The illustration at left is the last of a series of illustrations for the Half and Half taken from a small book of dance music published by Malvin M. Franklin in 1914. For general information on dancing the Half and Half, an unusual 5/4 time waltz stepped on the first, fourth, and fifth beats, please see my previous post on basic traveling steps for the dance.
In the illustration, the dancers have moved from a normal ballroom hold into a variant side-by-side position in which the lady's left arm is stretched across the gentleman's shoulders to take his left hand at shoulder height, while their right hands are joined behind her back. In this position they move forward together with a series of "alternating steps then sliding steps" before, presumably, resuming ballroom position to continue the dance.
Unfortunately, Franklin is not terribly clear on precisely how the dancers get into this position or out of it or, for that matter, precisely what the alternating and sliding steps they perform are.
Since the change of position adds pleasing variety to the dance, I spent some time figuring out how to make this work.
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