Capering & Kickery

"La Contre Danse", cotillion figure (1900)

There are plenty of cotillions - in the sense of "nineteenth-century dance games", not "eighteenth-century French square dances" - that are some variation on "form a square or longways set and do a quadrille figure or country dance".  "La Contre Danse" is an interesting take on this theme from W. Gilbert Newell, of Bridgeport, Connecticut, and was published in St. Louis dancing master Jacob Mahler's compilation, Original Cotillion Figures (St. Louis, 1900).  It caught my eye because of the unusual formation: couple facing couple across a longways set, as in the American contra "The Tempest", the English "Polka Contre Danse", or quadrille figures done in columns rather than squares.  I can't be certain that this is the only cotillion figure using this formation -- hundreds of them were published from the early nineteenth into the early twentieth century, and I can't claim to have looked at them all -- but it's the only one I've found so far.

"La Contre Danse" is relatively complicated as figures done in sets go.  It opens and closes with two-step done in couples, and in between there is a brief march to set up the longways set before the actual contra/country/contre danse figures begin.  Here's how it works:

Halloween Cotillion Figures

I'd previously avoided posting any of the actual Halloween figures given in H. Layton Walker's Twentieth Century Cotillion Figures (Two Step Publishing Company, Buffalo, New York, 1912), simply because each one is so short that any one didn't seem like enough material to make a decent blog post.  But in combination, these four figures actually touch on different elements that might be useful for anyone planning an early twentieth century Halloween-themed event.

Taking the four figures in the order in which they appear in Walker:

Rothard's One-Step

This one-step sequence appears in the second edition of F. Leslie Clendenen's 1914 compilation, Dance Mad.  It is titled simply "One Step" with the attribution "by E. Clarence Rothard".  Rothard is listed in the thank-you credits in the back of the second edition, but his location is not given and a cursory search has not turned up any specific information about him.  An "Edna Rothard Passapae" was teaching dance in Newark, New Jersey, by at least 1918 and might have been the daughter of E. Clarence, since it was not unusual for daughters to follow their parents as dance teachers.  But even if she was, that doesn't necessarily mean that E. Clarence Rothard was also based in New Jersey.

Rothard's one-step is quite a lengthy sequence.  There are eight separate sections of the dance, some of which are repeated.  The overall pattern of the dance segments is ABCCDEFGHDH, each letter representing four bars of 2/4 music (eight beats) for a 44-bar (88-beat) dance.

The specified tune is "Hungarian Rag" (left; click to enlarge), a popular 1913 composition by German-American composer Julius Lenzberg adapted from Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsodies.  The piece is still well-known; period recordings of it may be found here and here, and a modern version here.  The sheet music is available online at the Charles Templeton Sheet Music Collection of Mississippi State University.

The sheet music is notated as 16b (repeated), 16b (repeated), 20b, 16b, and 16b.  How exactly this is supposed match up with a 44b dance is an interesting question, but since the dance is broken into four-bar units, one can make it fit by adding another repeat of one of the 16b strains for a total of 132 bars, which allows for three times through the dance.

Exeter Waltz

Last year I wrote up Massachusetts dancing master George F. Walters' Exeter Caprice, one of two Walters dances that appeared in the second edition of F. Leslie Clendenen's 1914 compilation, Dance Mad.  The other was the Exeter Waltz, a hesitation waltz sequence which, at sixteen bars, is long enough to function as a standalone sequence dance or, if the surrounding dancers are accustomed to accommodating hesitations, used as a puzzle-piece for improvisation.  There is no choreographic connection between the Exeter Waltz and the Exeter Caprice.

There were some difficulties in reconstructing the Exeter Waltz (see the Reconstruction Notes below); the following version is what I came up with after some experimentation with different possibilities.

Starting position: normal ballroom hold, gentleman's back to line of dance and lady facing line of dance.  Gentleman starts left foot, lady right.  The instructions below are given for the gentleman; the lady dances opposite.

The dance consists of sixteen measures of waltz music divided into two eight-bar sections.  Turns to the right are clockwise or natural; turns to the left are counter-clockwise or reverse.

South Indian "Harem Tango"

And here it is: the last of the tiny Dance Mad tangos!  

The South Indian "Harem" Tango, like the others in this series of posts, is an American tango which appeared in both the first and second editions of Dance Mad (St. Louis; both editions compiled by F. Leslie Clendenen and published in 1914).  It is a very short sequence, only six measures (twelve steps or beats), and rather silly.  Clendenen attributes it to W. T. Kaserman, a dancing master who does not appear on Clendenen's lists of contributors in either edition.  Perhaps he was embarrassed?

I should state outright that there is nothing even slightly South Indian or harem-like about this sequence; it's utterly ordinary.  The name is pure exoticism.

While I haven't looked into Kaserman in depth, I believe he was from the Cleveland area.  He seems to have taught with his wife, since both of them appear (circled in red) in the picture at left of the "New Officers of International Asociation [sic] of Masters of Dancing for Season of 1906-1907 Just Chosen in Fort Wayne." taken from the June 13, 1906, edition of the Fort Wayne [Indiana] Weekly Sentinel.  Also in the picture: Montréal dancing master Frank H. Norman, at top right, whose Rocker Hesitation and Rag-Time Crawl I have previously discussed.  Click to enlarge the photo.

Zebley's Tango

Moving right along with my tiny tango post series, here's another sequence from F. Leslie Clendenen's two editions of Dance Mad (St. Louis, 1914).  This one is simply called "Tango" and was provided by T. Victor Zebley, a Washington, D.C., dancing master.  It isn't really a "tiny" tango; it's a full thirty-two measures, which is enough for a full-fledged sequence dance.

Zebley's tango is very straightforward to reconstruct and, provided one remembers the full sequence, easy to dance, with three points where the dancers can make some minor choices of their own.  I give my preferences, but also describe the other options in the performance notes below.

"Mixed Pickles" Tango

Continuing with my lengthening series of tiny tango sequences from the first and second editions of F. Leslie Clendenen's compilation Dance Mad (St. Louis; both editions 1914), here's another short (sixteen-bar) tango sequence.  If not performed by all the dancers on the floor in unison, it must be done with care, since the dancers move directly against line of dance at two separate points.

For such a short sequence, there are quite a few niggling little problems with the instructions and reconstruction, which I'll talk about a bit below.

The starting position for the dance is a regular ballroom hold with both dancers turned to face forward along line of dance, moving more-or-less side by side to start.  The gentleman starts on the left foot, the lady on the right.  Steps below are given for the gentleman; the lady dances opposite.  

"Mixed Pickles" Tango (sixteen measures/thirty-two beats)
1234    Four walking steps along line of dance, LRLR
5678    Cross left foot over right and do four walking steps against line of dance (over elbows), LRLR

12        Facing partner, point left foot along line of dance
3          Close left foot to right, rising on toes
4          Sink onto heels
5678    Grapevine along line of dance, LRLR (see performance notes below)

1234    "Scissors": Cross left foot over right, step side right, cross left over right, and point right (movement and point are against line of dance)
5678    "Scissors": Cross right foot over left, step side left, cross right over left, and point left (movement and point are along line of dance)

1234    Draw steps: slide left along line of dance, close right to left, repeat
5678    Spin turn clockwise, rocking left back/twice

Court Cotillion

Among the myriad ways of matching up couples in a mid-nineteenth to early twentieth century cotillion (meaning the dance party game, not the eighteenth-century square dance), using a deck of cards was an obvious choice.  Here, for example, is "The Cards", from the lengthy list of figures provided by New York City dancing master Allen Dodworth in his 1885 manual, Dancing and its relations to education and social life (the link is to the 1900 edition):

No. 180.
The Cards.

The conductor presents the four queens from a pack of cards to four ladies, and the four kings to four gentlemen; each gentleman then searches for the lady who holds the queen corresponding to his king; after dancing, each lady presents her queen to another lady, and the gentlemen present the kings to other gentlemen.  The process is repeated until all have participated.

This is simple and obvious, and it doesn't require a blog post to explain how to make it work if one understands the general concept of cotillions.

An interesting variation on the cards theme appears in H. Layton Walker's Twentieth Century Cotillion Figures (Buffalo, New York, 1912).  This figure is actually a version of the Ninepins, a quadrille with an extra gentleman (or sometimes a lady) in the center who tries to steal a partner from one of the surrounding couples during the dance figures.  The Walker figure is called "Court Cotillion" and turns Ninepins into an ongoing game in which each bereft gentlemen goes to select another lady and gentleman to start off the next quadrille-plus-one.  It is to be done to waltz music. 

"Tango No. 1"

Continuing on with the tiny traveling tango sequences from 1914, here's one that's a bit less tiny than the Two-Step Tango.  "Tango No. 1" is listed in both editions of Dance Mad (St. Louis, 1914) with the note "As taught in our classes.", which presumably meant the classes of F. Leslie Clendenen's own academy.  That means that this is as much a class practice sequence as a social dance.  As I reconstruct it -- and see the reconstruction notes below -- it is a reasonable sixteen bars (thirty-two beats) in length, and suitably easy for a class, as it only involves four basic moves - walking, a spin turn, draw steps, and grapevine.

The starting position is a closed ballroom hold with the gentleman's back to line of dance and the lady facing line of dance.  The gentleman starts on the left foot, the lady on the right.  Steps are given for the gentleman; the lady dances opposite.

Tango No. 1 (16 bars/32 beats of tango music)
1234    Walk backward four steps
(half-turn counter-clockwise)
5678    Walk forward four steps 

1234    Fast clockwise spin turn, ending with gentleman facing wall
5678    Draw steps: side-close-side-close

1234    Grapevine: side-cross behind-side-cross in front (lady does opposite cross, not mirror!)
5678    Repeat grapevine

1234    Repeat draw steps
5678    Repeat clockwise fast spin turn, ending with gentleman's back to line of dance

The overall mnemonic: back, forward, spin, draw; grapevine, grapevine, draw, spin.  It would be nice if it were perfectly regular, with each half ending with either spin-draw or draw-spin.  But, alas, it is not, so the dancers must pay attention!

Two-Step Tango

The Two-Step Tango is an anonymous eight-bar sequence published in the first and second editions of F. Leslie Clendenen's compilation Dance Mad (St. Louis; both editions 1914).  There are several of these tiny "tango" sequences that travel decorously around the room without much tango feel to them -- see the similar Butterfly Tango and Dixie Swirl.  These short progressive sequences all appeared in the first edition, along with the somewhat better-composed and more tango-like ones (including a "Tango Two-Step") from Albert Newman.  The impression I get from this is that the more authentic tango was still making its way across the country in early 1914, so the authors of these sequences were still interpreting it as "slow one-step to tango music".  The second edition of Dance Mad expanded the tango section enormously, retaining the short sequences but adding twenty-two pages of more authentic Argentinian and Parisian tango steps.

The Two-Step Tango is basically a promenade, performed with both partners facing line of dance, side by side, holding inside hands.  The gentleman begins on the left foot, the lady on the right.  The gentleman's steps are given below; the lady dances opposite.

Two-Step Tango (eight bars/sixteen beats of tango music)
1        Forward left
2        Forward right, turning slightly outward
3        Back left, making a slight dip (against line of dance, back to back with partner)
4        Side right (along line of dance, still back to back with partner)
5        Side left (along line of dance, swinging to face partner)
6        Back right, making a slight dip (against line of dance) 
7        Side left (along line of dance, facing partner again)
8        Forward right

1, 2    Forward left, slowly
3        Close right to left
4        Forward left
5, 6    Forward right, slowly
7        Close left to right
8        Forward right

Humming Bird Dance

"Humming Bird Dance" is a hesitation waltz sequence which appeared in the first and second editions of F. Leslie Clendenen's compilation Dance Mad (St. Louis; both editions 1914).  It is attributed to "Mr. Menancon", who appears in the list of credits at the end of the second edition as "Elmond Menancon, 909 Elm Street, Manchester, N[ew] H[ampshire]".  I believe the first name ought to be "Edmond", since a dancing master of that name is listed in Manchester city directories from 1906 and 1918.  In the 1906 Manchester Directory, Edmond Menancon is listed separately as an artist, dancing master, and, interestingly, the sexton of a church.  Here's Menancon's advertisement from page 819 of the 1906 directory:

The sexton position seems a somewhat odd fit for an artist-photographer-dance teacher; the triple career doesn't seem to leave much time for a day job.  Perhaps it was his father?

In the 1918 residential directory, as transcribed here, he is listed as an "artist/teacher [of] dancing" having "rms" (presumably "rooms") at 318 Pearl. 

The Humming Bird Dance itself is a sixteen-bar sequence done in "one-step waltz" style, one step (sometimes with embellishments) per bar of waltz music.  The instructions in Dance Mad list it as for "Any waltz music."  Whichever piece is used, it will need to be at a fast hesitation waltz tempo, or the dance will drag.

To start, both dancers face line of dance, the gentleman behind and to the left of the lady.  The lady's right arm makes a semi-circle so that her right hand is over her head, palm up.  The gentleman takes the tips of her fingers with his own right hand.  Left hands are joined and extended in front.  This is referred to as "a la minuet", which would no doubt have startled  dancers of the original minuet in the eighteenth century.  Both dancers begin with the left foot.  

The basic step is onto the toes with a slight dip.  There is also a repeated three-beat sequence of stepping with a stronger dip (1), striking the free foot on the floor as it swings forward (2), and hopping while extending the free foot into fourth position forward (3).  The latter will be listed below as a "step-strike-hop" for brevity.

The Rocker Hesitation Waltz

Montréal dancing master Frank H. Norman was last seen on Kickery when I discussed his description of the Rag-Time Crawl, from his Complete Dance Instructor (Ottawa, 1914).  The Rocker Hesitation, or Rocker Hesitation Waltz, is another easy sequence dance attributed to Norman and taken from the pages of The Two Step, a journal of "Dancing, Acting and Music" that in 1919 was based in Buffalo, New York, and edited by Layton Walker, whose delightful cotillion (German) figures have featured on Kickery several times.  The associate editors were a Who's Who list of American dancing masters with a few international names, including many well-known to dance historians today from their surviving works: F. Leslie Clendenen, Albert W. Newman, Jacob Mahler, Charles d'Albert, George Washington Lopp, Oscar Duryea, and Norman himself.

The Rocker Hesitation was published in Volume XXIX, No. 6, of The Two Step, dated September 1919.  That year, the dancing masters were still struggling with the aftermath of the first World War and the musical and terpsichorean innovations of "jazzification" and the "shimmy" vs. the more respectable waltz, one-step, and foxtrot.  Among the interesting tidbits in the pages of The Two Step that year were that the waltz was coming back at the "slow" tempo of 48 bars (144 beats) per minute, which gives you some idea of how fast they were dancing it before the war! 

In a conveniently self-serving column in the October issue (in which the Rocker Hesitation Waltz instructions were reprinted) Norman stated, while discussing the rebound of dancing after the war, that

...as we are always craving for [sic] something new, England sends us a very pretty and easy new dance, one that will, no doubt, figure on all the programs this season.  It is called the Rocker Hesitation and is an offshoot or a rebound from a dance of somewhat similar name that proved too difficult for the average dancer to master with grace.

He doesn't go into details about the antecedent dance, but a plain "Rocker", attributed to Oscar Duryea, appears on other "latest dances" lists that year and might be the basis for the hesitation version.

It was noted in the November issue that Professor Norman demonstrated the Rocker Hesitation with a Mrs. S. Wyness for the visiting Prince of Wales at the Grand Army Dance on October 30, 1919 (one of two balls the Prince attended that evening) and that the Prince remarked that it was "a dainty and pretty dance."

Maxixe Variations: Flirtation Step

Here's another easy maxixe variation: the Flirtation Step, with the gentleman shadowing the lady and peeking at her alternately from one side to the other.

The Flirtation Step appears most usefully in two sources: G. Hepburn Wilson's How to Dance the Modern Dances (New York, 1914) and in one of a series of flip-books published in 1914 by tobacco company Liggett & Myers to promote its cigarette brands, including Fatima and Sultan.  There was an entire series of ten of these, with figures for the one-step, tango, hesitation waltz, and maxixe.  These flip-books were reprinted in the 1990s, and the reprints can still be found for sale now and then.  

Wilson depicts his dancers with the lady's hands raised, elbows bent, and the gentleman behind her, as shown in the illustration at left (click to enlarge).  He describes the step thus:

As the lady and the gentleman two-step to the left, the gentleman is looking over the lady's left shoulder, and then in continuing the two-step movement to the right, the gentleman looks over the lady's right shoulder.  This step is termed the FLIRTATION STEP.

Maxixe Variations: a dip here, a heel tap there

Here's a quick pair of variations (well, a variation and an ornament) for the maxixe, both pulled from the maxixe descriptions in Albert Newman's Dances of to-day, published in Philadelphia in 1914. 

I don't use Newman as a maxixe source all that often because he really only offers a pair of possible sequences, his own and one from another instructor in his studio.  And he likes his body sway the opposite of the way I do it (toward the leading foot rather than away), so even if I were inclined to do his sequences, I'd be fighting muscle memory to do them in his style.   But even a minor source like Newman provides a few useful flourishes here and there.

------------------------------------------------

First, an interesting dip or, more accurately, a lunge.  It adds a little spice to the maxixe without any need for turning or changes of arm position.  It is easy to perform, but I would not consider it leadable unless the lady already knows the move.

Half & Half: Seven Steps

"Seven steps" is actually something of a misnomer for this variation, which actually involves eight steps taken over two measures of half and half (5/4) time.  Its original source, Frank H. Norman's Complete Dance Instructor (Ottawa, 1914) lists it only as step "No. 2" (out of two) for the half and half.  The Half and Half section of Norman's book is credited to George E Rutherford.

The basic principle of the step is to take a single slow hesitating step, lasting three counts as usual (1-2-3), and then take seven quick steps on the last two beats of the first measure and all five beats of the second (4-5-1-2-3-4-5).  Like the five-step variation, this is a very "busy" step that is best done to a very gentle tempo of half and half music.  

Rutherford's description has the gentleman starting on the right foot and going forward along line of dance while the lady goes backward.  He describes the seven quick steps as "Beginning l. take seven short running steps forward, forcing the Lady backward count 4-5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5."  That's clear enough, but not much fun to do repeatedly, even if one reverses the genders and has the man run backward.  But Rutherford gives three possible variations, one of which I want to cover here:

"The running steps may be taken -- four forward -- and three back..."

Half & Half: Pivot Turns

"If you wish to spin you must do so on the slow step, continuing forward on the last two counts."        -- from Modern Dancing by Vernon & Irene Castle, 1914

One of the basic half and half steps which I did not cover in my long-ago post on basic traveling steps for the dance was the pivot turn, as distinct from turning waltz in half and half time.  There aren't all that many sources for half and half, so it's mildly (very mildly) significant that this step is mentioned three different times.  There's the Castles' succinct description quoted above.  There's a mention of it in a list of steps, or possibly a choreography, where it is given without any detail as "No. 3. pivot turn, right and left, 8 measures."  (from "Half and Half" by J. E. Miles, in Dance Mad or the Dances of the Day, 2nd edition, F. Leslie Clendenen (editor), 1914.)  And there's a full description as part of a mini-sequence which doesn't actually work.  Here's the relevant part:

THE PIVOT TURN is made by stepping L. to side.  C. 1.
Pivot 1/2 on ball of L.  C. 2. 3.  Walk forward. 4. 5.  

(from "Half and Half" as taught by Castle Assistants, in Dance Mad or the Dances of the Day, 2nd edition, F. Leslie Clendenen (editor), 1914.)

Green Mountain Volunteers

Green Mountain Volunteers is currently fourth on my list of go-to contra dances for the 1910s, after the Circle; Hull's Victory; and Lady of the Lake.  It really ought to be sixth, after Boston Fancy and Portland Fancy as well, but the former is too much like Lady of the Lake, and the latter I'm still thinking about. 

Unlike the five dances listed above, which appear on a pair of Maine dance cards from 1918-1919, I do not have dance card evidence for this one.  The only pre-1937 source for it, in fact, is Elizabeth Burchenal's American Country-Dances, Volume I (New York & Boston, 1918), in which she lists it among the dances "half-forgotten or less used" by the late 1910s:

Some of the most widely used of the contra-dances to-day in New England are The Circle, Lady of the Lake, Boston Fancy, Portland Fancy, Hull's Victory, Soldier's Joy, and Old Zip Coon (or, the Morning Star); while among the half-forgotten or less used ones are Chorus Jig, Green Mountain Volunteers, and Fisher's Hornpipe.

This is a category distinct from dances which are "obsolete" and which she reconstructed herself from old books.  I don't consider those latter ones to be sufficiently documented for my taste.

But, frankly, I include Green Mountain Volunteers in my repertoire for 1910s primarily because it's a neat dance by virtue of its unusual figures.  Contra dances, then and now, can get somewhat monotonous, so I appreciate the ones that stand out.

Green Mountain Volunteers is unusual among 1910s contra dances in having no obvious nineteenth-century pedigree.  The only potential connection, suggested by Ricky Holden in The Contra Dance Book (1956), lies in its loose resemblance to figures listed under "Beaux of Oak Hill" in some mid-nineteenth century manuals.  I'm not entirely convinced by the association, however, and the differences are substantial enough that "Beaux" warrants a separate post. 

Who is Your Partner?

What would Halloween be without masks?  And what would a cotillion be without at least one figure where people blunder around blindly crashing into each other?

"Who is Your Partner?" is from St. Louis dancing master Jacob Mahler and appeared in Original Cotillion Figures (St. Louis, 1900), his collection of figures from himself and other dancing masters.  It is easy enough to run, but it does require props: 

A number of black masks, like those used in lodges, viz: those that have no eyes, in order to completely blindfold the wearer.

Here's how it goes:

The gentlemen are called to the center of the room, and made to join hands in a circle.  They are given the masks which they put on; they then join hands again and circle to the right; at signal from the leader, they let go hands, hunt for a lady (the ladies are in their regular seats) dance with her.  He is not to remove his mask until he calls the name of the lady with whom he is dancing. 

Exeter Caprice

The Exeter Caprice is one of a small number of schottisches and schottische-like dances included in the second edition of F. Leslie Clendenen's 1914 compilation, Dance Mad, for which Clendenen solicited dances from dancing masters across the United States and in Europe and South America.  One of those who responded was George F. Walters.  The Dance Mad index of dancing masters lists him as based in Waltham, Massachusetts, about sixty miles south of Exeter, New Hampshire, and the famous Phillips Exeter Academy, more commonly known just as "Exeter".  I suspect that Walters' Exeter Caprice and Exeter Waltz might be named for the school, either because he taught dance there or because he hoped to.

While the classic schottische seems to decline in popularity towards the end of the nineteenth century, dances in schottische time still turn up on dance cards and in dance manuals under names such as gavotte, caprice, barn dance, and five-step.  It's not clear to me what choreographic or musical trait, if any, distinguishes a caprice from a schottische, but I have found more than a dozen examples of them on New England dance cards from the mid-1880s into the 1890s.  "Caprice" on a dance card might refer specifically to the mazurka-like Caprice (or Caprice Schottische) described by M. B. Gilbert in Round Dancing (Portland, Maine, 1890) or to one of the occasional named caprices.  Or perhaps "caprice" was simply another term for a schottische, as implied by sheet music such as the 1906 "The Famous Princess Royal", shown at left, that listed both dances.

CD Review: Ragtime Dance Party

Ragtime Dance Party is the one and only album released by the Crown Syncopators, a San Francisco-based trio that performs at ragtime music festivals on the West Coast.  I've never had the pleasure of dancing to their music in person, which this album makes me very much regret.  Per the title, every single tune is danceable as well as a joy to listen to.  I highly recommend it for anyone who enjoys American music and dance of the 1890-1920 era.

The Crown Syncopators consist of Frederick Hodges (piano), Victoria Tichenor (drums), and Marty Eggers (tuba).  They don't seem to have a website, but their appearances are listed on Hodges' event schedule here.

The CD comes with ten pages of liner notes that contain the background on each piece and reproductions of the original sheet music covers.  Along with familiar favorites like Scott Joplin, James Reese Europe, and James Scott, I was especially pleased to see in the mix a couple of less-familiar female composers, Grace Marie Bolen and Adeline (or Adaline) Shepherd, both of whose careers were cut short by marriage.

As usual with ragtime, the boundaries between dances are quite fuzzy.  The same piece played at a different speed can be a one-step or two-step, or even a foxtrot.  Style counts as well; some pieces that are in the right tempo range just don't "feel" foxtrot to me, and some pieces "feel" like cakewalks and others don't.  With an experienced group of dancers, I'd just play the tunes and let the dancers find their own way, but for those who are looking for music for specific dances or need a little more guidance, here's how I've categorized each piece.  Note that some are listed in multiple categories!

CD Review: The Robert E. Lee

The Robert E. Lee (1997) is a neat little album of solo piano played by the famous musician Bob Milne, who is not only a top-notch ragtime pianist, music historian, and "national treasure" who performed at The Library of Congress in 2004, but also has the astonishing ability to "play" multiple tunes at once in his head, meaning that he can do incredible tricks like playing music in 3/4, 4/4, and 5/4 simultaneously.  There's a fascinating article about his abilities at Mlive.com.

The CD title and the famous tune "Waiting for the Robert E. Lee" both refer to the famous steamship which won a race from New Orleans to St. Louis in 1870.

I have had The Robert E. Lee sitting around for over a decade but only ever used one track, "Trouble in Mind", regularly, as an interesting change of style for when I DJ for modern blues dancers.  Until I started teaching ragtime more often than usual this year I hadn't really gone through the rest of the album carefully.  The CD wasn't recorded specifically for dancing, so some of the pieces don't have the regular rhythm one would desire, but about half of them are quite good for dancing, a few others are workable, and the piano playing is invariably a joy to listen to even for the less danceable tunes.

Two Easy Mixer Games, 1912

I recently had a request to teach 1910s-era dance games, so I went digging through early twentieth-century books of cotillion (or "German") figures looking for some easy mixers that could be explained in a few sentences.  I found two that fit the bill in Twentieth Century Cotillion Figures, by H. Layton Walker (Two Step Publishing Company, Buffalo, New York, 1912).  That book is one of my favorite sources for the silliest and most extreme figures, but it has plenty of simpler ones as well.

Neither of these figures require any props or preparation, and they can be taught in moments on the dance floor, a practice actually recommended in the description of the second.

Ada Rehan Waltz

The Ada Rehan Waltz is a simple and graceful hesitation waltz sequence published in Frank H. Norman's Complete Dance Instructor (Ottawa, 1914), where it is attributed to John Hackett of Hamilton, Ontario.  It is named for the famous Irish-American actress, shown at left in a famous 1895 portrait by John Singer Sargent (click to enlarge).  Quite a few photographs from her theatrical career may be found in the New York Public Library's digital collection.  By 1914 she had long retired from the stage, and I doubt she had any personal or professional connection to this dance.  

The starting position for the Ada Rehan Waltz has the gentleman and lady facing each other, his back to the center of the room, both hands joined, and arms extended.  The gentleman starts with the left foot and the lady with the right.  His steps are given below; the lady dances opposite.  The dance follows the classic sequence dance pattern of "go this way, go that way, waltz", similar to the Berlin, the Veleta, the Rye Waltz, and many, many, many other sequence dances.

Early Foxtrot: Catch Steps

I spent a lot of time teaching foxtrot this spring, and after going through my usual repertoire of easy foxtrot variations with several different groups, I feel I need to add a few new steps.  Nothing complicated, just something to spice up my standard set.  Both of these steps are taken from Edna Stuart Lee's Thirty Fox Trot Steps (New York, 1916).

The basic catch step is just a simple way to change the lead foot, either because it's needed for a variation or just for fun.  It's so easy I can explain it without a little numbered chart: 

Gentleman starts left forward.  Walk for awhile.  When you want to change lead foot, make a single two-step.  Keep walking with the lead (odd count; the strong beat of the music) on the other foot.  The lady does the same thing, but backward and starting on the right foot.

More formally:

The Catch Step
1234    Four walking steps (LRLR)
5&6     Two-step (LRL)
7...       Continue walking (R...)

The Scissors Catch is a more elaborate way of accomplishing the same thing, with a tango-inspired tight cross of the feet:

The Scissors Catch
1234    Four walking steps (LRLR)
5          One more walking step (L)
6&7     Cross right over left and chassé left behind right, bringing right forward again, still crossed
8...       Continue walking (L...)

6&7 are a two-step done in a crossed position.

According to Lee, this step "is attractive and has the appearance of being difficult."  She's right; it's flashy but really not that hard.  On a normal catch step (two-step), you step outward at a slight diagonal.  On the scissors catch, you step inward, crossing the feet and maintaining that cross throughout the chassé.  So instead of stepping out to the right with the right foot on 6, the gentleman steps to the left.  The lady, dancing backward, steps with her left foot to her right, crossing behind.  After the step-chassé (crossed two-step), the dancers will need to twist a bit to free the trailing foot to make the next step.

The relation between the two catch steps is the same as that of the Snake Dip to the Zig Zag in the one-step -- the Snake Dip initiates by stepping out to the left on the first step while the Zig Zag initiates with a cross by the right foot over the left on the second step.

Lee notes that you can vary the Scissors Catch (and, of course, the regular Catch Step) by doing it on the other foot, and that you can vary the Scissors Catch by doing two in a row, which will mean no change of lead foot.  This will require a noticeable twist clockwise by both dancers on the second Scissors Catch, since they have to free the crossed foot (behind for the gentleman, in front for the lady) and bring it all the way around to cross the other way (gentleman: in front, lady: behind).  This isn't all that hard, but it needs a bit more vigor, well-controlled, than a series of normal two-steps.

One can dance the Scissors Catch keeping the body facing more-or-less straight along or against line of dance, or one can do it with more turn, making small diagonals to the side and coming close to Yale position.  Either way is interesting and attractive.

For both steps, note that the four walking steps at the beginning are Lee's introduction to just about every variation in her book.  While it is nice to space out the fancier foxtrot variations with a few walking steps in between, it's not necessary to have it be precisely four or to always do a catch step on a particular beat.

CD Review: Magnetic Rags

I snapped up Magnetic Rags: Ragtime for Brass (2000), from the Avatar Brass Quintet, years and years and years ago, but I had never made much use of it in dancing.  But this spring I've found myself needing ragtime music much more frequently than usual for classes and workshops, so I've been digging deep into my playlists for something other than Spare Parts and the Paragon Ragtime Orchestra.  Magnetic Rags was not intended for dancing, and it's certainly a dandy listening album, but it has enough tracks usable for dancing to make it a worthwhile purchase for dancers as well.  The exclusively brass instrumentation (trumpet, flügelhorn, horn, trombone, and tuba) gives it a pleasantly different sound from most ragtime recordings.  

The arrangements and one of the pieces are by noted modern ragtime composer William Ryden, who also provided the extensive liner notes, including an explanation of his selections for the album:

Ragtime is not easy to define.  Perhaps the closest I can come in a musicological sense is to call it a dance-based American folk music that features a syncopated melody against a regular accompaniment.  In another sense it is a melding of African and Western musical cultures.  These definitions apply, however, to all the ragtime songs, dances and even some marches written from the middle 1890s to about 1920.  What we think of today as classic ragtime are the more formal instrumental compositions, mostly for piano, written during that period.

The album program is all "classic rags", including works by a cornucopia of well-known composers as Scott Joplin (of course), George Gershwin, James Reese Europe, Eubie Blake, Irving Berlin, as well as a few by more obscure artists.  

That was unexpected...

"Don’t sit and grouch, girls, when the boys do not ask you to dance.  Smile and look good-natured.  Learn to enjoy watching other people dance, and learn how to dance well with other girls.  The popular girl knows how to lead other girls, and she can have a wonderful time dancing with girls when there are not enough boys to go around."

 -- V. Persis Dewey, "Tips to Dancers," Good Manners for Ballroom and Dance Hall, Kenosha, Wisconsin, 1918.  Pages 28-29.

One of those topics I come back to over and over again is the topic of ladies dancing together.  It's one of those things that is very hard to research.  It's rarely mentioned in dance or etiquette manuals, presumably because it was normally outside the bounds of formal etiquette.  It just happened informally when there were too many ladies and not enough gentlemen.  

Ladies dancing together was a common enough practice in Regency-era country dancing for dancing masters to discuss it (and gentlemen dancing together as well).  Hopping eight decades forward and across the Atlantic, there was a strongly-worded essay in favor of it by an anonymous dancing master in The Two-Step in 1898.  And there are references to personal experiences that testify that it really did happen: Jane Austen dancing with her friend Catherine or a young Fanny Kemble waltzing with other ladies for reasons of propriety.  But such references are so rare that they are hard to research purposefully; it comes down to reading letters, diaries, and memoirs, hoping to get lucky.

The quote from V. Persis Dewey above is that rarity: ladies dancing together discussed in an etiquette manual, even if that manual is from tiny Kenosha, Wisconsin.  The quote is not new to me; her little booklet, "Tips to Dancers", has been online for years.  But I've finally come across video that actually illustrates it in practice...and more!

Winthrope (a March figure, 1912)

"Winthrope" is a cotillion (dance party game) figure found in Twentieth Century Cotillion Figures, by H. Layton Walker (Two Step Publishing Company, Buffalo, New York, 1912).  It's not much of a game, however, though it includes the basic cotillion elements: a group of couples dancing, separating, selecting new partners, and bestowing favors.  The figure itself, however, is simply an interesting way to transition from a typical grand march into a circle of couples for couple dancing.  And that is actually useful. 

I have no idea why it's called Winthrope.

Here are the four diagrams (click to enlarge), followed by a transcription of the instructions:

WINTHROPE
Sixteen couples up and dance.  Favor, thirty-two couples now on the floor.  March down the centre of hall, etc.  Continue to march around hall then down the centre in fours.  First four to right, second four to left; around hall again, down in eights; halt; second and fourth line of ladies about face and march, as in figure 1.  Lead to the lower end of gentlemen and follow lines of figure No. 2.  Which when you have completed, will leave you in position as figure 3.    Now the second and fourth line of gentlemen about face; march as in figure 3, finishing as per figure 4, which will bring you opposite your original partners.  Face your partner and all dance.

Early foxtrot: the drag step

It's been quite some time since I've written up any early foxtrot variations, so here's a simple but stylish one from 1914 to add to your repertoire!  

Dancer Joan Sawyer, owner of the Persian Gardens nightclub in New York City, called this the "drag step", but unlike the drag or draw steps found in other dances of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the feet are not just closed heel to heel.  Instead, the closing foot is tucked behind (his) or in front of (hers) the other.  Here's Sawyer's description of the drag step and the following "trot", with the accompanying illustration at left:

The gentleman slides the left foot out to his left as though he were going to walk sideways.  He then drags his right foot over back of the heel of the left foot, coming up slightly on the toes at the end of the movement, and breaks into a forward "trot" of four steps, gentleman starting the first trot step with is left foot...The lady you see slides her right foot out to her right, she then points the toe of her left foot over in front of her right foot, throwing her weight on to the left foot, then trots backward four steps, sliding the right foot back first.

The rhythm is the slow-slow, quick-quick-quick-quick common to many early foxtrot patterns.  From the illustration it seems to be not just a side step; the dancers are actually be turning their bodies and feet so that they are moving forward to the side.  This accords with a second description of the move published in the Seattle Star on Friday, November 27, 1914:

Gentleman steps left diagonally forward to two counts of the music, slides right across behind left to two counts of the music and runs forward four steps, left foot beginning the running step. 

The article from which this description was taken is attributed to Edna Neil, a former dancer with Anna Pavlowa in the Imperial Russian ballet.  Pavlowa and her troupe famously toured America in 1914, and the article on foxtrot is headlined "Member of Pavlowa's Imperial Ballet Shows How to Dance the Fox Trot."  The article gives the drag step no name beyond "Figure 1", but it is the first variation that appears after the basic walk/trot sequence.  Sawyer's description, which appeared in her book How to Dance the Foxtrot (New York, 1914), is also the first given after the basic sequence.  This priority placement suggests that this was a small but important element of early foxtrot repertoire.

The actual move is just as simple to do as to describe.  Unlike the cross steps in foxtrot that I described a few years ago, in the drag step, the gentleman tucks his closing foot behind the other while the lady crosses hers in front, both of them rising up on the toes slightly.   I favor the Seattle Star description's diagonal angle rather than a step directly perpendicular to line of dance, as implied by Sawyer.  Her mnemonic for the move is "slide, drag, trot-trot-trot-trot."  Rather than the smooth continuous travel of the walk/trot combinations, the drag step has a sharper flavor, with a noticeable pause in travel on the second beat. 

Since the dancers are quite cozily close after they have just switched into a promenade position, I believe the gentleman, rather than isolating the leg movement, should allow his body to swivel slightly so that as he closes his trailing foot behind and the lady points hers in front, the dancers switch  briefly into a "Yale" position, hip to hip.  The will give the lady more space to make her cross in front.  The move is easily leadable; all that is necessary is to cue the lady to cross in front rather than step backward.  That should be taken care of in the process of guiding her into moving sideways.  Then straighten her out for the trotting steps.  Sawyer recommends doing full sequence (slide, drag, and trots) four times in a row, though that may be more as a means of learning it than a requirement when dancing socially.

Enjoy!

A Valentine Cotillion

I return once more, in honor of Valentine's Day, to H. Layton Walker's delightful Twentieth Century Cotillion Figures (Two Step Publishing Company, Buffalo, New York, 1912), which is always guaranteed to provide me some interesting figures for imaginative dancers.  Christmas was a bit disappointing, as holiday cotillion themes go.  Valentine's Day seems much more promising, since both cotillions and valentines have the goal of matching up people and thus ought to combine nicely!  

Starting from the top of an evening's program, Walker does provide a couple of useful suggestions for the grand march.  I noted a few years ago that good leaders could get their marching dancers into formations such as the letters of the alphabet, or other geometric figures.  Hearts, for example, lend themselves easily to being both created and escaped from by lines of dancers.  Walker provided the diagrams at left for what he called a "Heart March Cotillion", though the shape is so basic that one hardly needs the help.  

More usefully, he noted that the dancers are left on the wrong side of their partners (men on the right rather than the left) when marching out of the figure.  That can be fixed by a standard kludge like having the partners cross each other when they meet, but Walker had a more elegant suggestion: simply repeat the figure going the opposite way up and down the room.  I find the symmetry of that appealing, though I also foresee a problem with dancers overthinking things and deciding to change places with their partners anyway, just because they are uneasy at marching in reversed positions.

Your marching dancers will, of course, be improved by silly headgear:

A St. Louis Hesitation Waltz (1914)

The generically named One Step Hesitation is a short hesitation waltz sequence that appeared in the second edition of the collection Dance Mad, or the dances of the day, compiled by F. Leslie Clendenen and published in St. Louis in late 1914.  It is subtitled "As Recommended by St. Louis Association Dancing Masters", and with no author listed, may have come from the hand of Clendenen himself.

Since the One Step Hesitation is almost entirely in the slowest possible type of hesitation (one step per bar of music), it calls for very fast waltz music or it will drag badly.  I prefer 180 beats per minute and up for this type of hesitation waltz.

The starting position is a normal ballroom hold with both dancers facing the line of dance.  The steps below are given for the gentleman; the lady dances opposite.  In general, forward steps are performed with a slight bounce to them: step (1), rise (2), fall (3).  

The full sixteen-bar sequence:

3b    Forward left, right, left; one step per bar
1b    Hop on left and swing right foot forward (1), step forward on right into a dip (2, 3)
4b    Face partner and step left sideways along line of dance, close the trailing foot; repeat step and close
(shift position slightly to the left so steps are entirely outside partner's feet)
3b    Three steps left, right, left around each other, clockwise, right hip to right hip, like a pomander walk
1b    Step strongly back on right foot into a dip (lady steps forward on left)
(shift position to the right)
3b    Three steps left, right, left around each other counter-clockwise, left hip to left hip
(end with the gentleman facing line of dance)
1b    Step strongly back on right foot into a dip (lady steps forward on left)
Repeat from the beginning

The last two dips are called "drop-dips" by Clendenen and are described fully under a different dance, the Dream Waltz, where each dip is referred to as "in reality a profound courtesy" by the gentleman, while the lady makes a "shallow dip" with the toes of her right (trailing) foot touching the floor.

For all three dips, the dancers need to rise again on the last beat of the measure in preparation for the next step.  These are not "hold that pose" moments, but brisk lunges 

The sequence is utterly straightforward to dance; the only real watch point other than coming out of the dips on time is the hop in the fourth measure.  The dancers need to avoid the common pattern of step (1), hop (2), swing foot (3).  In this dance, the hop is on the first beat of the next measure, so the dancers must step-rise-fall and then hop.  The dancers will notice a perceptible pause, but if the music is suitably fast, it won't feel awkward.

As a reconstruction, it is also fairly straightforward.  The only ambiguity is in the second half of the dance, when the dancers walk around each other for three measures.  In Dance Mad, the One Step Hesitation immediately follows the Rye Hesitation, which includes the same move with the dancers walking around each other for three measures then dropping into the dip/courtesy on the fourth, though in the Rye Hesitation, the walk-around does not reverse.  But the Dream Waltz, which follows after the One Step Hesitation, gives a slightly different turn called a "walking turn" in which the dancers shift their weight back and forth, more like a spin turn.  

Since the language in the One Step Hesitation is most like that of the Rye Hesitation (both use the phrases "walk three steps" and "moving around partners"), I've chosen to adopt the same movements for the walk-around part of this sequence.  

The One Step Hesitation can hardly be called a brilliant piece of choreography, but it is good for beginners because it incorporates common elements like the dips and walk-around.  It's not recommended for the social ballroom dancing, given the long stretches where there is no forward motion, unless all the dancers are doing it at the same time.

Seasonal Cotillions

Once more, some cotillions, this time to wrap up the year with midwinter cheer!  As with the North Pole figures, these are taken from H. Layton Walker's Twentieth Century Cotillion Figures (Buffalo, New York, 1912).  This trio of figures is pure fun, however, with no special historical significance.  Three figures aren't enough to comprise an entire party on their own, but mixed with standard, non-winter-themed figures, they add a nice seasonal touch.

But first, let's let's decorate the ballroom with a winter theme...

Snow Flake Dance (party decor)
I can do know better than to quote Walker on the details:

Produce a winter scene that would cheer rather than chill the dancers.  Ceiling to be festooned with crepe paper, and hung with ornaments.  Under these decorations have network of wires loaded down with artificial snow.  Provide serpentine [long, string-like confetti] to the participants which is to be thrown over the snow-laden festoons and wires, sending down the shower of flakes.  The effect is very pretty.  Souvenirs for the dance are caps for the ladies and hugh [sic] chrysanthemums for the gentlemen.  Orchestra can occupy an ice cave at the end of the hall and all the decorations of the room are to be consistent with the snow-flake effect.

Presumably those are huge chrysanthemums for the gents.  

As is often the case, I am bemused by the level of effort and money this description implies.  The orchestra can occupy an ice cave?  A real ice cave?  A fake one seems like it would be less messy and less likely to result in frozen fingers wrecking the music, but with the conspicuous-consumption aspect of cotillions, one can't be quite certain they didn't actually consider building the orchestra a giant igloo.  But least the whole thing seems safer than decorating with evergreens.

On to some figures...

Seeking the North Pole...

In honor of the freezing cold winter weather, I'm returning to H. Layton Walker's Twentieth Century Cotillion Figures (Two Step Publishing Company, Buffalo, New York, 1912) for a pair of cotillion figures themed around the then-current news of the attempts by explorers Robert Peary and Frederick Cook to be the first to reach the North Pole in 1908-1909.  At the time Walker's book was written, there was a lively conflict going on between the two men as to who could claim the polar laurels.  Since then, both accounts have been discredited to varying degrees, but it seems to still be something of an ongoing debate among scholars.  There's an interesting account of the two expeditions and the contemporary debate at the Smithsonian Magazine website, which I recommend for anyone wanting more historical perspective.

What interests me about these figures, along with generally appreciating ballroom silliness, is how, as with Admiral Dewey and the Spanish-American War, current events were turned into ballroom party games.  It's also worth noting for general timeline purposes that, in a book published in 1912, so many of the figures specify the use of the two-step, which was then on the verge of being swept away by the new dances of the 1910s.

On to the figures!

Down and up, differently

This is turning into a miniseries of posts on technique for 1910s American contra dances, as helpfully described by Elizabeth Burchenal in American Country-Dances, Volume I (New York & Boston, 1918). 

In general, Burchenal is a treasure.  But her instructions aren't always perfectly correct or clear, and there's one figure where I've got some real problems with Burchenal's descriptions: "Down the Center and Back".

Here's how Burchenal describes it in her glossary of figures:

Down the Centre and Back
In ordinary position (or sometimes with crossed hands joined) a couple go eight steps down the centre of the set toward the foot; then swing half around (or when crossed hands are joined, they face about without releasing hands and without swinging around) so as to face up the set, and return eight steps toward the head of the set (8 measures).

That's a very clear description, but there are a couple of problems with it. 

One problem is that when the dancers turn as a couple rather than individually: if you go eight steps (four measures) down the set, then try to turn as a couple and come back up to the top in the same eight steps, you have to turn really fast and make some big steps coming back (or perhaps make tiny steps going down, which no one ever does).  It can be done, but it's awkward, even though it's facilitated by having the dancers go down the center in "ordinary position", meaning ballroom hold, which at least lets the man help the woman swing around quickly.  It's rushed and ungraceful and I don't like it.

But the bigger problem is that in her actual dance instructions down the center and back is used in five different ways by Burchenal, and she gives the same timing (eight steps) for the "down the centre" segment in every single one of them:

• down with crossed hands, turn individually, up to original places
• down with crossed hands, turn individually, up to second place
• down with crossed hands, turn individually, up, cast off
• down in ordinary position, turn as a couple, up to second place
• down in ordinary position, turn as a couple, up, cast off

So in four measures (eight steps), one is variously supposed to:

• return to original places
• return to second place
• return to original places and cast off
• turn as a couple and return to second place
• turn as a couple, return to original places, and cast off

I'm particularly unenthused by that last one.  Even assuming that one can turn as a couple in two steps (whee!), that gives the couple only six steps to travel the distance they just covered in eight steps and cast off.  And Burchenal does not mention the common modern trick of having the second couple catch the active couple around the waist as they come back up and swing them around to help them cast.  The cast is unassisted.  

At least they're not wearing hoop skirts.

No really, no hands!

Along with the development of the buzz swing, another mystery I've wondered about in the evolution of modern contra dancing is just when the figure "right and left" acquired one of its twentieth-century forms, in which two couples (or two men facing two women) cross over, passing right shoulders rather than taking hands, followed by the person on the left walking backward, not in a "courtesy turn", but simply shoulder to shoulder with the person on the right as they turn halfway to change places.  Ricky Holden gave the following description of right and left in The Contra Dance Book (Newark, New Jersey, 1956):

All move forward to opposite place, passing right shoulders with opposite person; keeping side by side as though inside hands were joined, pivot half around as a couple and reface the center of the set.  The one on the left of each pair pivots backwards around while the one on the right moves forward.

It can be clearly seen in, e.g., this video of the modern contra version of Money Musk, starting at about :23.  

This isn't the only way to do a right and left nowadays.  I believe the standard modern version involves either passing right shoulders or taking right hands and then taking left hands with a courtesy turn (see, for example, the lists of figures here and here; search for "right and left").  The no-hands version with the shoulder-to-shoulder pivot seems to be regarded as "old-fashioned" or "chestnut style", which tells you something about how much contra has evolved since the 1950s! 

I've been told with great assurance that the no-hands version is the "nineteenth-century style" of right and left.  But I've seen no evidence that it predates the twentieth century, and it's certainly not the original way of doing right and left, either in country dances or squares (quadrilles).  I don't believe it's nineteenth century at all.  But when did it become popular?

Boarding House

Final cotillion figure for the month!  Boarding House straddles the line between comedy and horror, making it perfect for Halloween.  Along with being probably the single weirdest cotillion figure I've ever seen, which is saying a lot, it's also the most elaborate, requiring the construction of a special trick table along with props and costumes for some of the dancers.  The figure is taken from St. Louis dancing master Jacob Mahler's 1900 compilation Original Cotillion Figures, in which it was attributed to Brooklyn dancing master William Pitt Rivers.  After reading through this figure, I'm not sure I'd have wanted to have him as my dancing master!

I'll include the full original description below, but since it is rather lengthy, I'll start with the requirements and process for the figure.

Red Ear Party, 1919

The description of the Red Ear Party, or Harvest Home Party, appears in Emily Rose Burt's Entertaining Made Easy (New York, 1919).  It was not a full-scale fancy dress ball, but an autumn/harvest-themed ball put on by, according to the book, a group of high school seniors as the opening event of their final year.  Along with normal dancing of the era, it featured a series of novelty dances which were effectively low-key cotillions.  Did the event really take place or was it imagined by Ms. Burt just for the book?  Hard to say.  But I'm impressed with the imagination and industry either displayed by the actual students or expected by Ms. Burt to be achievable by high school kids.  I wish my teenage school dances had been like this!

The red ear of the title was not a body part but an ear of corn.  The significance is said to go back to a colonial tradition in which whoever found the red ear at a corn husking party would get to kiss the girl of his choice.  (You can see an example of one red ear among a lot of normal ones here.)  In this case, finding the (faked) red ear was used to select a "queen" for the party. 

Following this theme, the invitations read:

“Oh, this time o' the year
  You'll recall the red ear
  (It will never go out o' date);
  So the members of "twenty"
  Have planned fun a-plenty
  At a regular Harvest Home fête—
    You're invited!”

The decorations were autumn-themed (leaves, ears of corn, red and orange balloons and lanterns, etc.), the dance cards were shaped like red ears of corn, and the light supper "consisted merely of peach ice cream with sugared popcorn on top, served on grape leaves, nut macaroons, tiny pumpkin tarts and fruit punch.”

The real area of interest for me, of course, was the dancing, and how a series of mini-cotillions ("novelty dances") could be adapted to a particular event and worked into a normal dance program of the late 1910s, even by a group of teenagers with modest resources. 

Marching Medications

Coming back to cotillion figures, and sliding even further down the weirdness scale, here's a figure that combines playing doctor and still more wacky costumes!  The source, once again, is the ever-delightful Twentieth Century Cotillion Figures by H. Layton Walker (Two Step Publishing Company, Buffalo, New York, 1912).

Like the Garden Figure and Stocking Auction figures, Sanitarium is a partner-choosing mixer, but with a much more elaborate setup.  Here's Walker's description:

SANITARIUM
Wig and mask, and stethoscope are the properties that are given the Doctor in this game.  The Doctor retires to a side room.  Couples who are dancing are signaled to stop and the gentlemen retire to the side of room and ladies step to opposite side of room.  A few remarks are made that the place has been quarantined and the health authorities insist on a medical examination of all the guests should be made while the Doctor is entering the hall.  He proceeds at once to examine the ladies as to their health.  With his stethoscope he taps the first lady on her back, holds his stethoscope to his ear and the other end to her back as if to test her lungs.  This done he will write out a prescription (these prescriptions are all in printed form with twelve different kinds of medicine) which he gives to the patient.  She at once proceeds to the side room, where the gentlemen have retired and which door is now labeled "Drug Store."  A drug clerk who may be one of the guests aside from the couples up will take the prescription, beckon the lady to sit down at one side while the prescription is being filled.  She waits a moment, then her bottle marches in life size.  These bottles and boxes are all made of Japanese paper and are worn by men.  The boxes and bottles are all labeled with medicines which they contain.  There will be no trouble finding partners as the ladies will receive a coupon which is torn from the the original coupon.

Whew!

Fruit and Stockings

Moving on from fancy dress balls, here are a pair of cotillion figures which actually involve some degree of costuming, at least for loose definitions of the concept.  Both figures are taken from H. Layton Walker's Twentieth Century Cotillion Figures (Two Step Publishing Company, Buffalo, New York, 1912), source of an endless supply of delightfully weird figures.  There are actually Halloween-themed figures in Walker's book, but they're quite dull by comparison with these two!

Both figures are simple mixers, with either the ladies or the gentlemen selecting partners from a group of opposite-sex dancers.  Dozens of figures of this sort were published over the years, but these two take the concept to a whole new level by having the dancers put on some sort of silly costume during the ball itself, presumably right over their normal evening dress.  

You wouldn't actually want to use figures like these at a fancy dress ball, where the dancers are already in masquerade-type costumes, but they would add some interesting variety at a ball or cotillion evening with dancers in normal 1910s eveningwear.

What a difference a few years makes!

That the repertoire of popular ballroom dances changed dramatically in the first half of the 1910s is not news, but it's always nice to find this transition neatly illustrated by actual dance programs.  I recently had the opportunity to look at a pair of dance cards for two balls held at St. Lawrence University, a private university in northern New York State.  Separated by three and a half years, late 1911 to mid-1915, the two cards neatly bracket the rapid transition from the fading of the nineteenth-century dances to the new dances of the later ragtime era.  

The first card, the outside of which is shown at left (click to enlarge), is actually made of loose-leaf sheets bound by small rings between metal plates with the arms of the Beta Theta Pi fraternity in relief on the front cover.  The card is small, less than two inches tall.  Inside, the title page proclaims that it is from the thirty-sixth annual ball of the fraternity's Beta Zeta chapter, which took place on December 8, 1911, in the St. Lawrence University Gymnasium.

The program for the ball was typical of the first decade of the twentieth century: a grand march followed by twenty-four dances equally divided between waltz and two-step.  Four possible extras are also listed, also equally divided.  Tunes are given, and while I have not traced them all, some are immediately recognizable: "Alexander's Rag Time Band", "Naughty Marietta", "Il Trovatore", etc.  The grand march tune was the well-known "National Emblem", a 1914 recording of which may be heard here.  

With its dominance by only two dances, this card is very similar to the 1906 and 1910 cards I have previously posted, and I've no new observations to make about this mix of dances.

The second card, shown at right (click to enlarge), is again a set of loose sheets bound with metal rings between hard covers, this time in what appears to be Bakelite.  The arms of St. Lawrence University are at lower right, and there is a red and white cord and tassel.  Once again, the card is tiny, just a couple of inches wide.  The event was the Senior Ball on May 20, 1915.

The program for this event was quite different: a grand march, seven one-steps, seven waltzes, three hesitations, a foxtrot, and two circle two-steps.  Lines for four extras are given, but the dances are not specified.  The grand march tune was once again "National Emblem", and "Il Trovatore" reappeared among the waltzes.  Also notable are "Ballin' the Jack" for the foxtrot and "Cecile" for a hesitation; both tunes are still popular in historical dance communities today.

This is a much more interesting program from both a dancer's and a historian's perspective.  One-step and waltz dominate, with a single foxtrot representing the very latest popular dance.  The split between "waltzes" and "hesitations" suggests that there were slower waltzes along with the high-speed ones necessary to make hesitations work smoothly.  There is no sign of the tango or maxixe; perhaps they were too difficult or too scandalous, or simply not well-known in a small town far removed from the population centers of New York and Boston.  The circle two-steps are likely to have been "Paul Jones" type mixers similar to the Round Two-Step.

Both of these cards were used, and while there is no overlap in the names listed as organizers or written in as partners, it is interesting to speculate that the attendees might have included some of the same students.

The images above of the two dance cards are courtesy of the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library at the University of Toronto.

An Alternate Star Cotillion

Way back in the early days of Kickery, one of my first few posts was on the Star figure found in Thomas Wilson's Royal Scotch Quadrilles (published in footnotes of The Danciad, 1824) and described, minimally, in his Quadrille and Cotillion Panorama (1816), and how I found an echo of it in an American cotillion figure more than fifty years later.  I later published a practical description of how to use it as a cotillion (German) figure.  

At the time, influenced by my reconstruction of the Star figure in the Royal Scotch Quadrilles, I interpreted the cotillion figure as a different way of describing the same figure.  But I recently came across the same late Star figure again in a 1912 cotillion manual, and looking at it, I realized there was another way to interpret it.

Roses and Hooples

As an antidote to the enervating heat wave which has descended on New England this week, I'm ending the month as I began it, with ballroom silliness that make Fair Light of Liberty look positively dull.  Here's another pair of cotillion figures, in the dance-party-game sense of cotillion, taken from H. Layton Walker's Twentieth Century Cotillion Figures (Two Step Publishing Company, Buffalo, New York, 1912).  They are both prop-intensive and a little bit, ah, weirder than most.  But what could be better for a summer ball than wholesome outdoor things like roses and hooples?

Despite the complexity of the setups and props, the directions for each figure are relatively straightforward.  I'm providing them word-for-word below with my own commentary interspersed, because these directions just demand it. 

Presenting...Hoople Race and Rose Bush!

One-Step Variations: La Bursco (El Brusco?)

"La Bursco" is a minor variation on the single hesitation in the one-step.  It was described in an undated booklet called Dancing, written by Charles F. Burgess and Virtus R. Scott as part of the King's Booklet series.  This booklet was published by Wehman Bros., though a colophon on the first page gives a copyright and publishing credit to Moses King, Inc.  It was probably published in 1914, as it covered the then-newly-fashionable hesitation waltz and half and half, along with the one-step, tango, and maxixe, but did not include the even newer foxtrot.

The name "La Bursco" is something of a mess.  It is presumably meant to be Spanish, but is not actually a word in that language, and the feminine article with a masculine noun makes no sense.  Spanish was clearly not Burgess and Scott's strong suit, since they managed to misspell rueda as roueda in another variation name.  So I think that this is most likely another error and that bursco is a typo for brusco, meaning brusque, or, in the context of movement, sharp or abrupt.  That seems more-or-less logical for a hesitation in the one-step.  The noun form, el brusco, would literally mean a brusque answer. 

Leaving aside the name, the move described is a single hesitation in which the dancers switch from "tango" position (both walking forward along line of dance) to face-to-face for the duration of the hesitation only.  The sharp switch from forward to facing and back to forward would presumably be the brusco part.  This is a simple way to add an extra fillip of style to the single hesitation I described here.

Fair Light of Liberty

In honor of America's Independence Day, a patriotic cotillion figure!

"Fair Light of Liberty" is taken from H. Layton Walker's Twentieth Century Cotillion Figures, published by Two Step Publishing Company in Buffalo, New York, in 1912.  Walker was, by 1912, the editor of a monthly dance journal, The Two Step, started by H. N. Grant in 1890.

Figures like this were usually danced as part of a cotillion (or "German") at the end of a ball or sometimes as an entirely separate event.  This usage of "cotillion" is distinct from the eighteenth-century square dance that was ancestral to the quadrille and modern square dancing.  Cotillion figures often involved a mixer element, props, and some sort of silliness.  "Fair Light of Liberty" has all three!

Here's the original description:

Eight couples up and dance.  At a signal the eight ladies stand at sides of hall at eight different places, that is one at each corner and one between the space from corner to corner.  The leader then gives a lighted candle to each lady which she holds high.  The eight gentlemen partners each select another gentleman and the sixteen men arrange themselves in a ring at center.  The leader has previously numbered the ladies from one to eight and has placed into envelopes two cards of each number and the gentlemen draw.  At a signal they dance around the left, hands joined in a ring, and at another signal run for station indicated on card they have drawn, and the first of the two who are to run to that special corner and blow out light first dances with the fair "light house."  Eight gentlemen are left, they dance with each other.

This follows the general format of such figures: couples dance, split up, play some sort of game, and then dance again in new combinations.  The instructions are a bit light on the practical details, so here's a detailed guide to how I would interpret and apply them: 

Quadrille for Two, 1913

Like the little one-step variations I discussed a year ago, the delightfully misnamed Quadrille for Two is drawn from a series of articles published in the Chicago Daily Tribune by actress-writer-producer Elsie Janis.  "Old Steps Made New" appeared on December 14, 1913, and featured Janis being inspired by old-fashioned dances such as the gavotte, minuet, and quadrille. 

The Quadrille for Two is not actually a quadrille.  It's a little one-step sequence for two dancers, with its supposed quadrille style coming from the inclusion of a quick dos-à-dos and a turn by right elbows, as shown at left.  Janis also gives a version for a group of four couples, but it is done in a longways country dance set, not a quadrille set.

Janis claims that she got the idea for this from an elderly dancer:

I was talking to a sweet old lady of about 60 on the subject of the dances of today.  She was an up to date little lady, and the type, only too rare, who believe that life is nice and every one ought to be allowed to enjoy themselves even to the extent of dancing the new dances.  She suggested to me an idea which I at once proceeded to carry out.  She said she did not see why the young dancers of today did not do some of the old quadrille steps in their dances.  I argued with her that in this day the girls liked one partner at a time and that it took too many to dance a quadrille.  She came right back at me by saying that all the dancers seemed to be seeing who could do the fanciest step and she thought some of the quadrille steps done by two would be attractive.

It might even be true, though it gives something of the same impression of false modesty or blame-shifting as dancing masters who claim as an excuse that their students made them do things.

The Butterfly Tango

The Butterfly Tango is an anonymous sixteen-bar sequence published in the first and second editions of F. Leslie Clendenen's compilation Dance Mad, or the dances of the day (St. Louis; both editions 1914).  It not named after a piece of music or colorful insect, but rather after the position of the dancers.  A rather confusing illustration, shown below, accompanies the dance in the first edition of Dance Mad: 

The only one of these positions which actually appears in the dance is the center one, which is described very precisely:

The partners stand side by side, the gentleman taking the lady's left hand in his left and the fingers of her right hand in his right, over her right shoulder.

This is more usually called sweetheart or varsovienne position.  The dancers also shift to holding only right hands and to waltz position, but never actually take either the left- or right-hand positions in the illustration.  

A "Butterfly Tango No. 2" appears in the index of both editions, but not in the text, so perhaps these illustrations go with some other Butterfly Tango that somehow slipped out of the final version.

The Butterfly Tango is an anonymous sixteen-bar sequence published in the first and second editions of F. Leslie Clendenen's compilation Dance Mad, or the dances of the day (St. Louis; both editions 1914).  It not named after a piece of music or colorful insect, but rather after the position of the dancers.  A rather confusing illustration, shown below, accompanies the dance in the first edition of Dance Mad: 

The only one of these positions which actually appears in the dance is the center one, which is described very precisely:

The partners stand side by side, the gentleman taking the lady's left hand in his left and the fingers of her right hand in his right, over her right shoulder.

This is more usually called sweetheart or varsovienne position.  The dancers also shift to holding only right hands and to waltz position, but never actually take either the left- or right-hand positions in the illustration.  

A "Butterfly Tango No. 2" appears in the index of both editions, but not in the text, so perhaps these illustrations go with some other Butterfly Tango that somehow slipped out of the final version.

The Rag-Time Crawl

I semi-jokingly call the Rag-Time Crawl "the dance for when I get tired of the Castle Schottische".  It basically fulfills the same function: easy to dance, accessible to beginners, and comforting to people who are not up to leading and following and enjoy the Macarena-like effect of everyone moving all together in the same pattern.

My source for the dance is Frank H. Norman's Complete Dance Instructor (Ottawa, 1914).  The author is J. B. McEwen of Glasgow, Scotland.  I don't know a lot about either of these gentlemen, but I can offer a few bits of trivia:

• There seems to have been considerable back-and-forth between North America and Europe by dancing masters in this era.  Norman's introductory pages note that he was a member, honorary member, or affiliate of dancing organizations in the U.S. and Canada, England, Scotland, and Paris.  

• He had been teaching long enough to include a testimonial from the Countess of Aberdeen (wife of the Governor-General of Canada from 1893-1898) for teaching her children back in 1894, and in 1919, he was the master of ceremonies for a ball in honor of the Prince of Wales in Montréal, as reported in the November, 1919, issue of the Buffalo (New York) dance journal, The Two-Step.

• McEwen published at least one book, The Ball Room Exponent and Guide to Fashionable Dancing (Glasgow, c1902), which I do not have a copy of, and by the 1920s had a dancing school associated with the Norwood Ballroom, as may be seen on The Glasgow Story website.  

• Like Norman, he boasted international connections; he is quoted as listing himself in his book as “the only Teacher of Dancing in Scotland possessing the British, French, and American Badges of Proficiency.”  He turns up in the same November, 1919, issue of The Two-Step in a blurb datelined London, November 5th:

The hesitation waltz is to be the dance of the season in London, in the opinion of J. B. McEwen, dance instructor de luxe, who has just completed his education in the latest dances in Paris and America.  

The hesitation dates back eight or ten years in the States, but McEwen has just discovered it, and he thinks it will be all the rage here in a few weeks.

Cinderella

Cinderella is a short hesitation waltz sequence that appeared in both the first and second editions of the collection Dance Mad, or the dances of the day, compiled by F. Leslie Clendenen and published in St. Louis, with the two editions both coming out during 1914.  

The dance was created by St. Louis dancing master W. T. Clark.  I expect that it was named after the then-brand-new Cinderella Dancing and Skating Palace shown at left (photo from the Pinterest collection of Scott McIntosh; click to enlarge), where Clark was the manager and dancing master.  His role there is mentioned in the December 16, 1913, issue of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, which also noted that Professor Clark would be demonstrating and teaching the Cinderella at the Post-Dispatch Christmas Festival Fund benefit the next evening, and that it would then be included on the evening's dance program, along with the Wave, the tango, the Castle Walk, the Norfolk and the Dream Waltz.

Entering the Yale grapevine

Now that I've described my preferred grapevine, let's talk about how to get it started.

The way I was taught to enter a Yale grapevine was to go through "tango position", a closed position with both partners opened up slightly so they can both move forward, on opposite feet, along line of dance.  At some point, the gentleman twists himself a bit so that he steps more sideways with the left foot and then crosses the right behind to start the grapevine, the lady continuing her tango position walk, which is, in effect, a cross in front as the gentleman's twist puts them into left Yale position.  He then leads her into the side step and back cross as he crosses forward.

I'm sorry, but by my current standards, that is just not elegant enough.  If the gentleman does all the twisting without the lady mirroring him, it feels like the gentleman is twitching peculiarly while the lady strolls along obliviously.  If they both face each other on the side step, the lady ends up going forward/sideways/forward, an annoying back-and-forth.  And it does not even have the virtue of being easy!

With over two decades of one-step practice behind me, here are four options I like better:

In the Country of Dance...

Paris being on my mind this week, I was reading through a 1919 dance-themed issue of a French satirical magazine that, in typical French fashion, combined silly essays and cartoons.  Issue #204 of La Baïonnette (The Bayonet) was published in Paris with a cover date of May 29, 1919, and issue title "Numéro Spécial: Dansomanie".

The issue doesn't contain any specific descriptions of steps, and the illustrations are often caricatures, though there are a few relatively straightforward ones, including the one at left (click to enlarge) in which the only humor is in the reactions of the pianist and spectators.  It is not, on the whole, particularly useful for detailed dance reconstruction, though it's great for historical fashions.  But this sort of social satire provides a useful clue as to what is popular by the targets it picks.  And apparently in the spring of 1919, the two most popular dances in Paris were the foxtrot and the tango.  

Along with the dance itself being caricatured liberally in the illustrations, the phenomenon of the foxtrot's popularity was also the butt of many of the jokes.  It featured in the centerfold, a scene of dancers with two older women conversing off to one side entitled Le cas désespéré (the hopeless case) and captioned, in part:

...madame, elle n'a pas se trouver un mari!  Si elle ne se marie pas avec le "fox-trot", je ne sais ce que j'en ferai.

My translation:

...Madame, she has not yet found herself a husband!  If she doesn't marry the foxtrot, I don't know what I will do. 

Respect the box step

I've been thinking a lot over the last few years about the underlying skills needed for various forms of social dance.  A critical one is the ability to shift steps between time signatures, as I discussed a couple of months ago.  And one of the best examples of that is what happened with the much-maligned "box step" in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.

The box step doesn't get a lot of respect among historical dancers in America because it is strongly associated with modern ballroom dance studio practices.  That's unfortunate, because I'm increasingly convinced that its historical incarnation, the "new waltz" (in contrast to the older valse à trois temps with its pirouette), is extremely important to know for anyone studying American social dancing of the 1880s-1910s.  Despite this, it often gets pushed aside in favor of the older style, which is usually taught first and thus becomes the default social waltz in modern reenactment.  That's not wrong, exactly; it's not like the older waltz vanished in favor of the new. But I think that we ought to be spending a lot more time on the new waltz, because it appears to be one of the fundamental building blocks of the social dance of the entire late Victorian/Edwardian/ragtime era.

Let's look at how the box step got used historically: