Capering & Kickery

How to Harvard

This post is for Antonia, a superb 19th-century reenactor and dancer who has just completed her freshman year at that Ivy League school up in Boston.  Congratulations from a Yalie!

• Era: 1880s-1890s (America)
• Dances: Schottische, Polka, Galop

I have a strong but unsupported suspicion that the dance variation called the Harvard is some sort of Victorian joke playing off the turn-of-the-century dance known as the Boston.  The characteristic step is a long slide forward or backward along the line of dance, similar to the step of the Boston, combined with a sequence of three measures of waltz-galop.

The Harvard was described by prominent late 19th-century dancing master M.B. Gilbert in his collection of couple dances, Round Dancing (Portland, Maine, 1890) as a variation for the schottische, though the timing is more that of a polka or galop.  It is attributed by Gilbert to the late Professor Vegas of New Orleans.

La Troïka

Many people confuse the Polka russe with the Troïka.  I will say all the same that, at balls, when the Troïka is announced, almost everyone dances the Polka russe.  If the rhythm of the two dances is the same, the manner of executing them differs, in the sense that the one is danced by two people and the other by three...the word Troïka means three, which should prevent all confusion.
            -- Professor Barthélemy Bottallo, Paris, c1910-12 (my translation)

In the late 1890s and early 1910s a trio of French dancing masters included descriptions of the Troïka, a simple polka sequence for three, in their works on modern social dance.  This Parisian Troïka is not the same as the Russian folk dance of the same name, though obviously inspired by it, and the choreographic link with the Polka Russe further emphasizes the connection.  I have previously discussed the many variations of the Polka Russe found in late 19th and early 20th century dance manuals, but for those who wish to actually dance the Troïka, I will give a quick summary of that dance.

Polka Russe

The Polka russe is a dance much appreciated by good dancers; it is of great simplicity while appearing very complicated.
            -- Professor Barthélemy Bottallo, Paris, c1910-12 (my translation)

I kept tripping over descriptions of the Polka Russe in various sources while researching something else, so I finally decided to pull together all eight descriptions in a little overview.  This proved an interesting demonstration of the lack of standardization in nineteenth-century dance: while the sequences given by different authors (or sometimes by the same author) are clearly related, there are enough clear incompatibilities among the various descriptions that there is no way to determine a definitive version.

While its origins are unclear, the sources I have range from late 1880s New York to the Paris of the first decade of the 20th century, though the American and French versions differ significantly in dance position and modestly in step-sequence.

The Parisian form of the Polka Russe incorporates the earlier "heel and toe" or "Bohemian" polka, which is included in some of the descriptions under the name "polka piquée," while the two versions from New York are very similar to a two-step sequence developed by William Lamb in England in the late 1890s, Tres Chic, and Lamb's similar two-step/schottische hybrid, Tantivy, as well as the popular Washington Post (done to the Sousa tune of the same name), which has similar positioning and arm movements to the Parisian form of the Polka Russe.