Reading this morning's headlines about events in Alaska, it seems the moment to post this little French sequence dance, which can also be used to vary an early twentieth-century two-step. I've found this sequence in only one source: La Danse, by [George] Washington Lopp, published in Paris in 1903 as part of a two-book compendium. The smaller part (forty-five pages to the two hundred-plus of La Danse) of the compendium is a brief manual of etiquette and costume written by J. Chéron.
Mr. Lopp seems to have been an interesting character, an American expatriate and former Chicago dancing master whose partnership in a Parisian musical conservatory went extremely sour, resulting in lawsuits, lockouts, and a "very tempestuous scene" with one of the patronesses of the conservatory, who insisted on performing a concerto she had composed. Apparently the piece was so dreadful that the audience
was unable...to endure the entire infliction, and most of those present incontinently left after the first movement had been half finished.
While La Danse is dated 1903, I think it most likely that this dance dates to 1897 or 1898, the height of the Klondike Gold Rush. Lopp attributes the dance to H.-N. Grant, whom Giraudet mentions in his list of dancing professors as being active in Buffalo, New York, in 1898.
The starting position for the dance is side by side, facing line of dance. The gentleman's right arm is around the lady's waist, and his left hand is on his hip. The lady's left hand is on the gentleman's shoulder, while her right hand lifts her skirt slightly. The steps given below are for the gentleman; the lady dances opposite.
Le Klondike Two Step (32 bars of 2/4 or 6/8 time)
1b Walk two steps forward left, right (1, 2)
1b Point left foot forward in fourth position (1) then touch the toe lightly behind right foot (2)
1b Walk two steps forward left, right (1, 2)
1b Close into ballroom position; slide left foot along line of dance (1) and close right to left (2)
4b Two complete turns of two-step (1&2 four times); end by opening up side-by-side again
4b Repeat first four measures above
2b One complete turn of two-step (1&2 twice)
2b Slide left along line of dance (1) and close right to left (2); repeat slide and close (1,2)
16b Turning two step; eight complete turns (1&2 sixteen times)
Open up to side-by-side position to repeat the sequence from the beginning.
Lopp specifically notes that the dancers should make long steps on the sideways slides, bending the knee slightly.
Reconstruction Issues
1. Lopp notates this dance rather oddly, with "one measure" being given as four "counts," rather than two, in the first part of the dance. The two-step segments are notated only as "two measures of two step" without further detail. Since a measure of two-step is generally two beats and since he gives the same tempo (120 beats per minute) for this dance as for a normal two-step, the four counts per measure is a problem. There are several ways to do the sequence precisely as written, but none of them make for a very consistent or rational dance:
- Assume that the dance instructions are correct but that the given time signature (6/8 or 2/4) is in error and it is really 4/4; dance the first part as given by Lopp and then either do the two-step segments at glacial speed or do a complete turn of two-step in one bar instead of two.
- Assume that the "counts" in the dance instructions are actually "1-and-2-and" instead of "1-2-3-4." This will make the two-step segments correlate normally with the music but the first part (step-step-point-touch/step-step-slide-close) feels frantic in a most unlikely way for the era of the dance.
I don't particularly care for the dances produced by any of these options, so I've chosen to interpret "one measure" as the given four counts, which is actually two measures of 2/4 or 6/8 music. The pattern given above reflects this interpretation.
2. Lopp ends with the instruction "Pour la coda, on finit en faisant un tour de valse." I'm unsure how to interpret this. Since one would have just finished "waltzing" (i.e., turning) the two-step for sixteen measures, there seems no reason to follow up with further turns, and with no specified music there is no specific coda to dance to at the end. One possibility is that all of the two-steps within the sequence are done forward (backing the lady) rather than turning, which seems unlikely when they are preceded by moves sideways along the line of dance and followed by opening up side by side. Another is that one repeats the sequence only once, or until the ball leader's signal, and then simply continues the turning two-step for the remainder of the music. I find the latter interpretation preferable.
One may also evade the issue entirely by simply using the first sixteen bars as a variation within a plain two-step rather than treating the entire sequence as an independent dance.
Music
There are many pieces of music with names like "The Klondike March and Two-Step" or "Klondike Gold," mostly published in 1897 and 1898. Since the instructions for music for the dance are simply for either 6/8 or 2/4 time, it may be presumed that there was no specific tune in mind; any march or two-step music would do.
[Edited 2/3/2023 to add: I've written an update to this post expanding on what I know and still don't know about the Klondike thirteen-plus years later.]
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