Mr. Saracco's Five-Step Waltz

 

• Era: 1840s-1890s America

In the 1840s, two separate dances known as the "Five-Step Waltz," "Cinq Temps Valse," or "Valse à Cinq Temps" arose, one from Paris and one, apparently, from New York.  The latter dance was described in 1854 by D.L. Carpenter in The Amateur's Preceptor on Dancing and Etiquette as follows:

This very beautiful Waltz was first introduced in New York, by that able master, Mr. Saracco; every movement being so exact and pointed, and of which is different from the Cellarious five time Waltz, being too much in the style of a gallop...

Mr. Saracco himself is shown at left.  His dance and the Cellarius version are sufficiently distinct in their movements that I will address only Saracco's five-step waltz in this post.

(Edited 11/25/2013 to add: more information about the origin of this dance has come to light; see my later post Mademoiselle Angelina for details.)

Two pieces of music in the requisite 5/4 time, both composed by Christian Nolff, may be found at the Library of Congress website.  "The Fashion," published in 1848, is subtitled "New Waltz, in Five Steps...by Mr. Saracco."  The three pages of the music may be found here, here, and here.  This piece later appears in an 1859 manual of dance and music under the title "The Five Steps Waltz."  A brief snippet of the music, played by Spare Parts, may be heard via the radio button below.

Nolff Five-Step Waltz

A second piece of music, "The American Republic," dated 1849, is subtitled "Waltz in Five Steps...as danced at P. Saracco."  Its two pages may be found here and here.

Music for the five-step waltz also appeared in Elias Howe's 1844 collection, "The Musician's Companion" as "Waltz in Five-Four" without attribution to any composer.  This predates any description that I have found of either Mr. Saracco's five-step waltz or the Parisian version.

How to dance Mr. Saracco's Five-Step Waltz
The dancers begin in a standard nineteenth-century ballroom hold, joined hands pointing along the line of dance (gentleman facing out toward the wall).  The dancers make half a turn in each bar of 5/4 music.  The steps for the gentleman are as follows; the lady dances opposite, doing the second bar's steps first followed by the first bar's:

1    Slide left foot along line of dance
2    Close right foot to left ("cut") , displacing left into a raised second position, toe pointing down
3    Hop on right foot, bringing left to a raised third position
4    Slide left foot across line of dance, beginning a half-turn
5    Hop on left foot, bringing right to a raised third position and completing the half-turn

1    Slide right foot along line of dance
2    Close left foot to right ("cut") , displacing right into a raised second position, toe pointing down
3    Hop on left foot, bringing right to a raised third position
4    Slide right foot forward between partner's feet, beginning a half-turn
5    Hop on right foot, bringing right to a raised third position and completing the turn

The mnemonic is "slide-cut-hop-slide-hop."  Thomas Hillgrove, writing in 1863 in A Complete Practical Guide to the Art of Dancing, notes that the dance is "very similar to the Polka Mazourka and was formerly a great favorite."  The first three counts of this five-step waltz are in fact identical to the first three counts of the polka mazourka.  Hillgrove also notes that the dancers should "turn and reverse as in other dances," meaning that they may make either natural or reverse turns.  For the reverse turn, simply guide the lady to slide her right foot across the line of dance on the fourth beat of the first bar while the gentleman steps forward with his left foot between her feet.  On the fourth beat of the second bar, the gentleman will slide his right foot across while the lady steps between.  Alternating half-turns in either direction (with either the lady or the gentleman constantly crossing in front) adds variety to a long sequence of natural or reverse turns.

There is some variation in the descriptions among the various sources.  Carpenter's description of the steps is in close agreement with that of Hillgrove, though Carpenter describes the movement sequence with no springs or hops and adds only at the end that one should "spring slightly at every position."  He also describes the cut as a "little battemen," suggesting that the heels click as the trailing foot displaces the leading foot, a typical ornament (at least for gentlemen) in various mazurka steps.  But in the 1862 Howe collection, The American Dancing Master and Ball-Room Prompter, and in Ferrero's 1859 The Art of Dancing, the fifth step is simply "bring the right foot in front of the left."  There is no mention of a hop or spring.  This close of the foot must be done without weight in order to free the right foot to make the next slide.  Completing the half-turn is more difficult without the hop.

The Saracco five-step waltz survived into the dance manuals of the late nineteenth century, with recognizable descriptions included in the manuals of J.W. Pepper (1882), Allen Dodworth (1885), C.H. Rivers (1885, under "Cinq Temps"), Judson Sause (1889), and M.B. Gilbert (1890), and William De Garmo (1892).  An oddly phrased version found in M.J. Koncen (1883) under the name "The New Five-Step Waltz," appears to be a badly-described version of the Saracco dance.  Several of these and other manuals also contain variations for the Saracco five-step which will be addressed in a later post.

A video of Cheryl Stafford and Thomas Baird performing Saracco's five-step waltz to the 1844 music may be found here.  While they have chosen to begin their performance side by side in a promenade position, there is no suggestion in any of the sources that the dance was performed in other than a normal close ballroom hold and with anything other than natural and reverse turning.

A recording of music for the five-step waltz may be found on the album Grand Concert!

Comments

[Linda]

"The Saracco five-step waltz survived into the dance manuals of the late nineteenth century" - I wonder if it survived into the ballrooms of the late 19th century. But, as you mention several variations, they probably did. So, thank you (looking forward to the continuation)

[Susan de Guardiola]

It's always hard to say whether things the dance masters thought it important to teach were the same things that people wanted to dance socially. It's possible they started coming up with variations because people didn't want to dance the old version any more. That may or may not have been successful as a strategy.

The "gold standard" of proof would be to find a late nineteenth-century dance card with a five-step waltz listed on it. To look for that I will need to visit people and places with better dance card collections than mine. It's a project I'll keep in mind for the future.

I plan to do a short article on those variations later this month and at some point will also cover the other mid-19th century five-step waltz that is associated with the Parisian dance master Cellarius.

[Linda]

Yes, a dance card is the ultimate evidence. It's great that people (or museums) collect them; here (in Ukraine) I've only seen one in a museum once.

[Pamela Robles]

I'm curious to know if there are other demo videos of the 5-step Waltz that is done by non-ballet dancers. It's a bit difficult to follow the footwork with all of the flourishes.

Thanks for posting this info.

[Oleksiy]

// It's a bit difficult to follow the footwork with all of the flourishes.

Really, it is not difficult. This waltzes is an simple dances in comparison to early quadrilles and east-European mazurkas.

[Pamela Robles]

I'm sorry, I didn't state it clearly. The flourishes on the LOC video make it difficult to follow what the steps are, at least for me. That's why I was enquiring about a more straight forward video.

[Lucas Gonze]

I have done a guitar recording of C. Nolf's music for the five-step waltz.

Video:
http://soupgreens.com/2009/05/21/dodworths-video/

Audio:
http://soupgreens.com/2009/05/20/dodworths-five-step-waltz/

In my blog post I documented this as being created by Dodworth. Thanks for the new info.

[Susan de Guardiola]

Linda and anyone else interested --
I finally managed to post the continuation of this with a few late-century variations for this five-step waltz here. Sorry it took so long, but it took some time to get a copy of a particular source which was critical to the writeup.