from the 1840s through the 1870s, generally referred to by the name of its composer, famed Parisian dancing master Henri Cellarius.

The mazurka proper was brought from Eastern Europe to the fashionable ballrooms of Paris and London in the early decades of the nineteenth century.  The original form of the mazurka was that of an improvised quadrille, with one gentleman in the set calling the figures on the spot and the other couples following his lead.  The difficulty of the steps combined with that of finding enough skilled dancers to make up a set was seen as overwhelming.  One popular solution was pre-choreographed quadrilles, which several dancing masters composed, but as London dance teacher Mrs. Nicholas Henderson noted in her early 1850s dance manual:

...a Quadrille requiring eight persons or four couples to dance it, and the figures of the Mazourka being extremely intricate and too difficult for private parties, the idea suggested itself to M. Cellarius, of Paris, to change the form of the dance, and convert the Quadrille into a Valse, preserving the original step.  This was no sooner done than it became the fureur of the Parisian circles, and it received the name of the Cellarius Valse, in compliment to the composer, although the proper name is the Mazourka Valse, in contradistinction to the Mazourka Quadrille.