Capering & Kickery

The New York Lancers, Figure 5

This is the fifth and final post in a series covering the individual figures of Allen Dodworth's New York Lancers, published in Dancing and its relations to education and social life in 1885, and comparing them side-by-side with the figures of Dodworth's standard Lancers.  The earlier posts in the series, covering figures one through four, may be found here, here, here, and here.

The New York Lancers, Figure 4

This is the fourth post a series covering the individual figures of Allen Dodworth's New York Lancers, published in Dancing and its relations to education and social life in 1885, and comparing them side-by-side with the figures of Dodworth's standard Lancers.  The earlier posts in the series may be found here, here, and here.

The New York Lancers, Figure 3

This is the third post in a series covering the individual figures of Allen Dodworth's New York Lancers, published in Dancing and its relations to education and social life in 1885, and comparing them side-by-side with the figures of Dodworth's standard Lancers.  The first post in the series, with some background and a discussion of Figure 1, may be found here.  Figure 2 may be found here.

The New York Lancers, Figure 2

This is the second post in my little series covering the individual figures of Allen Dodworth's New York Lancers, published in Dancing and its relations to education and social life in 1885, and comparing them side-by-side with the figures of Dodworth's standard Lancers.  The first post in the series, with some background and a discussion of Figure 1, may be found here.

The New York Lancers, Figure 1

I recently had the opportunity to reconstruct and teach a Lancers (Quadrille) variant created by New York dancing master Allen Dodworth and published in his lengthy Dancing and its relations to education and social life in 1885 as "Dodworth's New York Lancers."

The figures are easy ones which make a pleasant change of pace for those accustomed to dancing the popular standard Lancers figures or their Saratoga Lancers variant.  They are also the same length as those of the standard Lancers, though sometimes fewer repeats are needed, so they can be used with many existing Lancers recordings.  I thought it would thus be interesting to take a look at the New York Lancers figure by figure and side by side with the usual figures to see exactly how Dodworth went about creating his version. 

Royale gyneska with me, madam?

Sometimes while doing dance research, I come across something so amusing I have to share it.   This time it's a blurb from The New York Times on October 5, 1924 about an international conclave of dancing masters held in Paris which voted on the supposed dance of the year.  This was a matter of sufficient import to warrant delivery of the results to the Times by special cable:

[The five-step], which received thirty-eight approving votes, is a mixture of the waltz and one-step and, as can be judged, somewhat involved.  The huppa-huppa, on the other hand, is neo-Chilian, being a backward glide which brings the partners in close contact.

The winner of the third place was the royale gyneska...