One-Step Variations: Traveling Turns

Although the traveling turn (or "pivot," though in period that can refer to a different turn as well) is enormously popular among modern dancers of the one-step, possibly because of the notoriously lengthy string of pivots done in continuous sequence by Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle (1939), it actually does not seem to have been nearly as popular among dancing masters of the 1910s.  While the traveling turn occasionally appears in other dances, I have found a written description of its use in the one step only in Albert Newman's Dances of to-day, published in Philadelphia in 1914.  Other sources mention "whirls" or "swirls," but exactly what kind of turning these terms refer to is not specified.

Newman's description of the step is brief and uncharacteristically vague:

In order to execute these turns properly it is necessary that the dancers should be most proficient and move perfectly together.

Each foot virtually describes a semicircle (cycloid movement) upon the floor, the dancers really stepping around each other.

This is quite effective, but requires considerable practice together.

His diagram, shown below, is also somewhat confusing, but does convey the overall effect of the step:

The key to performing these turns is that the dancers really are stepping around each other, alternately stepping along the line of dance and across it.  The dancers should begin in closed ballroom hold, with the gentleman facing the wall and the lady the center of the room.  The turns will be easier to begin if the gentleman is slightly further along the line of dance than the lady.

On the first count of the turn, the gentleman steps with his left foot across the line of dance directly in front of the lady, so that his back is toward the line of dance.  The lady makes a very small step along the line of dance with her right foot, turning her body to the right and pivoting on that foot.  On the second count, they reverse roles, with the lady stepping left across the line of dance and the gentleman making a very small step with his right foot along the line of dance and pivoting on it, continuing the momentum of the turn.  Ideally, these two steps will enable the dancers to make a complete turn.  The steps across the line of dance are critical; each dancer must step strongly with the left foot or the turn will not succeed. The step with the right foot must be small and directly between the other dancer's feet.  This is the same technique used in the second part of the nineteenth-century schottische, but without the little hops it is more difficult to make complete turns.

Newman is quite correct about this requiring practice, so the less ideal result is that the dancers do not manage a complete turn.  In that case, a three-quarter turn makes a very smooth transition to backing the lady.  Experienced dancers will also be aware that performing the turn at a corner of the room also requires only a three-quarter turn.

The traveling turns can be strung together with pairs of walking steps in promenade position between them (walk-walk-pivot-pivot-walk-walk-pivot-pivot), in pairs (four pivot steps; two complete turns), or, for the expert, in a continuous string of pivots, Fred and Ginger-style.

While not mentioned by Newman, it is also possible, though more difficult, to turn in reverse (counter-clockwise), with each dancer stepping with the left foot along the line of dance and the right foot across it.  This should not be tried at corners.