- Era: late 1890s-early 1900s
With these words, William Lamb introduces "A new Round Dance for the Ball-Room." Lamb was a noted English dance teacher and writer who served as president of the British Association of Teachers of Dancing. The Très-Chic appeared in his book Saxon's Everybody's Guide to Ball-Room Dancing (London, c1898-1900; it is listed in the 1901 English Catalogue of Books for those years), from which it was blatantly plagiarized by two dance writers publishing in the American Midwest in the first few years of the twentieth century, including A.C. Wirth in his Complete Quadrille Call Book (Chicago, 1902) and D.F. Jay in his ABC Guide to Ballroom Dancing (Chicago, c1900), both using Lamb's language to describe the dance. (Some biographical information about Wirth may be found in my earlier post on the Rye Waltz.)
Lamb notes that the (eponymous?) music for the dance is by Ernest Allan, though I have not located a copy of it. It can be danced to any polka, march, or two-step music, however, and while Lamb probably intended it as a separate sequence dance, it makes a pleasant variation to use while dancing a two-step.
The sequence is a particularly short and easy one, accessible to anyone who has mastered the basic two-step (briefly described in my prior post on some American two-step variations). The steps given below are for the gentleman; the lady dances opposite. Starting position is side by side, holding inside hands (his right, her left) and facing line of dance.
The Très-Chic (eight bars)
1b Hop on right foot and point left lightly forward; hop right again
and tuck the left foot raised behind the right (rhythm 1-2)
1b Chassé forward (slide-close-slide; left-right-left; rhythm 1&2)
2b Repeat the above, opposite feet (1-2, 1&2)
4b Take closed ballroom position and two-step, making two complete turns (1&2, 1&2, 1&2, 1&2)
At the end, break apart to take hands and restart the sequence.
Lamb does not use the term "two-step" to describe the last four bars, but the description of the step involved (slide-close-slide) makes it clear that a two-step is intended. Other than the starting hold, the first four bars of the dance are identical to those used around the same time by another English dance master, R.M. Crompton, in the more complex dance sequence Tantivy (described here). They also bear a strong resemblance to the earlier "heel and toe" or "Bohemian" polka step of the mid-19th century.
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