Capering & Kickery

Regency & Renaissance Dance Workshops, NYC (Sunday, October 4, 2009)

I will be teaching two dance workshops for The Elegant Arts Society in New York City this Sunday, October 4th.  Logistical details are below.

The first (1:00-3:45pm) will focus on the dances of the Regency era (1810-1820), specifically on reels, and waltzes, and country dances.  Depending on available time and numbers, we will also dance the amazing reel for nine people (and one hat) known as the Bumpkin.  This class is the final review before the Regency Assembly taking place on October 17-18 in New Haven, Connecticut.  (For information on the Assembly, please email EAS.)

The second class (4:00-6:00pm) will drop all the way back to the 1500s and the line and circle dances known as branles as described by French cleric Thoinot Arbeau in his 1589 work, Orchésographie.  This will be a lively class of full of kicks and jumps and will cover ten to twelve easy dances done to wonderful 16th-century dance tunes.

Both of the above are beginner-level classes.  No experience is needed and no partner is required, though gender balance is not guaranteed.  Clean, leather-soled flat shoes are recommended for both classes.

The classes are held at Dick Shea's (a capoeira studio), 104 W. 14th Street at 6th Avenue, New York City.  Ring buzzer #3, up 2 flights, first door on the right.  For more information, please email EAS.

The Regency class costs $18, or $12 for people attending for the first time; the Renaissance class costs $15.  Pay at the class.

Ballroom Marsupials

The most popular "animal dances" of the early 1900s appear to have been the Turkey Trot and Grizzly Bear.  But the F. Leslie Clendenen's compilation manual Dance Mad (St. Louis, 1914) offers a pair of one-step variations attributed to London dance teacher Walter Humphrey, who apparently found inspiration in the hopping of Australian marsupials.  I've never found these variations in any other source, so it's not clear to me how widespread they ever were.  I would also have placed them a bit earlier, maybe 1908-1910, as by 1914 the animal dance fad was already well past and the smoother, more elegant style of Vernon and Irene Castle was making the one-step acceptable in respectable ballrooms.  It's possible that Mr. Humphrey and/or English dancers in general had not quite caught up with the latest American dance fads, or that Clendenen was not as fussy in compiling his book as its subtitle, "The Dances of the Day," suggests.

For both variations, the dancers both face line of dance.  It's not clear whether they should retain joined hands in front or open up fully.  I find the latter more graceful, but how much of a priority grace should be while hopping around a ballroom imitating a marsupial is debatable.  Those wishing to study wallaby technique in detail may consult this National Geographic video.

Steps below are given for the gentleman; the lady dances opposite.

Kangaroo Hop
1    Short step forward left
2    Long hop forward on left foot
3    Short step forward right
4    Long hop forward on right foot

Wallaby Jump
1    Step forward left
2    Hop forward on left foot
3    Hop forward on left foot
4    Hop forward on left foot
5-8: repeat step and three hops on right foot

In both variations, the dancers need to actually travel forward on the hops rather than just bouncing in place.

As William Hamrick noted drily in The Flying Cloud Vintage Dance Handbook, wallabies have a different understanding of rhythm than kangaroos.

Late Nineteenth-Century Variations for the Five-Step Waltz

• Era: 1880s & 1890s America

Back in May, I described one of two versions of the mid-nineteenth century Five-Step Waltz and promised a later continuation looking at some of the variations that appeared in the last decades of the century.  Mr. Saracco's version of the dance, discussed in that earlier post, continued to appear in later American dance manuals: Allen Dodworth (New York, 1885), William DeGarmo (New York, 1892), M.B. Gilbert (Maine, 1890), C.H. Rivers (Brooklyn, c1885), Judson Sause (Chicago, 1889), Cartier (New York, 1882), Cartier & Baron (New York, 1879), Lucien Carpenter (Philadelphia, 1882), and M.J. Koncen (St. Louis, 1883).  Most of these manuals are compilations and offer no new information, but Dodworth, Gilbert, and DeGarmo were actual dancing masters, and the three of them offer a few simple variations on the original five-step waltz that may be useful to those recreating the dances of the 1880s and 1890s.

Famous Last Words

On the lighter side of dance research...

There's plenty of silliness in historical dance manuals, ranging from mythological origins of dancing in general to apocryphal stories about the origins of particular dances.  But none of that makes me laugh quite so much as a couple of lines in Foulsham's Modern Dancing, by Maxwell Stewart, published in London around 1925 and ambitiously subtitled "A guide to everything the dancer old and young, skilled and unskilled, wants to know."  That was rather optimistic of Stewart; this particular dancer wishes he had included a lot more detail about some of the moves he described.  But the following has got to be one of the most risible lines I've ever found in a dance manual.

Regarding jazz music:

Now, this kind of music does not lend itself to dancing much besides the Fox Trot, the Two Step, etc., and it is, therefore, almost impossible to invent anything new which can be danced to jazz time.

With the advantage of hindsight, one can laugh oneself sick over Foulsham's hilarious failure to anticipate the coming of the Lindy hop and the whole related family of swing dances.  This is particularly ironic in a manual that does note and describe a few steps for the Charleston and has one of the earliest descriptions of the newly-developing Quickstep.

But even without the advantage of hindsight, betting against innovation is a fool's game, as the rapid changes in social dance -- and science, medicine, art, technology, music, etc. -- over the course of the 20th century demonstrate.  Everything changes, and the direction of a particular change can be unimaginable only a few short years before.  Social dance is no different.

Historical Dance Weekends ~ October 2009

Next month I'll be teaching at two historical dance events on back-to-back weekends with the wonderful musicians of Spare Parts.  The events range from the early 19th century all the way through the first decades of the 20th.

On October 10th & 11th, I will be in beautiful Victorian Cape May, New Jersey, for the Vintage Dance Weekend that is part of Victorian Week, sponsored by the Mid-Atlantic Center for the Arts.  I will be teaching some dance workshops on Saturday afternoon, followed by a formal 19th-century ball that evening featuring the classic 19th-century couple dances of the Civil War era and later (waltz, polka, schottische) as well as a few contras and the Polo Quadrille.  On Sunday afternoon, I will precept a Ragtime (1910s) era tea dance including the one-step, foxtrot, tango, and the delightful finger-snapping Lulu Fado.  Period costume is encouraged for Saturday's ball and Sunday's tea dance, but is not required.  Spare Parts will play Saturday night and Sunday afternoon.  Full registration and logistical information may be found at the MAC website.

Then on October 17th, I will be in New Haven, Connecticut, teaching an afternoon workshop and precepting a formal ball at the Elegant Arts Society's Regency Assembly.  This event features the dances of the first quarter of the nineteenth century (1800-1825), the era of Jane Austen, Lord Byron, and the Napoleonic Wars.  There will be country dances done in period style, quadrilles, waltzes (including the bouncy sauteuse waltz), and reels, including the lively nine-person Country Bumpkin.  Once again, Spare Parts will play for the evening event.  This is part of a larger weekend including a park stroll and tea-and-games event on the Sunday.  The flier for the event can be downloaded: front, back, registration form.  You can also email for further information.  Not part of the weekend (but also fun) is an evening of couple dancing on the preceding Friday night, Elm City Waltz, where I will be DJ'ing a mix of historical and modern music.

It would be lovely to see Kickery readers there; please come and say hi when I'm not in the midst of ball-running!

Call for Papers: Early Dance at Kalamazoo (2010)

A call for papers for a dance-oriented session at the International Congress for Medieval Studies taking place next May in Kalamazoo, Michigan.  Responses are needed pronto, as the paperwork has to be in to the Congress by the end of September.  The conference is huge and very exciting, with scholars in many disciplines from all over the world; I've presented there the last three years and hope to have a paper there this year as well.  They're looking for something a little beyond a simple dance reconstruction -- more on the process of reconstruction itself and the history of dance reconstruction and connections between dance history and other fields of study.

The call for papers:

Long Ago and Far Away: Intra-European perspectives on early modern dance.
Early Dance at Kalamazoo
45th International Congress on Medieval Studies (May 13-16, 2010)

Early Dance at Kalamazoo is an organization formed to encourage further scholarship at Kalamazoo in the field of early dance and its relation to other disciplines, including literature, art history, musicology, theater, history, and textiles through the interdisciplinary pursuit, independently or in conjunction, of textual and performative research. We are particularly interested in forming links between scholars in the field of dance history and those in other disciplines, as each group is, to its detriment, often unaware of the significant work done by the other. We focus on different aspects of issues in dance reconstruction and the general subject area, bringing together scholars of dance, manuscript illumination, textiles, and church history.

This year's proposed session looks at cross-cultural aspects of and perspectives on early modern dance, its history, and textual background, such as the Renaissance French interpretation of dance in the Ottoman Empire. It is a segment of the field that is rarely studied or discussed and deserves greater attention in order to further understanding of greater cross-cultural currents in 15th and 16th century Europe.

We are seeking papers dealing with these themes for the session entitled "Long Ago and Far Away: Intra-European perspectives on early modern dance."  Abstracts are to be sent to [email protected] before the end of September.

Regency & Renaissance Dance Workshops, NYC (Sunday, September 13, 2009)

I will be teaching two dance workshops for The Elegant Arts Society in New York City this Sunday, September 13th.  Logistical details are below.

The first (1:00-3:45pm) will focus on the dances of the Regency era (1810-1820), specifically the French quadrilles which became popular in the mid-1810s.  We will dance and look at a step-sequences to use in the five figures of the First Set of French Quadrilles: Le Pantalon, L'Eté,  La Poule, La Trenise, and La Finale and figures one, two, four, and five of the Caledonians.  Depending on available time and numbers, we will also dance the amazing reel for nine people (and one hat) known as the Bumpkin.  This class is the final review of quadrilles before the Regency Assembly taking place on October 17-18 in New Haven, Connecticut.  (For information on the Assembly, please email EAS.)

The second class (4:00-6:00pm) will drop all the way back to the late 1500s and explore Italian dances for groups of three or six taken from the Fabritio Caroso's 1581 treatise, Il Ballarino.  Two or three dances will be chosen from among Allegrezza d'Amore (for three), Ballo del Fiore in terzo (three), Dolce Amoroso Fuoco (six), Contrapasso Nuovo (six), and Furioso (six), depending on the numbers in attendance and general skill.

Both of the above are beginner-level classes.  No experience is needed and no partner is required, though gender balance is not guaranteed.  Clean, leather-soled flat shoes are recommended for both classes.

The classes are held at Dick Shea's (a capoeira studio), 104 W. 14th Street at 6th Avenue, New York City.  Ring buzzer #3, up 2 flights, first door on the right.  For more information, please email EAS.

The Regency class costs $18, or $12 for people attending for the first time; the Renaissance class costs $15.  Pay at the class.

Up She Goes!

After the flight of the Wright Brothers in 1903, society was increasingly fascinated with the new aeroplanes.  Dance music and dancers followed the fad, with quite a few "Aeroplane Waltzes" being composed and at least two different dances by that name written.  Philadelphia dance teacher and writer Albert W. Newman published his own Aeroplane Waltz in his 1914 manual, Dances of To-day, suggesting that it be danced to the 1910 song "Come Josephine in my Flying Machine," though any other fast waltz will do.  The chorus to the song begins:

Come Josephine in my flying machine,
Going up, she goes!  up she goes!

I've included a brief snippet of the song for reference; click to play:

Come Josephine Snippet

 

Mr. Newman's dance, which was dedicated to the wealthy Philadelphian William P. Baltz, is a simple sequence dance that was also included in the 1914 compilation Dance Mad published in St. Louis by F. Leslie Clendenen.  Both Newman and Clendenen considered the dance particularly appropriate for children; given how silly the song sounds to modern ears, this is probably still valid advice.  My experience is that few adults can perform it for long without laughing.

The dancers start side by side facing along line of dance, joined hands together in front.  Steps are given for the gentleman; the lady dances opposite.

Mr. Newman's Aeroplane Waltz
1b    Glide left foot forward (1); raise right foot in front (2); hop on left foot leaving right foot raised (3)
1b    Repeat same leading on right foot
(dancers face each other in normal closed ballroom position)
1b    Glide left foot to side (1); draw right foot up to it (2,3)
1b    Repeat glide, with a more exaggerated step and a pronounced dip
4b    Turn to the left or the right with the Long Boston or simply waltz

By waltz, Newman means the "new waltz" of the late 19th and early 20th century, with the partners stepping forward-side-close/back-side-close, rather than the older rotary waltz.  The Long Boston, also known as the One Step Boston or Cradle Boston, involves stepping back on one foot with a bend (1), rising up on the ball of that foot (2), and dropping the heel (3), then transferring the weight to the other foot with the same sequence; repeat.  Turning to the right (with the gentleman's left foot back)or left (with the right foot back) is accomplished by shifting the back foot slightly clockwise or counter-clockwise each time the weight is transferred.  This makes for a slow, four-bar pivot turn which doesn't travel, though it's possible to be aggressive about it and make a full turn every two bars.  But it is not a series of traveling pivots.

The dance is intended to simulate the experience of being in an aeroplane, which does nothing to reduce the giggle-factor.  Newman helpfully explains that

"This glide and dip represents the aeroplane going over a mountain top and down into the valley."

Clendenen adds that in the turn,

"the body should sway slightly from side to side, to represent the unsteadiness of the aeroplane."

and that the entire dance should be performed with "an extreme lightness and most gracefully."

The sheet music for "Come Josephine" is available online at the marvelous Lester S. Levy Collection at Johns Hopkins Unversity, for those who would like to match tune and dance.