- Era: 1870s(?)-1890s (America)
The Five Step Schottische, as described by prominent late 19th-century dancing master M.B. Gilbert in his tome of couple dances, Round Dancing (Portland, Maine, 1890) and later by Marguerite Wilson in her oft-reprinted Dancing (Philadelphia, 1899), squeezes five movements, rather than the standard four, into each bar of schottische for an interesting variation which alternates sideways slides and half-turns for a sequence similar to that of waltz variations such as the contemporary Le Metropole (also included in Gilbert’s manual) or the later Five-Step Boston described by Philadelphian Albert Newman in 1914. Putting this combination into schottische rhythm makes for an interesting but not overly complicated dance worth resurrecting by the modern late-19th-century dance reenactor.
