Capering & Kickery

Doin' the Lambeth Walk, 1938

The Lambeth Walk was the first of the "romping" sequence dances that became popular in England between the first and second World Wars.  Referring to a particular street in the Lambeth section of London, the song and dance number originated in the successful 1937 musical Me and My Girl.  When Noel Gay's music was published with dance instructions included, a fad was born which remains a living tradition today.  The dance turns up in all sorts of odd places, and the song is still traditional in the Pearly community of charitable organizations.  A quick search on the term "Lambeth walk" will turn up plenty of metaphorical usages along with references to the street, which still exists, though mostly rebuilt after being bombed in during World War II.

The musical itself has been revived several times, though the Broadway choreography of the Lambeth Walk scene in the 1980s revival was only loosely inspired by the original dance.  Follow that link for the wonderful performance by Robert Lindsay and Maryann Plunkett, and to get a a feel for the tune.

A Waltz Minuet

In the late nineteenth century, short dance sequences came into vogue, combining couple dancing with simple figures.  Among these were more than one attempt to merge a romanticized version of the eighteenth-century minuet with the waltz.  These "waltz minuets" bore no particular resemblance to their minuet namesakes, lacking the "Z" pattern of the true minuet or any real attempt at proper steps. 

In 1890, M.B. Gilbert published in his Round Dancing (Portland, Maine, 1890) a waltz minuet choreography consisting of a sixteen-bar "minuet" pattern alternating with sixteen bars of waltz.  The sequence is given below.  The first section is quite slow, with only one step or movement per bar of music.  The dancers start with right hands joined and both begin with the right foot.

1b    Slide right foot foward
1b    Close left foot to third position behind, bending the knees
1b    Slide left foot backward
1b    Close right foot to left in third position, bending the knees
2b    Walk around each other two steps (right, left)
2b    Bring feet together, drop hands, and bow/courtesy to partner over both measures
8b    Repeat all of the above joining left hands and beginning with the left foot
16b  Take closed position and waltz

Total: 32 bars of waltz music; repeat dance as needed to fill out music.

The first four bars are noted by Gilbert as being the "Pas minuet," though no baroque dancer would so label them.  The bringing of the feet together is not clearly spelled out, but it would make sense to simply close up the right foot to the left.  The waltz would be that described by Gilbert, the lively turning "leap-slide-cut" of the late nineteenth century.

A lovely little video of dancers Thomas Baird and Cheryl Stafford performing Elizabeth Aldrich's reconstruction of this waltz minuet may be viewed courtesy of the Library of Congress here.

The Palais Glide

Between the two World Wars a fad for easy and often silly "romping" sequence dances swept Britain.  The Lambeth Walk is the best known of these, but many others survive.  Among them is the Palais Glide, which can be done by a couple or by an entire line of dancers side-by-side in a line, arms around each others' waists.  It is a living tradition in the British isles, having been danced continuously since the 1930s, and survives today as a ceilidh and party dance as well as being performed by World War II reenactors.

Most secondary sources consider the Lambeth Walk (1937) the first of the romping sequence dances and date the Palais Glide to 1938, but one of my sheet music sources for it is actually dated 1935.  This might be a misprint, or it might be that it took a few years to catch on or that it was not popularly accepted until after the Lambeth Walk.

The dance requires eight bars of 4/4 music and consists of a thrice-repeated short grapevine sequences in a slow-quick-quick-slow rhythm followed by a series of forward steps.  In 2001, Syd Bruce recalled dancing it during World War II:

I can remember as a teenager during the war, going to socials and dances in the school, attended by soldiers and land girls billeted in the village and sometimes sailors from Point Clear, which were very popular.  Seeing the Palais Glide, Waltz etc and even the Highland Fling performed in army boots was something to behold!

The Rye Waltz

• Era: 1890s-1900s America (Midwest/West)

The Rye Waltz is a simple sequence dance dating to the late 19th century and done to a special arrangement of the tune "Coming Through the Rye" which alternates between duple (schottische or two-step) and triple (waltz) time.  The oldest description I have found is in E.H. Kopp's The American Prompter and Guide to Etiquette, which was published by the John Church Company, operating in Cincinnati, New York, and Chicago, in 1896.  Kopp called himself a "compiler" rather than an author, and attributes many of the dances in his book to other dancing masters, often lifting his text directly from their works.  Kopp attributed the Rye Waltz to A.C. Wirth, and his description is virtually identical to that found in Wirth's  Complete Quadrille Call Book and Dancing Master, published in Chicago in 1902 and reprinted in 1903.

Andrew Charles Wirth (right) taught dance in the Milwaukee area, and a contemporary biographical entry in the 1897 Men of Progress: Wisconsin (pages 167 & 168) states that he had written a book on dancing, so it is likely that the 1902 book is either a second work or a later edition of an older original.  Wirth and Kopp's books are among several of the 1890s and early 1900s from both America and England containing language which has clearly been copied directly from one to another, though it is not clear which was the original source and none other than Kopp and Wirth include the Rye Waltz.  In the absence of more definitive evidence, it is reasonable to consider Wirth the choreographer of the dance.