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May 31, 2009

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"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)

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.

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.

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.

// 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.

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.

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.


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.

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