Capering & Kickery

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.

Foxtrot Styling, c1920

A nice little style detail for the foxtrot as danced in England in the years after World War I:

"A variation is also to be observed in the chassé done alternately to left and right, at an angle of 45 degrees to the line of the dance.  In the ordinary way of doing this, say, when the man is going forward, he slides the left foot forward to the left, and then brings the right foot up to the left, and again advances the left.  The new variation is to cross the right foot behind the left.  When the chassé is done to the right, it is of course the left foot which is crossed behind the right.  The lady (or the gentleman if he is going backwards), crosses her foot in front of the foot that is first moved."
        --- "The Sitter Out" (column) in The Dancing Times (London), January 1920, p.270.

By the "chassé", the writer means the two-step, as is clear from the description of the "ordinary way" of performing it.  The description is referenced again in March, 1920, issue (p. 439; the numbering is continuous across multiple issues).  In the "To-Day in the Ballroom" box shown at left (click to enlarge), under "Fox-Trot", there is a note that "The crossing of the feet (described in January) is popular and effective if the steps are kept small."

CD Review: Kitten on the Keys

Kitten On the Keys is an album of "Ragtime, Novelty, and Stride Classics" from famed concert pianist Frederick Hodges, previously noted here as part of the Crown Syncopators, whose album Ragtime Dance Party I heartily recommend for both dancers and listeners.  Kitten on the Keys is more of a listening album, with enough musical flourishes that the dance beat on some pieces can be hard to track.  I wouldn't necessarily suggest using many of these pieces for newer dancers, but it's a treat for listeners and more experienced dancers should be able to manage fairly well.  

The brief liner notes explain Hodges' approach: 

The professional pianist, however, correctly understood that sheet music was to be used as a guide or a blueprint for constructing a full and satisfying piano solo...the professional pianist strove to create a unique and special arrangement that gave the piano roll and record buying public a good reason to buy yet another record of the rag hit of the day.  

Employing this historically correct approach, I have taken delight in creating my own arrangements of the rags on this CD.  Only in rare instances do my arrangements reflect the published sheet music, and then only when the published arrangement or sections thereof were so musically satisfying that little embellishment or expansion was required.  Nevertheless, my goal has been to perform these rags in an authentic manner, fully consistent with the performance styles of their composers and of the best professional pianists of the ragtime era.

More information about Hodges' substantial accomplishments may be found on his own website (warning: music autoplays!)

This is a piano-only recording, which is appropriate for the ragtime era.  Most of the music is best suited to one or more of the two-step/one-step/foxtrot family of dances, but the highlight of the album for me is a rare half-and-half track, "Drawing Room Echoes".  The liner notes are brief, but interesting.  

On Old Fashioned Dances, 1926

On January 21, 1926, a column unfavorably comparing modern dancing to that of earlier eras was published in the Lewiston Evening Journal, published in Lewiston, Maine.  "On 'Old-Fashioned Dances' " appeared under the column title "Just Talks On Common Themes" and the byline of A. G. S.  The initials are those of  Arthur Gray Staples (1861-1940), a Maine writer who was the editor-in-chief of the Lewiston Evening Journal (later just the Lewiston Journal) from 1919-1940.  "Just Talks On Common Themes" was his daily column.  Staples described these columns many years later in an inscription of one of his books to the Maine State Library:

The only claim for these things is their spontaneity.  They write themselves — “after hours,” chiefly.  In their day and generation many good folk seemed to like some of them and many did not.

A collection of the columns was published in 1919 or 1920 and may now be found online at archive.org.  Later collections were issued in 1921 and 1924, but  a 1926 column was obviously not included in any of them.  Fortunately, it is now online in its original newspaper publication.

What's with this Paul Jones thing anyway? (1919 edition)

I've written previously about Paul Jones mixers in answer to a question about their origin, so I was quite amused to find the editors of The Dancing Times expressing their bafflement about the dance all the way back in the issue for March, 1919:

Here is the programme of music played by Alfred Delmonte's Jazz Band at the Victory Ball held at the Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool, on Thursday, February 6th.  We are curious to know what exactly is a "Paul Jones," which figures twice upon the programme...

The Dancing Times was a British journal which covered both stage (ballet) and ballroom dancing.  Its editors may have been in the dark about the Paul Jones, but their subscribers were happy to fill them in. 

What's with this Paul Jones thing anyway?

David Millstone of the Square Dance History Project sent me a query in email about how the name "Paul Jones", after the naval hero of the American Revolution, came to be attached to a late nineteenth century song and then a twentieth-century mixer dance.  I can't give a precise answer to David's question, but I can offer some background and informed speculation while meandering through a quick survey of some of the dances given the "Paul Jones" name.

The tl;dr version is: just because two things in dance or music have the same name doesn't mean they necessarily have any relationship whatsoever.

Royale gyneska with me, madam?

Sometimes while doing dance research, I come across something so amusing I have to share it.   This time it's a blurb from The New York Times on October 5, 1924 about an international conclave of dancing masters held in Paris which voted on the supposed dance of the year.  This was a matter of sufficient import to warrant delivery of the results to the Times by special cable:

[The five-step], which received thirty-eight approving votes, is a mixture of the waltz and one-step and, as can be judged, somewhat involved.  The huppa-huppa, on the other hand, is neo-Chilian, being a backward glide which brings the partners in close contact.

The winner of the third place was the royale gyneska...

A 1920s Medley Paul Jones

Most Paul Jones-style mixers are similar to the one found in the manual Dancing Made Easy (New York, c1919-1922): the dancers form a circle of couples, or possibly two concentric circles, each operating separately, if the numbers are too great.  They perform a grand right and left, then at the leader's signal dance a one-step with the next person in the chain.  The 1903 Round Two-Step (described here) is quite similar, except that the dance of choice is a two-step.

But in the mid-1920s English manual Foulsham's Modern Dancing, by Maxwell Stewart, a more elaborate version is described. 

To initiate the dance, the band plays a march and the dancers begin the grand right and left as usual.  The signal to change to dancing in pairs is given by a change of music: the band switches to a foxtrot tune.  Each dancer takes the next partner in the chain, and they foxtrot, with Stewart noting that the steps used are "as a rule" limited to the walk and the "two-step Chassé to right," though the latter is not actually given in his list of foxtrot steps earlier in the book and is more reminiscent of 1910s foxtrot style (see my previous post on this here) than the steps he does give, which look more towards later style.  Perhaps that is intentional, on the assumption that everyone knows the "old-fashioned" steps but is less likely to know the newer ones.

At some point, the music changes back to a march, and they resume the grand right and left.  Once again the music changes, this time to a one-step, and the dancers take next partners for that dance.  The music shifts back to a march a final time for a third grand right and left until finally the band begins to play a waltz and the dancers each take the next partner and end the Paul Jones by waltzing.

Stewart positively burbles with enthusiasm about the medley aspect:

It is a very jolly affair for those who can execute the steps of the three present-day dances.  It is a pot-pourri of all that is best at the moment, and our only wonder is that more medley dances are not evolved.

His initial description of the dance is dryer and more humorous, possibly unintentionally:

It is the nearest thing we have now to the old square dances, with just this difference: that it is round.

Indeed it is.

Valencia!

"Valencia (A Song of Spain)" was a popular tune by José Padilla, apparently imported from Paris to England and thence to America in 1926.  Accompanying the American sheet music was a brief set of dance instructions which could be done to "Valencia" or any other foxtrot.

Interspersed with walking steps are four specific moves:

(1) The Balance: step forward on one foot then back onto the other (count 1, 2)

(2) The Strike: step, usually to the side, with one foot, then strike the other foot lightly against it (count 1, 2)

(3) The Catch: a two-step; step-close-step (count 1&2).

(4) The Round: a rond de jambe; this is described as pointing the left toe and describing a small, fast circle.  The instructions suggest that it moves clockwise ("point toe of left foot to left side...start to rear") but the illustration of the move, shown at left, contradicts this, the arrows clearly showing counter-clockwise circles, which also work much more smoothly with the flow of the dance; the Round is invariably followed by a step forward on the left foot.  This move is very fast and takes some practice for two people to perform smoothly in unison, with their feet equidistant throughout.

These moves are combined into four short routines, which may be mixed and matched at will:

Famous Last Words

On the lighter side of dance research...

There's plenty of silliness in historical dance manuals, ranging from mythological origins of dancing in general to apocryphal stories about the origins of particular dances.  But none of that makes me laugh quite so much as a couple of lines in Foulsham's Modern Dancing, by Maxwell Stewart, published in London around 1925 and ambitiously subtitled "A guide to everything the dancer old and young, skilled and unskilled, wants to know."  That was rather optimistic of Stewart; this particular dancer wishes he had included a lot more detail about some of the moves he described.  But the following has got to be one of the most risible lines I've ever found in a dance manual.

Regarding jazz music:

Now, this kind of music does not lend itself to dancing much besides the Fox Trot, the Two Step, etc., and it is, therefore, almost impossible to invent anything new which can be danced to jazz time.

With the advantage of hindsight, one can laugh oneself sick over Foulsham's hilarious failure to anticipate the coming of the Lindy hop and the whole related family of swing dances.  This is particularly ironic in a manual that does note and describe a few steps for the Charleston and has one of the earliest descriptions of the newly-developing Quickstep.

But even without the advantage of hindsight, betting against innovation is a fool's game, as the rapid changes in social dance -- and science, medicine, art, technology, music, etc. -- over the course of the 20th century demonstrate.  Everything changes, and the direction of a particular change can be unimaginable only a few short years before.  Social dance is no different.

At the Prom: Yale 1921

Yale University's Junior Promenade, held on February 8, 1921, made the cover of the Yale Record, a humor magazine similar to (but predating) the Harvard Lampoon, which had a wide circulation outside Yale as a beacon of collegiate style. (Click the image at left for a larger version courtesy of Yale's Manuscripts & Archives.)  The event is of interest to me not only as a Yale alumna but because I recently purchased one of its ball cards.

The cover of the card (shown below) is made of white leather, with the Yale device and the year 1921 embossed in gold on the front.  A blue and white twisted cord holds the pages in place.  There is no sign of how a pencil might have been attached.  Between the cover and the pages of the card itself is a sheet of translucent vellum with a spiderweb pattern.

Of interest among the list of names given for the ball committee is the Floor Manager, James Smith Bush, the uncle of former United States President George H.W. Bush and great-uncle of former President George W. Bush.

The set of dances listed inside shows the growing dominance of the foxtrot in the upper-class ballroom of the early 1920s.  Forty-two dances are listed, with the twenty-first being the supper dance.  Of those, no fewer than thirty-two are foxtrots!  The other ten are divided between eight one-steps and a mere two waltzes.  The card belonged to a lady; twenty-one of the listed dances have gentlemen's names written by them.  Some names are written in formal style ("Mr. Newmarker") and some more casually ("Roddie").  Several men are listed twice, but none more than twice.

For those interested in details of etiquette, there is a notice on the back that gentlemen should "Please escort ladies to boxes immediately after each dance."