The Rye Waltz

• Era: 1890s-1900s America (Midwest/West)

The Rye Waltz is a simple sequence dance dating to the late 19th century and done to a special arrangement of the tune "Coming Through the Rye" which alternates between duple (schottische) and triple (waltz) time.  The oldest description I have found is in E.H. Kopp's The American Prompter and Guide to Etiquette, which was published by the John Church Company, operating in Cincinnati, New York, and Chicago, in 1896.  Kopp called himself a "compiler" rather than an author, and attributes many of the dances in his book to other dancing masters, often lifting his text directly from their works.  Kopp attributed the Rye Waltz to A.C. Wirth, and his description is virtually identical to that found in Wirth's Complete Quadrille Call Book and Dancing Master, published in Chicago in 1902 and reprinted in 1903.

Andrew Charles Wirth (right) taught dance in the Milwaukee area, and a contemporary biographical entry in the 1897 Men of Progress: Wisconsin (pages 167 & 168) states that he had written a book on dancing, so it is likely that the 1902 book is either a second work or a later edition of an older original.  Wirth and Kopp's books are among several of the 1890s and early 1900s from both America and England containing language which has clearly been copied directly from one to another, though it is not clear which was the original source and none other than Kopp and Wirth include the Rye Waltz.  In the absence of more definitive evidence, it is reasonable to consider Wirth the choreographer of the dance.

Putting the date back still further, I have in my collection a dance card (shown at left; click the image for a larger view) which includes the Rye Waltz as number thirteen on a list of twenty dances.  The card is from a Las Vegas ball held on April 24, 1894.  Intriguingly, the Rye Waltz is listed as a "Ladies Choice" dance.  This is the oldest reference I have located for the dance, but I would not be surprised to find that earlier ones exist.

The tune is traditional Scottish and dates back at least to the 18th century, when Robert Burns wrote the well-known lyrics.  Wirth and Kopp both label it, without explanation, "Scottish Expression."  A snippet of the music for the Rye Waltz, as played by the Brassworks Band:

This snippet is taken from the Brassworks album The Congress of Vienna, where it is recorded under the name "La Chinche" ("the bedbug") and the dance is said to be from "early California."  The Brassworks CD may be purchased here.  It is the only recording of the dance arrangement of which I am aware, though since the dance had a twentieth-century life in folk dance circles, there are likely other recordings in existence.

(Edited 5/9/14 to add: a version of the Rye Waltz was still found in 1958 as a "traditional Nova Scotia folk dance".  It was described in an article on Nova Scotian dance by Maurice Hennigar in Ralph Page's folklife magazine Northern Junket, Volume 6, Number 3, March 1958 in company with a waltz quadrille, a schottische sequence, and the Bon Ton Gavotte.)

The dance sequence itself consists of two parts to match the musical changes and is done in a closed ballroom position throughout.

Part One (4 bars of 4/4 time)
    1 Point left foot to second position
    2 Bring left foot back to fifth raised behind
    3 Point left foot to second position
    4 Bring left foot back to fifth raised behind

    1 Step left to second position
    2 Draw right foot to third
    3 Step left to second position
    4 Draw right foot to third raised

Repeat the above two bars commencing with the right foot and moving against line of dance for a total of four bars.

Part Two (3/4 time)
    Waltz

While neither source specifies how long the waltz section should last, the Brassworks Band has chosen, reasonably enough, to play a sixteen-bar waltz section before returning to part one of the dance.

Wirth and Kopp note that in the first part there is no hopping, though the knees should be bent slightly. and that the second and fourth bars should be stepped rather than glided.  For the second part they recommend the "glide waltz," though it is difficult to say whether they mean the old (rotary) style of waltz or the newer style coming into fashion at the end of the nineteenth century, since they do not define the term.  It is safe to assume that the waltz should not include any leaping.  Wirth offers no suggestion on tempo, but Kopp recommends 34 bars per minute for the first part and 62 bars per minute for the second part.

The Rye Waltz reappeared in 1914 in the form of a hesitation waltz with a different choreography; this version will be discussed in a later post. 

(Edited 1/6/2014 to add: the Rye Hesitation may be found here.)

Comments

[Jeff]

Isn't there another 'mixed time' dance that you have shown? I seem to recall something, but can't remember it.

The fact that the Rye Waltz is Ladies Choice on the card you have is very strong proof that the dance had been around long enough for the Dance Masters to decide to make it such.

[Susan de Guardiola]

Jeff,
I don't recall any other mixed time dance right off the top of my head, but I've gone through an awful lot of little dances over the years, so I can't be certain.

I'd guess that the Rye Waltz is a few years older, but not that much, especially if it's actually Wirth's. He was born in the mid-1860s and didn't take up dance composition immediately, so it wouldn't be much older than c1890, I don't think.

The "Ladies Choice" is an oddity to me; I don't recall seeing that on a dance card before. I haven't looked at enough of them to know whether it's really unusual or whether I just haven't personally come across it. I don't know that it signifies much about the age of the dance, though.

[Alan Winston]

The "Early California" thing is because the Brassworks Band works sometimes with Jim Letchworth, who leads "Early California" dances; for many years, until the state got more serious about earthquake safety requirements for historic buildings, a ball in the c. 1820 Plaza Hotel at San Juan Batista. As far as I know, "Early California" people (including me) tend to draw mostly on "Dances of Early California Days" by Lucille K. Czarnowski, which had a mixture of Spanish-inflected material from various sources (including her own and others field observations and interviews of people doing stuff the way they said their grandparents had done it) and Anglo material mostly drawn from published dance manuals. I don't know that I'd actually call 188x "Early California". As I recall, she mentioned that there were diary references, etc, to "El Coyote" but she couldn't find a California description, so she printed dance and tune collected in Guatemala or some such. Which is a long way of saying that El Chinche may be "Early California" because it's in Czarnowski's "Early California" book, but that doesn't actually mean it existed it in this form before Wirth made up the Rye Waltz.