Capering & Kickery

March 2025 Gig Calendar

March is weird.  Two weeks of absolutely nothing, then eight days of gigs in two weeks.  Whee!  Technically, that is four teaching days (including a three-day weekend), one evening of DJing, one morning and one evening of calling, and an academic conference, with trips to Boston and New York as well as two other parts of Connecticut.  Plus at least one day of library research.  The time periods jump from the Renaissance to the early 19th century to the present; it's almost as insane a mix as February.  I love it, but I wish things could be spread out a little bit more evenly...

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Sunday, March 16th ~ Middletown, Connecticut
Dances of Bridgerton class at Vinnie's Jump & Jive (Facebook event)
2:00-4:00pm.  Dearest Gentle Reader, you are cordially invited to a class on authentic dances from the fabulous Bridgerton TV series.  This workshop's focus dance is still to be determined, but along with a new dance we will also review some or all of George and Charlotte's lovely "waltz" (no actual waltzing!) from the Queen Charlotte prequel series, Simon & Daphne's dance from Season 1, and the "Harmony" dance from Season 2 plus, time permitting, mix in a bit of actual historical Regency dancing for contrast.  $18.00 per person cash at the door or $15.00 per person online in advance.  Registration opening by February 1.  More information about our Bridgerton dances here. 

Tuesday, March 18th ~ Somerville, Massachusetts (Boston area)
Bluesy Tuesy at NESFA!  (Facebook page) (Facebook group) (Facebook event)
7:30-10:00pm (plus).  Bluesy Tuesy at the NESFA Clubhouse library in Somerville!  Lesson (not me - I don't teach blues!) from 7:30-8:30, then I will be DJing blues from 8:30 until at least 10:00, possibly longer if the dance floor is full!  Indoors with air cleaners going; masks optional.  Sliding scale donation, $5 to $25.  Volunteers get free admission!  Directions are at the NESFA Clubhouse page.

Thursday, March 20th ~ Boston, MA
Renaissance Society of America (RSA) and Shakespeare Association of America (SAA) joint conference
9:00-10:30am “What dances shall we have?” Staging, Reconstructing, and Adapting Historical Dances (Roundtable)
I will be part of a roundtable discussion on the issues involved in reconstructing performing historical dances (balancing accuracy with other factors) with a fantastic group of dance history scholars and practitioners; see details here.  Attendance is limited to those attending the conference (which runs March 20-22); registration and more information at the RSA conference website or the SAA conference website.  You can register through either site.  There will also be a dance workshop (Spanish Canario) at 11:00am that day as well as a pre-conference workshop on Wednesday (introduction to Renaissance Dance) and another (on staging historical dance) on the Saturday.  I am not the instructor for any of the workshops, however I do plan to attend at least the Thursday one.

Friday-Sunday, March 21st-23rd ~ Concord, Massachusetts (Boston area)
Cross-Step Waltz (plus!) Weekend for Mostly Waltz Boston (Facebook event)
Friday evening to Sunday morning.  Workshops, practice time, and a DJ'ed evening dance.  Featuring a mix of waltz and other couple dances, including a special historical-to-Bridgerton set of classes Saturday afternoon into evening.  Plus, stay for the regular Sunday afternoon Mostly Waltz (2:00-5:30pm) with live music and a quick waltz lesson from me focusing on cross-hand/shadow/sombrero transitions in rotary waltz!  Registration is now open at the Waltz Weekend website!

Tuesday, March 25th ~ New Britain, Connecticut
Dance History Ball (CCSU)
10:50am-1:30pm.  Private event.

Saturday, March 29th ~Staten Island, New York (New York City)
Lafayette Anniversary Ball for Staten Island History Bridge (Facebook page) (Facebook event)
6:30-10:00pm.  1820s ball celebrating Lafayette's tour of America in 1825-1826.  Live music by Marnen Laibow-Koser and Jean Monroe.  Regency/1820s costume strongly encouraged.  Beginner-friendly program mixing American and French dances of the era.  All dances taught!  $75/person; tickets may be purchased here.  The site is accessible by public transit as well as having parking facilities.

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I am available to travel for in-person dance teaching, lecturing, and ball precepting.  I am also still available for private or group online lessons and talks via Skype or Zoom (or your videoconferencing software of choice).  Please email me directly if you would like to schedule an event, workshop, or talk!

Coming in April: off to Helsinki to teach and then to the UK for the Oxford Dance Symposium!

Skeleton Dance

   A bit of Halloween silliness and a reminder that dance reconstruction is a broader field than one might think:

 

Of Cabbages and Kaling

"Halloween dancing parties are much in vogue at present, and a quaint device for arranging partners is still observed, in country places, and, in modified form, in cities..."

I admit, I had never particularly associated cabbage or kale with Halloween, so I was a little bemused when I came across the design at left for a Halloween card.  Cabbage?  Kale?  Really?

Apparently it all goes back to "Auld Scotland", and since I'm in Scotland (again), I'm willing to look at a supposed Scottish tradition:

"The lads and lassies in "Auld Scotland," in the olden time of "Kaling," (hunting for kale or cabbage stocks) went, blindfolded, into the garden on Halloween, and each was expected to honestly bring back the first stalk grasped in the darkness.  A thrifty well-formed stalk promised the finder a comely partner for life; a dwarfed or crooked one just the reverse.  A bit cut from the top of the stalk indicated the temper of said partner, sweet or bitter as the searcher after destiny chanced to secure a sample.  If much earth was found clinging to the root, the finder would be rewarded by riches; but if bare, poverty would be his portion."

So far this is a standard fortune-telling method.  But no, wait, in 1891 America it's actually...a sort of cotillion, in the dance party game sense?  A method for picking dance partners?  Why not!

A Dream Ball, 1885

And now for something a little bit different: not quite a ghost story, but a story of a dream of ghosts dancing  "The Dream Ball" was published in Aunt Judy's Magazine (London), Volume IV, Issue III, in 1885, the last year of its run.  The author was S. D. Spicer, about whom I know absolutely nothing.

"The Dream Ball" tells the story of the highly imaginative "Duchess" Paulet, a thirteen-year-old history buff who, on a birthday excursion, finds herself alone in the South Kensington Museum (now the Victoria and Albert Museum), where she eventually falls asleep leaning against a plaster replica of the Apprentice Pillar from Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland.  In her dream, the carriages in the museum come to life and collect people from the paintings to take them to a ball held outside of time, where people from different centuries meet and dance together.  The author bragged in a note at the end that all the paintings and objets referenced in the story could be found in the museum, and, indeed, the descriptions of some of them are detailed enough that it's possible to identify the specific works.  I'm not going to attempt to do all of them, but I'll give a few quick examples.

A Grand Fancy Dress Ball in Liverpool, 1844

A lengthy description of a Grand Fancy Ball in aid of the Public Charities held on Monday, March 25th, 1844 was published in a Supplement to the Liverpool Mercury on March 29th, 1844.  When I say lengthy, I mean that it started out with around 1500 words of self-congratulation and description of the charities involved in rather purplish prose along these lines:

Liverpool has for a long period been famed for the multiplicity of its noble public institutions, having for their object the amelioration of the condition of its poorer inhabitants, the relief and cure of their bodily ailments, and the supplying of their temporal wants, without regard to party, creed, or colour.  The benevolence which suggested and the generosity which has hitherto supported asylums wherein the sick, the maimed, the blind, the houseless, the stranger, and the starving could find temporary care, succour, and shelter, cannot be too much commended; and we feel persuaded the exertions thus made by those who "have enough and to spare," have been amply repaid, not only in their secret consciousness of having performed a Christian duty, but in the earnest and heartfelt aspirations of those who have, by their kindly aid, been snatched from the jaws of death,--of those whose fevered brows have been gently fanned by the refreshing breath of charity,--of those whose prostrate limbs have found strength and activity in places founded by benevolent hands, and of those who, devoid of the common necessaries of life, have had their most pressing wants supplied.

For those not counting, that paragraph consists of exactly two sentences, the latter of which contains over 140 words.  To make an extremely long story short, the ball was in aid of the Liverpool Infirmary, the Northern and Southern Hospitals, the Dispensaries, and the District Provident Society, all very worthy institutions.  I'll be quoting and paraphrasing extensively from the Mercury article, but I will be skipping over the rest of the charity descriptions in favor of information about the ball itself.

Fashioned by Sargent: Fancy Dress Costumes at the MFA in Boston

I have a special treat this month that I've been saving for almost a year.  Last December, I was able to attend the astonishing exhibit Fashioned by Sargent at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.  The exhibit paired paintings by John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) with actual clothing of the period for comparison, including many of the actual items worn in the paintings.  This was heaven for a costume person like me!  The clothing and artwork were each astonishing individually.  But being able to compare clothing side by side with Sargent's paintings of it made it obvious how much Sargent tweaked the look of things and how cautious one should be using paintings as a source to reconstruct costumes.  I spent several hours in the exhibit just staring intently at everything.  And to add dance historian rapture to costume rapture and art rapture, two of the costume/painting pairs were of fancy dress costumes!

I took extensive photos, but I am not the world's best photographer, nor is my camera all that special.  And the lighting in the exhibit was kept low to protect the paintings and textiles, with lots of little sparkly indirect lights that twinkled oddly off the protective cases in which the costumes were displayed.  All of this adds up to photos which are not the greatest quality, but which I hope will communicate the beauty of the garments and the excitement of comparing them to the original paintings.  There are much better lit photos of some of the paintings and clothing on the exhibit website, a couple of which I have borrowed for this post.

A Halloween Dance, 1919

Dennison's Bogie Book was a series of Halloween decoration and party guides published by the Dennison Manufacturing Company, whose primary business was paper products (including plain crepe paper and a variety of specific decorative items) beginning in 1909 and continuing near-annually for at least a couple of decades.  The contents are somewhat hilarious by modern standards, but one has to admire the creativity of the company's marketing staff in adapting paper products for everything from table decorations to hats to entire costumes. 

The original books are collector's items now, and quite expensive, but several of them are freely available online. 

The 1919 edition, whose cover is shown at left (click to enlarge), features a whole page of "Innovations for the Dancing Party" on page 26.  Some of them are quite clever while some are quietly horrifying in a grimly amusing way.  But if you want to put on a Halloween dance in the style of the late 1910s, there are enough tidbits here to make it work.  The rest of the book is also a helpful guide to decorating a room or a refreshment table, making party hats for one's guests, and creating invitations.  There's even a short ghost story.  I'm just going to stick to the dance-specific parts, but the entire book may be seen at Hathitrust for those who wish to delve into the rest of it.

Cozy Corners

The turn-of-the-twentieth-century etiquette book Twentieth Century Culture and Deportment, or The Lady and Gentleman at Home and Abroad by Maude C. Cooke (Philadelphia: National Publishing Company, 1899) devoted part of a chapter on artistic home decorations to the "cozy corner".  The construction and decoration was described in some detail:

Have your carpenter make a double right-angle bench, with a high, straight back. The seat must be two and a half feet wide, and the top of the back five feet from the floor. This now looks like an ungainly three-sided square, or rather oblong, for it is better to have one side somewhat longer than the others. The wood should be stained cherry or oak, to match the other furniture in the room, and oiled and polished so as to be smooth and of rich appearance; or, use hard wood, black walnut, ebony, mahogany.

The seat and inside back may be thickly and prettily upholstered, and then piled high with pillows, or, the wood having been nicely finished, the upholstery may cover the seat only. Be sure and have the seat made low, otherwise the Cozy Corner will be uncomfortable, its name will be belied, and no one will hie to what might have been the favorite seat in the room...

...The seats should be piled with sofa pillows, and in the inclosure a few hassocks would not be found amiss.

The purpose of the cozy corner?

The word cozy suggests warmth and pleasantry, as well as comfort. Therefore, this corner is always by the fire, and those occupying it are presumably cheery and happy.

It is just the place to rest in, just the place to read in, just the place for you and your dearest friend to chat in, just the place to play a game in, as bags, balls, etc., could easily be tossed from one seat to the other; just the place to lay plans in, for you are in no hurry to move, and so your plans, not being hurriedly completed, would be more apt to prove satisfactory; just the place to nap in, just the place to frolic in. Indeed, just the place to add to our already comfortable homes if we would have them one remove nearer the ideal home than they now are.

(quotes from pp. 479-80; the entire book may be found online at Project Gutenberg)

This being a dance history blog and not a nineteenth century home decor blog, one might wonder why exactly I find cozy corners worthy of attention.  Oddly enough, at least in early twentieth century Maine, they seem to have sometimes formed part of the decorations at college dances! 

Highland Mazourka

Let's get the important part out of the way first:

The Highland Mazourka is not a mazurka.  

It is, however, a delightful example of the nineteenth-century tendency to transpose dances from one time signature to another.  In this case, typical polka mazurka sequences have been transposed from 3/4 time to 4/4 time with a bit of extra hopping added to fill out the music, which should be of the Scottish strathspey style.  The polka mazurka itself consisted partly of polka (2/4) steps transposed to 3/4 time.  Confused by all these shifting time signatures?  Fear not; all will be made clear below!

Foxtrot Post Index

(Edited 7/18/24 to add: having had a Better Idea, this post is now superseded by this shiny new index page and will no longer be updated.)

I've written a great deal about recorded variations for the foxtrot in its early years.  It can be hard to locate all these posts or to navigate them using subject categories.  So, by request, here is a "mothership" post indexing all of my foxtrot material, sorted into categories in what seems to me to be the most useful way and in chronological order within the categories.  I'll continue to add to it as I write new posts on the foxtrot or find other ones that I had not properly tagged or that are useful in dancing early foxtrot.

Enjoy!

1. 1910s: foxtrot basics
These posts cover the main repertoire of the early foxtrot and some easy variations

04/19/08    Basic Walking & Trotting Patterns in the 1910s Foxtrot
    the absolute basics: walks, trots, walk/trot combinations, and side-slides (galop)

04/25/08    Quick-Quick-Slow: The Two-Step Infiltrates the Foxtrot
    moves in QQS rhythm: two-step, rocking hesitations, trots, and a lovely sequence with a reverse pivot

08/04/09    Sliding Along in the Foxtrot
    repeated diagonal four-slides (galops) without turning

05/12/14    Twinkle, Twinkle: Fast and Slow
    rocking hesitations, either slow or quick

10/09/14    Basic Foxtrots from Edna Lee
    simple sequences found in other sources

02/18/17    Early foxtrot: the drag step
    a simple slide-close followed by trots

 

2. 1910s: fun with foxtrot
Interesting moves for when one is ready to go beyond the basics.

05/02/08    Fancy Little Foxtrot
    a great little sequence with a hop and fast pomander walk

08/08/09    Foxes in Boxes
    traveling and turning box-steps in QQS timing

05/15/14    Two Easy Foxtrot Hesitations
    the Rock-a-bye and the Trot des Artistes; fancy names for a single hesitation and a drag step

06/05/14    Early Foxtrot: Slides & Glides, 1916
    two asymmetrical variations with three or four slides (galop)

07/21/14    Hop, hop, foxtrotters!
    two more hop-turn sequences

06/08/17    Early Foxtrot: Catch Steps
    using a single two-step to switch lead foot

12/26/20    Foxtrot Styling, c1920
    two English sources on "cross-steps", actually just an ornament for the two-step

06/03/21    Early Foxtrot: a bit of maxixe
   adding maxixe styling to the two-step in the foxtrot

06/13/22    Foxtrot in diagrams, 1919
    two basic walk/two-step patterns, a walk/waltz pattern, and an interesting syncopated sequence

06/06/22    The Castle Fox Trot (1 of 2)
    the first three sequences given by the Castles in late 1914: basic walk-trot, step out and pomander walk, and hop-kick

06/09/22    The Castle Fox Trot (2 of 2)
    the fourth and fifth sequences: "Get over, Sal" and trot and reverse trots

11/06/23    Early Foxtrot: The Zig-Zag
    two combinations incorporating QQS zig-zag movements

 

3. 1910s: oddities
Uncommon or one-shot variations only useful if you want a lot of variety.

05/19/14    Cross Steps in the Early Foxtrot
    two variations where you cross one foot over the other

06/09/14    Early Foxtrot: The Newburgh
    a long step-sequence with two-steps and cross steps

06/08/15    One for the ponies!
    a long sequence with lots of walks and hops

07/27/15    Early Foxtrot: The Castle Favorite
    walks, trots, and hops

06/10/19    Early Foxtrot: Quick Dips
    two sequences with ornamental dipping

06/18/20    Early Foxtrot: The Pavlowa Extension
    a long sequence with some especially graceful elements

06/22/20    Early Foxtrot: The Minuet Turn
    weird perpendicular promenades; nothing to do with minuet

06/07/21    Early Foxtrot: the St. Denis Spiral
    more maxixe styling and a spiral track

 

4. 1910s: miscellaneous
A few related posts.

05/31/08    Another Note on the Early Foxtrot
    a newspaper article briefly mentions several of the variations previously described

06/16/14    The Castles' Paul Jones
    a simple mixer that optionally uses the foxtrot for the couple dance part

12/11/14    Fox Trot Hats
    recommendations for the fashionable lady foxtrotter

03/21/24    Suspiciously similar
    did the dancing masters crib from Joan Sawyer?

 

5. Later foxtrot
I rarely go past 1920 in my foxtrot research, since my interest is primarily in the earliest form of the dance, but here are a few posts that touch on the foxtrot of the 1920s:

08/18/09    At the Prom: Yale 1921
        a dance card featuring a ridiculous number of foxtrots

11/25/09    Valencia!
        a novelty dance from 1926 with sequences that can be danced to the name tune or used in the foxtrot

02/07/10    A 1920s Medley Paul Jones
        a simple mixer which incorporates foxtrot as one of several couple dances

Revisiting La Russe

Twelve years ago, I wrote a brief post explaining how to dance "La Russe", a redowa/mazurka variation I found, like so many others, in M. B. Gilbert's Round Dancing (Portland, Maine, 1890) and [George] Washington Lopp's La Danse (Paris, 1903).  I remain confident in my reconstruction, but in the intervening years I've discovered the official music for it, which clarifies that it was intended as an independent dance rather than merely a variation, and a bit of background.  So it's time to revisit La Russe!

First, I'd suggest going back and reading my original post on La Russe, since I am not going to go back through the details of how to perform it.

The choreographer of La Russe remains unknown, but apparently that was intentional: La Russe was created and promoted by the American Society of Professors of Dancing, which had a policy of not crediting the choreographer(s) for the dances they published as their own.  La Russe was established among them by early 1882, as their proceedings record that at their thirty-eight meeting, on April 2, 1882, they voted to publish original music for the dance by George W. Allen and noted that the step would be practiced at their next meeting.

Doin' the Lambeth Walk, 1937

Long, long ago I published a reconstruction of the Lambeth Walk, from the musical Me and My Girl, as demonstrated on a 1938 newsreel film by British Pathé.  At the time, I mentioned that the newsreel version did not actually match the directions published on the 1937 sheet music (the cover of which is shown at left; click to enlarge) and promised to talk about other versions of the dance at some point.  Having just had the chance to teach the Lambeth Walk last weekend for the first time in ages, it seems a good time to get back to it!

Before reading on or trying the dance, I suggest reading my post on the 1938 version and watching the British Pathé video (the Lambeth Walk starts at about :54) to get an idea of the spirit and style and links to some recordings.  This is not an elegant dance; it's a meant as a jaunty working-class strut.  Oi!

The starting position for the dance is side by side, gentleman on the left and lady on the right.  The starting foot is probably the right foot for both dancers, judging from the poor-quality photos accompanying the instructions, but it doesn't actually matter at any point in the dance.

Dancers should start at the lyrics "Anytime you're Lambeth way..."

Suspiciously similar?

In late 1914, the Columbia Graphophone Company published How to Dance the Fox Trot by the noted dancer Joan Sawyer, a little promotional booklet whose cover is shown at left.  Columbia's goal was to promote record sales, but the booklet is a well-written source for early foxtrot. 

An introductory note from Ms. Sawyer dated November 23, 1914, declared:

The Fox-trot was originated and danced first by me at my Persian Garden in New York and later in vaudeville.

I have no particular desire to delve into the eternal dispute over who, exactly, created the foxtrot, but Sawyer was certainly one of the earliest to popularize it and to publish a coherent set of sequences for dancing it.  I've already written about three of her four sequences (the first is a standard one) and will not repeat all the descriptions, but here is the list with the names given by Sawyer:

1. The Walk and Trot.
2. The Drag Step and Trot.  
3. The Maxixe Glide and Trot. 
4. The Zig-Zag Step and Trot.

It was not until relatively recently, when I was working on the Zig-Zag Step, that I realized that another source gave a list of four sequences suspiciously similar to Sawyer's: a booklet with the unwieldy title Description of Modern Dances as Standardized by the New York Society Teachers of Dancing and approved by the Congress of Dancing Societies of America at meeting held December 27th, 1914, in New York City, N. Y. (American National Association Masters of Dancing, Pittsburgh, 1915).  The dancing masters didn't give their variations names, but the list taken as a whole looks awfully familiar:

Leap Year figure, Washington, D. C., 1892

Not having any more convenient descriptions of cotillion (dance party game) figures with leap year themes in books of such figures, I have to take them where I find them -- in this case, in a description of a society leap year ball attended by no fewer than seven foreign ministers of different nations held in Washington, D. C., on March 24, 1892.  The ball was described briefly in The New York Times on March 25, 1892.  The majority of the short article is taken up by lengthy lists of all the important people who organized and attended the event, but in between, there is a description of a cotillion figure.  Interestingly, it was led by two couples simultaneously, from "opposite ends of the hall". 

Dancing was general until 9:30 o’clock, when the cotillion began, led from opposite ends of the hall by Miss Richardson with Mr. William Slack and Miss Stout with Mr. Clifford Richardson.  In the selection of the favors the greatest ingenuity had been exercised, and the laughter-provoking devices were highly satisfactory.  

Perhaps, sensible of the number of people attending, they were actually running two cotillions in parallel?

A Leap Year Ball, Massachusetts, 1896

An elaborate upper-class leap year ball was held in Fall River, Massachusetts, on Friday, February 21, 1896, as reported at great length in the Fall River Daily Evening News the following Monday.  Fall River is quite close to Providence, Rhode Island, and this ball had a number of similarities to the leap year ball held in Providence four years before, though it does not seem to have featured an enormous cotillion.

On the organizational side, the committee was entirely female, as were the eleven "active and efficient" floor managers.  As in Providence, the receiving line consisted entirely of male patrons, each holding "a bunch of beautiful roses" and "a small fan".  There was no mention of them curtsying, alas, only smiling.

While not emphasized in the writeup the way it was for the Providence ball, gentlemen other than the patrons had been gifted with flowers as well:

Most of the men had been provided by their escorts with boutonnieres, and many of them carried also bunches of flowers and fans.  Corsage boquets [sic] were not infrequent adornments of shirt fronts.

This may have been expensive for some of the ladies:

Every one of them brought at least one man, and one or two brought half a dozen. 

 

Female Callers at Leap Year Balls, 1896

Despite the role reversal mandate at leap year balls, it's still difficult to find examples where the role reversal extended into actually calling or otherwise leading the dancing.  While I have several mentions of female floor managers, it's not clear whether they were leading the dancing or just assisting a male caller or prompter.  One of the few clear examples I'd found previously was two ladies leading a cotillion, at a leap year ball held in Providence in 1892.  So I was beyond delighted to find two mentions of female callers in short blurbs about leap year balls held in Idaho and Kansas in 1896. 

"The Leap Year Ball": a poem, 1896

Before getting back to detailed newspaper descriptions of leap year balls, here's a less detailed but still useful description of one in the form of a very mediocre poem.  It was published on page three of the Oakdale Leader, in Oakdale, California, on Friday, February 14th, 1896.  

The leap year elements mentioned specifically in the poem are:

• the ladies "managing" things and taking the author into the ballroom
• the "beaux" sitting in a row waiting for partners and the ladies rushing to find one, making sure no one was left out
• Fannie and Julia as some sort of ball organizers or floor managers, wearing badges and making sure things went smoothly
• a lady acting as treasurer and, by implication, asking the author to dance

I admit to cynically feeling that the ladies being concerned that none of the "gints" were slighted was showing more care for their feelings than many gentlemen showed for those of ladies when in conventional roles -- the ladies were perhaps deliberately setting an example for the gentlemen of how they wished to be treated.

A Valentine Party, 1891

The fourth in a very occasional series of short descriptions of specialty dance events from the pages of the 1890-1891 volume of Demorest's Family Magazine.  Like the tidbit about the thé dansante, this short description of a party-opening cotillion (in the dance party game sense) is drawn from the "Chat" column of the February, 1891, issue.  The theme, of course, is Valentine's Day!

The original text from Demorest's:

A Valentine Party, for which invitations are already out, promises to be a unique affair.  There are but twenty persons invited, ten ladies and ten gentlemen, all well acquainted, and each has been requested to bring an original valentine, which must be included in the envelope furnished by the hostess and already superscribed "To my Valentine."  On arriving, the guests will find in each dressing-room a bunch of ribbons of different colors, also a heart-shaped bag.  A ribbon is to be tied around each valentine, which is then to be deposited in the bag, through a slit at the top.  After all are assembled, two children, dressed as Cupids, will act as postmen, delivering the valentines from the gentlemen's bag to the ladies, and from the ladies' bag to the gentlemen.  The valentines are then to be read aloud by the person receiving them (being considered as written expressly for them), and a vote taken to decide on the two best (one by a lady and one by a gentleman) from a literary point of view, the two wittiest, and the two most sentimental, and prizes given to the writer of each.  The prizes are to be silver-mounted cushions, photograph frames, and mirrors for the ladies, and scarf-pins, pocket-cushions, and silver-mounted penwipers for the gentlemen, all heart-shaped.  The refreshments are to be served at small heart-shaped tables, and afterward there will be dancing, those having matching ribbons to be partners for the first dance.

     -- Demorest's Family Magazine, Volume XXVII, No. 4, February, 1891, p. 245

 

A Leap Year Ball, Dundee, Scotland, 1892

I didn't look for a description of a Scottish leap year ball, but I came across one anyway while rummaging through newspaper archives.  This was an actual Leap Day ball, held on "that carnival of female freedom", February 29, 1892, in Dundee.  It was described the next day in the Evening Telegraph. 

The ball was hosted by the ladies of the Physical Recreation Society, presumably a branch of the National Physical Recreation Society founded by Herbert Gladstone in 1885 or 1886.  According to the website of The John Hulley Memorial Fund, the NPRS was the successor of the National Olympian Association (1865-1883) and a founder organization of the British Olympic Association (1905).  While not an Olympic sport, dancing was certainly physical recreation, as the author of the article noted:

It goes without saying that it was full of “go,” for gymnastics—or, shall we say, physical culture?—means health, and health means high spirits, and high spirits spell enjoyment and fresh pleasure. 

Large sections of the article were devoted to describing the dresses and the decor.  But there is also substantial information about the dance program, which is interesting not just as a leap year ball but as an example of an 1890s Scottish ball in general, and about the ladies in charge.  In true leap year tradition, 

Seven ladies of the Society formed the Committee, and managed everything, including their men friends who ventured to criticise the arrangements. 

Along with organizing the ball, they wore badges and acted as the reception committee and floor managers at the ball itself:

They were all distinguished last night by a tiny bow of red and black striped ribbon, carrying a five-pointed star, on which were inscribed the initials of the Society.  Their functions were to act as a Reception Committee, to introduce strangers, give the signal for the music to strike up, and so on,

...though occasionally they became distracted by the pleasures of the dance:

all of which pleasant duties were duly performed—excepting when a gadding member floated off in a fascinating waltz, oblivious of the obligations imposed by her badge, and other quite excusable lapses of that nature.  “Oh, I’m dancing the first waltz!  I forgot all about this!” said one fair lady, as she looked ruefully at her star.

A Leap Year Ball, Utah, 1896

Off to the land of the Mormons for a leap year ball in the exciting community of Roweville, a town in northern Utah so small it barely exists even now, when it has been renamed Bothwell.  In 1896, it was a small farming community founded only two years before. 

The ball was held on Friday, January 17, 1896, but coverage of the ball appeared in the Brigham City Bugler two weeks later, apparently submitted by a local correspondent who signed herself

The Duchess.
Roweville, Utah, Jan. 24, 1896.

I'd like to know the story behind that title!

The "Grand Ball" was proclaimed the first leap year party ever held in Roweville, which of course had not even existed four years before.  It was held in the schoolhouse with "a part of the Bear River Orchestra" to provide the music for dancing under the guidance of an experienced floor manager, Mr. August Nichols, Jr., and was said to be well-attended.  The dance program was not given in the article, but the company danced until one in the morning, ate supper until two, then continued dancing until five.  I admire their endurance.

A Leap Year Ball, Oklahoma, 1896

It's leap year, it's leap month, and it's time to look at more descriptions of leap year balls!

First up, a ball held in Enid, Oklahoma, on Friday, January 17, 1896.  Note that leap year balls, while concentrated in the beginning of the year because it was the middle of the social season and leap year was a new and exciting element to play with, were not necessarily held on Leap Day, or even in February.

Enid had only been founded a few years earlier, in 1893, during a "Land Run" in which former Cherokee land was opened to settler claims.  It grew rapidly, supposedly reaching over four thousand people within a year.  These details and more about its history may be found here.

This was a classic leap year ball:

When once in four years the flight of time gives one more day to the month that withesseth the birth of G. Washington, Esq., it brings with it a custom long established of awarding to the ladies the rights and prerogatives that at all other times belong exclusively to the gentlemen.

Four Tiny Polka Redowa Variations

Believe it or not, even I get a little bit tired of going through the seemingly endless list of insignificant couple dance variations published in M. B. Gilbert's Round Dancing (Portland, Maine, 1890) and reprinted in French in G. W. Lopp's La Danse (Paris, 1903).  Studying all of them is important for my overall project of analyzing late nineteenth century American couple dance variations, but a lot of them are just trivial as individual dances, though still useful as data points and material for improvisation. 

As with my trio of tiny galop variations a few years ago, here are four dances that fall in the mazurka/redowa classification that just don't have enough to them to warrant individual posts.

What these four have in common:

• They are all based around the polka redowa (polka in 3/4 time): (hop) slide-cut-leap, counted &123.  While three of the four are called mazurkas, they have very little obvious mazurka in them and a great deal of polka redowa; hence my post title.  All four will work to redowa and mazurka music in general.  Gilbert and Lopp both specify a tempo of 144 beats per minute for that entire genre of music.
  
  
• They almost certainly all have matching sheet music, their names being the names of the tune they were originally attached to.  But the music hasn't emerged in my searches so far, the dances are regular enough in pattern that specific music isn't critical, and they just aren't interesting enough for me to devote a lot of time to continued searching.  If the music turns up, it turns up.  If not, these make easy variations for improvisation.
  
  
• They all appear in both Gilbert and Lopp, and the descriptions match with only insignificant exceptions.
  
  
• They present no reconstruction issues.
  
  

So, in the interest of efficiency, here are the four dances, with brief notes about each.

So, in the interest of efficiency, here are the four dances, with brief notes about each.

Polka mazurka valsée par contretemps

Much more intriguing to me than the walk-and-pivot polka mazurka des bals publiques discussed in my previous post is the variant described most clearly by Desrat in his Traité de la danse (Paris, c1880; later edition c1900), in which he suggested dancing the polka mazurka using the "valse à deux pas" (his personal name for the valse à deux temps) but in counter-tempo (par contretemps), meaning with the steps shifted to different notes of the bar:

Quand les danseurs valsent la Polka-Mazurka au moyen de la valse à deux pas, ils la dansent par contretemps exécutee en prenant le premier temps de chaque pas de Danse sur le troisième temps de chaque mesure.  

My loose translation:

When dancers perform the polka mazurka by means of the valse à deux pas [temps], they dance it counter-tempo, executed by taking the first movement of each step of the dance on the third beat of each measure.  

I gave this a try and found it a truly delightful way to dance to mazurka music, throwing the accent of the dance onto the third beat in a way that matches the music very well.

Polka mazurka des bals publics

This past weekend I got into an interesting online discussion about the definition of polka mazurka, during which one person sniffed that it was merely waltz invading mazurka.  That's not actually true in the original technical sense of the dance, but late nineteenth-century French dancing masters did note some things people did as "polka mazurka" that bore no resemblance at all to the original steps.  One of those things was the version supposedly done at public balls in Paris (by the lower classes), as opposed to in private salons (by the upper class).  It was not "codified", complained the dancing masters.  It was "untidy".  But at least it did not lack grace if the movements were "rapid and regular".

Spanish Waltz (sequence dance), 1918

No, not that Spanish Waltz!  This Spanish Waltz is a sixteen-bar sequence dance.  According to a short article published September 19, 1918, in The Lima Times-Democrat (Lima, Ohio), it was introduced at the recent meetings of the Ohio and International Associations of Dancing Teachers in Columbus, Ohio.  Instructions for the dance seem to have been published in full by the Springfield School of Dancing in The Daily Morning Sun of Springfield, Ohio.  I don't have a copy of that publication, but the directions and illustrations were reprinted in The Two Step, Volume XXIX, No. 3, dated March, 1919, with a reference to The Daily Morning Sun publication. 

The Spanish Waltz was credited to W. D. Lynch of Akron, Ohio, head of both the Ohio and international associations, who self-interestedly assured readers of The Times-Democrat article that it was one of three new dances that would be popular during the upcoming season, along with the old standbys the one-step, waltz, and foxtrot.  The Two-Step, which apparently copied the Springfield article verbatim, included a note that the dance would be taught at a lesson series by a Mr. and Mrs. Goodfellow at the Springfield School of Dancing beginning January 8th, 1919, which would not have been the most useful information by the March issue!

The Two-Step/Daily Morning Sun introduction to the dance was:

A Simplified Ballroom Dance Novelty adapted after the Attractive and Beautiful Spanish Dancing which has been and is yet the rage in the larger eastern cities.

The article in The Times-Democrat described it as follows:

"The Spanish waltz is a simplified version of the Spanish dances seen on the stage with partners facing each other.  Any Spanish music, played a trifle fast, may be used.  The dance is somewhat complicated."

Standards vary, and I can't speak to what the stage versions were like, but along with being simplified, I would call the Spanish Waltz simple rather than complicated.  Judge for yourself!

The Sage Maidens Dance, 1891

An entertaining article somewhat misleadingly titled "Sage Maidens of Cornell University" appeared in Demorest's Family Magazine in January, 1891.  Cornell was one of the first universities to become coeducational (in 1870) and the campus life of female students was of general interest.  Cornell's class of 1890, with about a dozen female students, is pictured at left; click to enlarge.

The article, written from a fairly feminist (for the nineteenth century) perspective, makes it clear that while "Sage maidens" is a pretty turn of phrase, not all of the female students at Cornell lived in Sage Hall (completed in 1875), and that in any case, neither building nor female students were isolated from the campus as a whole.  The building contained classroom space as well, and male and female coeds (the article makes a point of using the term for men as well!) studied together and socialized together rather extensively.  Including, of course, dancing!