Capering & Kickery

A Waltz Quadrille (1893)

By the end of the 19th century, quite a number of quadrilles were being published that didn't follow the earlier form of having multiple separate figures.  Although this dance does have two distinct dance parts, the original instructions (which may be seen here) are clear that they should be treated as one long figure:

Play an ordinary waltz and do not stop between the numbers.

The source of the dance is The Prompter’s Handbook by J.A. French, published in Boston in 1893.  I haven't looked for any other sources for this particular set of figures - it's a trivial little quadrille which I reconstructed in order to have a late-evening set dance that was easy and provided an excuse for plenty of waltzing.

The Twinkle Hesitation

The Twinkle Hesitation, attributed to S. Wallace Cortissoz, was published in Leslie Clendenen's collection, Dance Mad, in St. Louis in 1914.  I'd been looking at dances in that book that incorporated twinkle steps, and this one caught my eye as fun to dance.  The dance itself is a sixteen-bar, three-part sequence, but each part also makes a nifty independent addition to any hesitation waltz.

The Mistletoe Hesitation

The Mistletoe Hesitation is a lovely little sixteen-bar hesitation waltz sequence originally published in F. Leslie Clendenen's Dance Mad, or the dances of the day (St. Louis, 1914), a collection of dances and dance moves borrowed liberally from other dance teachers and manuals.  The Mistletoe is attributed to M.W. Cain and is one of the earliest uses I have found of a twinkle step.

The Half & Half: Basic Traveling Steps

• Era: 1910s

The half and half, a hesitation waltz danced in 5/4 time, was one of those novelties that appeared and vanished quickly in 1914.  There may be as many people alive now who know how to dance it as ever danced it in its own era!  It is also handicapped by having very few surviving pieces of music in the right time signature.  Today's experienced historical social dancers can probably hum the eponymous "Half and Half" from memory.  Sources describing the dance are equally difficult to come by; I have only three in my collection, though one of them, Dance Mad, generously provides four separate descriptions.

Click here to listen to a half and half tune in 5/4 time.

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.