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.

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.

Star Schottische

One of the myriad minor schottische variations described in M.B. Gilbert's Round Dancing (1890), is notable as the earliest appearance I've noticed of what has become the standard style for the first part of modern folk schottische: three running steps forward in "military position" (as described in my previous post, "À la Militaire") rather than the step-close-step of the nineteenth century dance.

Gilbert attributes the Star Schottische to W.F. Mittman.

The steps below are described for the gentleman; the lady dances on the opposite foot.

First Part (two bars of four beats each)
(take military position, side by side)
1b    Three running steps forward, left-right-left, hop on the left foot
1b    Repeat, starting with right foot

Second Part (two bars of four beats each)
(close into a normal ballroom hold)
2b    Waltz galop (two complete turns)

Gilbert does not describe what the free foot does during the hops in the first part; it could be extended into a raised fourth position forward or simply tucked next to the hopping foot. 

At the end of the first part the gentleman must move in front of the lady quickly in order to leap straight backward along the line of dance in the waltz galop.  (See my previous description of the waltz galop for how to perform this step.)

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.

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.

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.

Le Triangle

Subtitled Nouveau Quadrille, the Triangle is not actually a quadrille in the literal sense of a dance involving facing couples.  It was composed by F. Paul and published in his manual, Le Cotillon, in Paris in 1877 and is danced by three couples rather than four, arranged in the form of a triangle.  Paul composed it to address the difficulty of finding four couples for the quadrille croisé of the time.  He adds modestly that he does not intend to impose it upon dancers, but gives the description only as a proposal.  I have never seen the Triangle in any other source; it may never have been danced outside of Paul's immediate circles.

Late Victorian Waltz Variations: The Bowdoin

This is the final post in this month's little series of easy and useful late nineteenth century waltz variations from M.B. Gilbert's 1890 manual, Round Dancing.  The first three posts in the series may be found here, here, and here.

Gilbert notes of the Bowdoin that he "applied these movements to the Waltz during the seasons of 1888-89, and found the application very pleasing."

Once again, this variation will work either leaping or simply gliding the waltz steps, with my preference being for the smoother transitions allowed by the gliding version.

Late Victorian Waltz Variations: Le Metropole

Returning once again to my short series on some of the more useful waltz variations published by M.B. Gilbert in his 1890 manual, Round Dancing, here's a third simple variation for the late nineteenth century waltz.  The first and second posts in the series may be found here and here.

Le Metropole uses the same simple sliding and waltzing steps of the Gavotte Glide but mixes them in a different way.  Gilbert attributes it to H. Fletcher Rivers.

Like the Gavotte Glide, this variation will work either leaping or simply gliding.  And as with the Gavotte Glide, its gliding feel makes me lean toward the latter for the sake of smoother transitions.

Dance Card: Las Vegas Benefit Ball, 1894

The last dance card I posted having been well received, here's another one from my collection.  This one is from a benefit ball held in Las Vegas on April 24, 1894, with music by the East Las Vegas Military Band "Assisted by "Prof. J.A. Hand's Full Orchestra." 

The card is badly stained, but the lovely cover image of a putto playing a guitar to a group of birds is still charming.  The cord for the pencil is still attached, though discolored.  The edges are pinked.  The card has not been used, though one dance ("Comus Waltz") has been crossed out and "Waltz" written in, presumably after a last-minute program change.  The ball committee -- all men -- is listed on the back cover.

(click to enlarge the images)

Late Victorian Waltz Variations: Gavotte Glide

This is the second in my short series on some of the more useful waltz variations published by M.B. Gilbert in his 1890 manual, Round Dancing. The first post in the series may be found here.

Of all of the variations in Gilbert, this simple mix of sliding steps and waltz turns is probably the easiest and the one I use most frequently in teaching new dancers.  Gilbert attributes it to "Constantine Carpenter, Son, and Charles C. Martel."

As with the Diagonal Waltz, this variation will work either leaping or simply gliding, though its gliding feel makes me lean toward the latter for smoother transitions within the variation.

Late Victorian Waltz Variations: Diagonal Waltz

By the end of the nineteenth century, American dancing masters such as M.B. Gilbert were coming up with long lists of little waltz variations of dubious utility and doubtful popularity.  Many of these are minor variations on a few simple themes, often interpolating sideways slides and chassé steps between measures of waltz.  I'm going to do a short series on some of the more useful and leadable of these variations this month, all taken from the pages of Gilbert's immense manual, Round Dancing, published in Maine in 1890 and incorporating many variations from the 1870s and 1880s.  Calling them "Victorian" is a bit of misnomer, since these are essentially American variations.

The Diagonal Waltz does not actually involve anything other than the normal step of the "new" waltz (step-side-close pattern) of the late nineteenth century.  It is really just a sequence incorporating natural and reverse turns in such a way as to never make a complete turn in either direction.  This is so basic a waltz skill that similar sequences are incorporated into most twentieth century versions of the box-step or Viennese waltz as well.

Gilbert considers a leaping version of the waltz (leaping-side-cut) to be the basic, but the Diagonal Waltz will work either leaping or simply gliding.

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.

Dance Card: Improved Order of Red Men, 1881

I am not a big collector of dance cards, but occasionally I buy one or get given one as a gift.  I plan to post them occasionally as examples of the order of dances at actual balls of their eras. 

This dance card, for a "Public Installation" of the Improved Order of Red Men, is dated January 6, 1881, and is divided between the a ceremony for a fraternal order and the following ball.  (Click to enlarge the front cover image at left.)

The Improved Order of Red Men is still in existence and claims a history going back as far as 1765 and a descent from the Sons of Liberty who perpetrated, in Mohawk disguise, the Boston Tea Party in 1773.  The current name dates from 1834.  Details of the order's history may be found on its website.  Two of the three "tribes" (local organizations) listed seem still to be in existence, though perhaps not in the same cities: Red Cloud (Indianapolis) and Minnewa (Philadelphia).  Polmete seems to have vanished.

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, Figure 4

Moving right along with the Royal Lancers quadrille for sixteen: the fourth figure is the first figure to really take full advantage of the large-square format, with each repetition bringing the active couples (heads or sides) exactly halfway around the square to the diagonally opposite position.  In this, it has more in common with the fourth figure of Allen Dodworth's later New York Lancers (here) than with that the standard Lancers, a version of which is described in the same post.

The formation for the Royal Lancers is shown in the first post in this series, here; reference to that diagram will be useful in sorting out the perambulations of the various couples.

The Royal Lancers, Figure 3

Proceeding through the Royal Lancers quadrille for sixteen, the third figure incorporates choreographic adaptations to the larger square similar to those made in the first two figures.  Once again, moves that are usually done by the head or side couples together are divided, but this time in a way which harks back to the oldest form of the Lancers, with the figures led in turn by each lady and her opposite.  The ladies chain for four couples is then modified into four ladies chains for two couples each, to suit the large-square formation.

A direct comparison with the third figure of the original Lancers may be made via my post on the third figure of the New York Lancers, here.  The formation for the Royal Lancers is shown in the first post in this series, here.

The Royal Lancers, Figure 2

Continuing on from my previous post covering the first figure of the Royal Lancers quadrille for sixteen, here is the second figure.  Once again, moves that are usually done by the head or side couples together are divided so that the first couples move during the first time through, the second couples during the second, and so forth.  A more substantial alteration is that rather than the side couples (in the first two repetitions) dividing to form lines of four at the heads and those lines going forward and back followed by a two-hand turn to places, the Royal Lancers takes advantage of the ready-made lines of four along each side of the set and allows both the head and side lines to advance and retire sequentially, skipping the two-hand turn to places entirely.

Comparison with the second figure of the original Lancers may be made via my post on the second figure of the New York Lancers, here.

The Royal Lancers, Figure 1

Era: American, 1860s onward

There are several "sixteen Lancers" quadrilles, written for eight couples rather than four, many of which adopt similar solutions in adapting the figures to twice as many couples.  The Royal Lancers, or Horse Guards, is a version that I have found in only two sources: Thomas Hillgrove's 1863 A Complete Practical Guide to the Art of Dancing and Professor M.J. Koncen's 1883 Quadrille Call Book and Ball Room Guide.  The diagram at the left (click to enlarge), taken from Hillgrove, shows the arrangement of couples for the Royal Lancers.  Note that the odd-numbered couples on each side are to the right of the even-numbered ones.  Koncen provides a similar diagram but misnumbers two of the couples.

The figures of the Royal Lancers are only minor variations on the standard Lancers ones, but the multiplier effect of doing the figures with twice as many couples makes even the simplest figures substantially more interesting.  For the most part, the Royal Lancers may be danced to any Lancers music, but note that there are both 20-bar and 24-bar versions of Figure 4 in the standard Lancers repertoire, and the Royal Lancers requires the longer music.

A Promiscuous Figure: The Sociable

"This is a very lively figure, as it keeps all the couples occupied and introduces a continual change of partners." 

    -- Dick's Quadrille Call-Book and Ball-Room Prompter, New York, 1878.

I've posted occasionally about promiscuous figures (Basket and Star, Gavotte and Minuet, Flirtation), single quadrille figures which may be substituted for one of the figures of the first set of quadrilles to provide more variety.  Another of these, which dates at least to 1848, was known variously as "The Sociable," "Quadrille Sociable," or "Social Quadrille."  Its distinctive feature was repeated partner changes.  As noted above, it also had the virtue of having very little waiting out for any of the couples.  While Charles Durang, writing in Philadelphia in 1856, sniffed at it as one of the "good, but now unfashionable" old figures, it seems to have remained popular right through the middle of the nineteenth century and is even included in a few manuals appearing into the late 19th and very early 20th century.

Different dancing masters disagreed about which figure of the first set this or other promiscuous figures may be substituted for.  One 1878 manual stated that substitution is done for the second or fifth figure, while an 1889 one is equally clear that the third and fourth figures are the ones to replace.  My personal opinion is that the Sociable is stylistically most like a fifth figure.

Thomas Hillgrove, writing in 1857, seems to have been the first to build an entire quadrille around the Sociable, using it as figure one in a traditional five-figure set called the "Quadrille Sociable."  Six years later, he includes it in a later manual as "Social Quadrille No. 1."  A similar five-figure quadrille is included in a manual attributed to Elias Howe and published in 1862.  Unfortunately, the five-figure version is not particularly interesting, just one of many interchangeable rearrangements of generic quadrille figures.  This may explain why it doesn't seem to have been picked up by many other authors. 

The Sociable by itself, however, is a fun little figure, easy to teach and fun to do.  Here's the basic version:

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 New York Lancers, Figure 5

This is the fifth and final post in a series covering the individual figures of Allen Dodworth's New York Lancers, published in Dancing and its relations to education and social life in 1885, and comparing them side-by-side with the figures of Dodworth's standard Lancers.  The earlier posts in the series, covering figures one through four, may be found here, here, here, and here.

The New York Lancers, Figure 4

This is the fourth post a series covering the individual figures of Allen Dodworth's New York Lancers, published in Dancing and its relations to education and social life in 1885, and comparing them side-by-side with the figures of Dodworth's standard Lancers.  The earlier posts in the series may be found here, here, and here.

The New York Lancers, Figure 3

This is the third post in a series covering the individual figures of Allen Dodworth's New York Lancers, published in Dancing and its relations to education and social life in 1885, and comparing them side-by-side with the figures of Dodworth's standard Lancers.  The first post in the series, with some background and a discussion of Figure 1, may be found here.  Figure 2 may be found here.

The New York Lancers, Figure 2

This is the second post in my little series covering the individual figures of Allen Dodworth's New York Lancers, published in Dancing and its relations to education and social life in 1885, and comparing them side-by-side with the figures of Dodworth's standard Lancers.  The first post in the series, with some background and a discussion of Figure 1, may be found here.

The New York Lancers, Figure 1

I recently had the opportunity to reconstruct and teach a Lancers (Quadrille) variant created by New York dancing master Allen Dodworth and published in his lengthy Dancing and its relations to education and social life in 1885 as "Dodworth's New York Lancers."

The figures are easy ones which make a pleasant change of pace for those accustomed to dancing the popular standard Lancers figures or their Saratoga Lancers variant.  They are also the same length as those of the standard Lancers, though sometimes fewer repeats are needed, so they can be used with many existing Lancers recordings.  I thought it would thus be interesting to take a look at the New York Lancers figure by figure and side by side with the usual figures to see exactly how Dodworth went about creating his version. 

The Polish Galop

• Era: 1880s-early 1900s, New England & Paris

The so-called Polish Galop, which is neither Polish nor necessarily a galop, is one of those odd little variations that was the creation of a single dancing master and was not generally taken up by others.  It is not Polish in origin; the name comes from the heel-clicking move it incorporates, which is typical of Polish dances such as the mazurka.  Its creator, Maine dancing master and author M.B. Gilbert, explains in Round Dancing, published in 1890, that

The movements of this dance were arranged by me for special use in children's classes, and I found the combination a pleasant innovation.

I also found it pleasant; it's actually slightly less "busy" than a regular galop.  And its ambiguity on where the turn (if any) happens is interestingly similar to that of the racket.

Schottische à Pas Sauté

By the last quarter of the nineteenth century, as the standard Victorian couple dances were becoming somewhat stale, there was a flurry of innovation among dancing masters attempting to come up with new variations, most of which do not appear to have caught on widely.  In M.B. Gilbert's 1890 tome, Round Dancing, he describes a variation, the Schottische à Pas Sauté, which resembles the old "doubling" of the schottische parts (as described in my review of the early schottische) in consisting only of "step-hops" but employs the recently stylish "military position", as described in my previous post, "À la Militaire", rather than using the closed position of the earlier era throughout.  Gilbert footnotes this variation as the Hop Waltz, harking back to the jeté waltz of the Regency era.

Both the first and second parts of the Schottische à Pas Sauté consist entirely of step-hops.  The steps below are described for the gentleman; the lady dances on the opposite foot.

First Part (two bars of four beats each)
(take military position, side by side)
1. Step forward left
2. Hop on left extending right to fourth position forward
3. Step forward right
4. Hop on right extending left to fourth position forward

Repeat all of the above.

Second Part (two bars of four beats each)
(close into a normal ballroom hold)
1. Step left across line of dance (lady steps right along line of dance, between gent's feet)
2. Hop on left foot, tucking the right foot behind the left in third position raised, finishing a half-turn
3. Step right along line of dance, between lady's feet (lady steps left across line of dance)
4. Hop on right foot, tucking the left foot behind as before, to complete the turn

Repeat all of the above for a second complete turn.

The word "step" rather than "leap" is used throughout; perhaps leaping was considered unnecessary with so much hopping involved.

Late Nineteenth-Century Variations for the Five-Step Waltz

• Era: 1880s & 1890s America

Back in May, I described one of two versions of the mid-nineteenth century Five-Step Waltz and promised a later continuation looking at some of the variations that appeared in the last decades of the century.  Mr. Saracco's version of the dance, discussed in that earlier post, continued to appear in later American dance manuals: Allen Dodworth (New York, 1885), William DeGarmo (New York, 1892), M.B. Gilbert (Maine, 1890), C.H. Rivers (Brooklyn, c1885), Judson Sause (Chicago, 1889), Cartier (New York, 1882), Cartier & Baron (New York, 1879), Lucien Carpenter (Philadelphia, 1882), and M.J. Koncen (St. Louis, 1883).  Most of these manuals are compilations and offer no new information, but Dodworth, Gilbert, and DeGarmo were actual dancing masters, and the three of them offer a few simple variations on the original five-step waltz that may be useful to those recreating the dances of the 1880s and 1890s.

Le Klondike Two Step

Reading this morning's headlines about events in Alaska, it seems the moment to post this little French sequence dance, which can also be used to vary an early twentieth-century two-step.  I've found this sequence in only one source: La Danse, by [George] Washington Lopp, published in Paris in 1903 as part of a two-book compendium.  The smaller part (forty-five pages to the two hundred-plus of La Danse) of the compendium is a brief manual of etiquette and costume written by J. Chéron. 

Mr. Lopp seems to have been an interesting character, an American expatriate and former Chicago dancing master whose partnership in a Parisian musical conservatory went extremely sour, resulting in lawsuits, lockouts, and a "very tempestuous scene" with one of the patronesses of the conservatory, who insisted on performing a concerto she had composed.  Apparently the piece was so dreadful that the audience

was unable...to endure the entire infliction, and most of those present incontinently left after the first movement had been half finished.

While La Danse is dated 1903, I think it most likely that this dance dates to 1897 or 1898, the height of the Klondike Gold Rush.  Lopp attributes the dance to H.-N. Grant, whom Giraudet mentions in his list of dancing professors as being active in Buffalo, New York, in 1898.

Alternating the One- and Three-Slide Rackets

• Era: 1880s into very early 1900s

Combining the one-slide rackets and three-slide rackets previously described creates an interestingly varied dance which is referred to by the prominent late-nineteenth-century dancing master Melvin B. Gilbert simply as the Racket, with no further descriptor.  The unadorned term is used by other writers to refer to several different variations in both 2/4 and 3/4 time, however, leaving us with unwieldy labels such as Allen Dodworth's "Alternating the One Slide and Three Slide to Galop."

Whatever one may call it, the sequence is not difficult once both the one-slide and three-slide rackets have been mastered.  Conceptually, one simply alternates two bars of one with two bars of the other to build an eight-bar sequence.  For the one-slide racket, two bars will be moving to the left and right (in whichever order); for the three-slide racket, two bars means moving either to the left or to the right.  So sequences may be built as follows:

2b   three-slide to left
2b   one-slide to right, one-slide to left
2b   three-slide to right
2b   one-slide to left, one-slide to right

The sequence may be commenced at any of the two-bar moves given above, though since one generally leads off a sequence with the left foot either the first or last pair of bars are the logical starting points.  Broken down into steps (given for the gentleman; the lady dances opposite), the sequence in the order given above would be:

The Three-Slide Racket

• Era: 1880s into very early 1900s

The three-slide racket extends the two-bar repeat pattern of the one-slide racket previously described into a four-bar pattern which has a more galop-like feel and is somewhat easier to initiate.  It is described in the major dance late-nineteenth-century dance manuals of M.B. Gilbert and Allen Dodworth and in two minor compilation manuals, one of which (Cartier's Practical Illustrated Waltz Instructor) names it "The Wave."

The instructions below are for the gentleman; the lady dances opposite.  The dancers start in a normal late-nineteenth-century ballroom hold with joined hands angled forward at a diagonal along the line of dance.  Like the one-slide racket, the three-slide racket follows a zig-zag track along the line of dance; there is no turning involved.

The Galop Racket or One-Slide Racket

• Era: 1880s into very early 1900s

The galop racket or one-slide racket is the simplest of the various rackets and is described under  both names in different sources.  In one Parisian manual it is simply "La Raquette," though most other sources agree that "the" racket is a compound sequence mixing two different racket rhythms.  Prominent New England dancing master M.B. Gilbert explained it simply as "Pas de Basque sidewise" in 2/4 time.

The instructions below are for the gentleman; the lady dances opposite.  The dancers start in a normal late-nineteenth-century ballroom hold with joined hands angled forward at a diagonal along the line of dance.  The dance follows a zig-zag track along the line of dance; there is no turning involved.

Mr. Saracco's Five-Step Waltz

• Era: 1840s-1890s America

In the 1840s, two separate dances known as the "Five-Step Waltz," "Cinq Temps Valse," or "Valse à Cinq Temps" arose, one from Paris and one, apparently, from New York.  The latter dance was described in 1854 by D.L. Carpenter in The Amateur's Preceptor on Dancing and Etiquette as follows:

This very beautiful Waltz was first introduced in New York, by that able master, Mr. Saracco; every movement being so exact and pointed, and of which is different from the Cellarious five time Waltz, being too much in the style of a gallop...

Mr. Saracco himself is shown at left.  His dance and the Cellarius version are sufficiently distinct in their movements that I will address only Saracco's five-step waltz in this post.

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.

Gavotte: Not

• Era: 1880s-1890s (America)
• Dance: schottische

The term "gavotte" has referred to a number of different dances since its earliest appearance in the 16th century.  In this post, it refers not to any of these specific dances, but to a pair of schottische variations described by noted 19th-century dancing master M.B. Gilbert in his manual of couple dances, Round Dancing (Portland, Maine, 1890).  As far as I can tell they have neither anything in particular to do with the earlier dances known as the Gavotte (or the mid-19th century promiscuous quadrille figure of the same name, described here), nor any distinctive choreographic feature that might supply some reason for the use of the term in their names.  Nor are these variations common in other dance manuals, suggesting that they were rarely if ever danced outside the studio.

I nonetheless find them worthy of writeup not because they are particularly compelling sequences but because of what they reveal about approaches to varying the schottische at the end of the nineteenth century, approaches that might be exploited by the experienced late Victorian dance reenactor.

Five Step Schottische

• Era: 1870s(?)-1890s (America)

The Five Step Schottische, as described by prominent late 19th-century dancing master M.B. Gilbert in his tome of couple dances, Round Dancing (Portland, Maine, 1890) and later by Marguerite Wilson in her oft-reprinted Dancing (Philadelphia, 1899),  squeezes five movements, rather than the standard four, into each bar of schottische for an interesting variation which alternates sideways slides and half-turns for a sequence similar to that of waltz variations such as the contemporary Le Metropole (also included in Gilbert's manual) or the later Five-Step Boston described by Philadelphian Albert Newman in 1914.  Putting this combination into schottische rhythm makes for an interesting but not overly complicated dance worth resurrecting by the modern late-19th-century dance reenactor.

Of the dance's name, Gilbert complains that:

Some more appropriate name might have been given to this dance, but I think it best to adhere to the phrase, rather than take upon myself a lingual reform.

This does not stop him for long.  A few pages later, he lists "Redowa Schottische" and "New Schottische" as alternate titles for the variation.  He attributes the former name to E.W. Masters, whom he claims originated it in 1871 (pushing the date of the dance back significantly), and feels that

Although this dance is better known as the Five Step Schottische, the name given above [Redowa Schottische] is far more appropriate.

The name Five Step Schottische, however, is more straightforwardly descriptive and thus more useful.

How to dance the galop

One of the simplest couple dances of the nineteenth century was the galop (gallop, galopade, gallopade), which traveled from the ballrooms of continental Europe to those of England and American in the 1820s and 1830s, often as part of quadrilles or country dances.  It was also -- by the middle of the century, predominantly -- a dance for individual couples, though it continued to appear in quadrille figures and occasional country dances throughout the nineteenth century.  It is described in just about every surviving French, English, and American source for couple dancing from the mid-nineteenth century into the early years of the twentieth.  I have cited a few of these in the text below; a complete bibliography would run multiple pages.

The galop is an aerobic dance done at a rapid pace.  One of the few manuals to include tempo notes, M.B. Gilbert's Round Dancing (Portland, Maine, 1890) gives a tempo of 144 beats per minute for the galop, as opposed to 116 beats per minute for the polka.  La Danse (Washington Lopp; Paris, 1903) agrees with those tempos (Lopp borrowed heavily from Gilbert) and adds 120 beats per minute for the two-step.

Coulon's handbook (third edition; London, c1860) describes the lively nature of the dance in its untamed form:

The Gallopade has had a long reign of nearly twenty years, and is still in high favour at public balls in Paris, as well as at Jullien's bal masqué in London. There is no dance more exciting, or easy to learn, it requires only a good ear to mark the time of the music. The chief requisite in this dance is to keep on one's feet, for there is great danger if once you fall that you will have those who follow over you, like the Capucins de Cartes. This power once acquired, you have only to throw yourself in the volcanic tourbillon and fellow the course of the stream, which with very little attention will be easily understood.

The Gallopade has recently been re-introduced in private society, where it is not customary to race as at a masquerade. They merely make a few steps of the galop and pass into the valse à deux temps. In this way the gallopade becomes a spirited and graceful dance instead of a tremendous rush.

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.

Lamb's Waltz Two Step

Here's an easy waltz variation from English dance teacher William Lamb's Everybody's Guide to Ball-Room Dancing (London c1898-1900).  The Waltz Two Step is a short sequence of two-step done in waltz time which can be used as a variation in a late 19th-century waltz or as a short standalone sequence dance.  Because the movements are quite slow-paced, it is best suited to extremely fast music. 

This sequence represents the an early form of "hesitation waltz" from before that term came into use in the 1910s.  In this case the normal two-step movement (briefly described in a previous post here) rather than being counted "1&2" in 2/4 rhythm, as is more typical in this era, is danced in 3/4 rhythm with each two-step stretched over two full bars of music, so that the slide-close-slide happens on the first, third, and fourth of the six beats.

Waltz Step, Galop Time

• Era: 1880s-1890s (America)

In his sizable manual of couple dance variations, Round Dancing (Portland, Maine, 1890), late 19th-century dancing master M.B. Gilbert describes the Waltz-Galop succinctly as:

Waltz step, Galop time

While no other dancing master that I have found includes the waltz-galop by name, the accenting of a waltz step done in duple rather than triple time is discussed by Allen Dodworth in Dancing and its relations to education and social life (1885, reprinted several times through 1900) and is included in dances such as the turn-of-the-century Pasadena, and the idea that waltz steps can be transposed from triple to duple and vice-versa dates back as far as the sauteuse waltz of the first quarter of the 19th century.

Lamb's American Schottische

English dance teacher William Lamb, in his Everybody's Guide to Ball-Room Dancing (London c1898-1900), published quite a few short dance sequences, most of limited interest to the average dancer.  His American Schottische has more potential than most of these because it does not involve any reverse-line-of-dance movement and thus can be easily used as a simple variation when dancing a late 19th-century schottische. 

Despite the name, there is nothing specifically American about this particular sequence, and it does not seem to have been taken up by other writers/compilers of dance manuals, even those who otherwise plagiarized Lamb quite freely.  I suspect it was not a particular hit, perhaps never having any life in period outside the pages of Lamb's book.  Nonetheless, I find it quite danceable and an interesting break from more typical schottische patterns.

Tantivy: The New Hunt Dance

• Era: late 1890s-1900 England/France

"Tantivy: The New Hunt Dance," was invented by English dancing master R. M. Crompton, later to become the first president of the Imperial Society of Teachers of Dancing and a part of the early 20th-century movement to keep ballroom dance out of the hands of the "wrong" people, which primarily meant American, and especially African-American, influences.  That was all in the future in the 1890s, however, when this dance first appeared.  It may have first been published in Crompton's own book, Theory and Practice of Modern Dancing (London, c1891).  Unfortunately, I do not have a copy of Crompton's work.  The dance, however, can be found in at least three other works of the late 19th century, attributed in each case to Crompton.

I first noticed Tantivy in T. Leggett Byrne's Terpsichore: Her Votaries and Fashions, published in London in 1899 (but with a preface dated to Dublin in 1898) and made available online by Chris Brady here.  A second source is Saxon's Everybody's Guide to Ball-Room Dancing, written by Crompton's contemporary William Lamb and published in London circa 1898-1900 (it is listed in The English Catalogue of Books for those years, which was published in 1901).  The description of the dance in these two sources is word-for-word identical.  Finally, Tantivy was included in the massive French tome Traité de la Danse,  published in Paris in 1900 as volume II of an immense work on dance by Eugène Giraudet that went through dozens of editions in the late 19th century.  Giraudet dates the dance to October, 1896.  While Crompton was certainly known to American dance teachers (Philadelphia dance teacher and writer Albert Newman claimed in the early 1910s to have received dances directly from him), I have not so far found this particular dance in any American source.

The word tantivy is associated with hunting in England, with an implication of going full-speed or headlong, as discussed by Michael Quinion at World Wide Words, and the dance does require a certain enthusiastic commitment to perform successfully!

The Très-Chic

• Era: late 1890s-early 1900s

"The Très-Chic is a dance for couples in six-eight time, and is of very animated and lively character."

With these words, William Lamb introduces "A new Round Dance for the Ball-Room."  Lamb was a noted English dance teacher and writer who served as president of the British Association of Teachers of Dancing.  The Très-Chic appeared in his book Saxon's Everybody's Guide to Ball-Room Dancing (London, c1898-1900; it is listed in the 1901 English Catalogue of Books for those years), from which it was blatantly plagiarized by two dance writers publishing in the American Midwest in the first few years of the twentieth century, including A.C. Wirth in his Complete Quadrille Call Book (Chicago, 1902) and D.F. Jay in his ABC Guide to Ballroom Dancing (Chicago, c1900), both using Lamb's language to describe the dance.  (Some biographical information about Wirth may be found in my earlier post on the Rye Waltz.)