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.
Since quite a few versions of the "standard" Lancers exist, I've used the "Lancers, as danced at the present time" given by Dodworth himself in the same manual, rather than his "Original Lancers" or any of the many other minor variants found in different manuals or the older versions of earlier in the century. Likewise, although the New York Lancers is found in at least one other source, The Perfect Art of Modern Dancing (Butterick Publishing, London & New York, 1894), I have accepted Dodworth's claim to the dance and considered his version the authoritative one. I've also included a few comparisons to the Saratoga Lancers, another late-nineteenth-century variation which is more a style of dancing the usual figures than a new choreography like Dodworth's.
First, the standard Lancers as given by Dodworth:
Lancers,as danced at the present time: First Figure (8b + 24bx4)8b Salutations to partners and then to corners
4b Head couples forward and back
4b Head couples turn opposites by two hands, returning to places
4b Head couples cross over, first couple passing through the second couple (drawers/tiroirs)
4b Head couples cross back, second couple passing through the first couple (drawers/tiroirs)
8b All balance to corners: forward four steps to right shoulders, back, two-hand turn
The figure is repeated three more times; on the second iteration, the head couples perform the figure but during the cross over (drawers/tiroir) figure, the second couple passes between the first to start. On the third and fourth iterations, the side couples perform the figure, with the third couple passing through first and then the fourth couple doing so the last time through.
This is a very typical version of the Lancers as danced from the mid-nineteenth century onward. Now let's take a look at Dodworth's choreography:
New York Lancers: First Figure (8b + 24bx4)
[8b Salutations to partners and then to corners; not included but standard practice]
Head couples turn to
the right, side couples turn to the left (=”first diagonal”)
4b Right hands
across halfway (ends with head couples on sides, sides at heads)
4b All forward to same couple and back, opening into square again
Head couples turn to
the right, side couples turn to the left, continuing around the set
4b Right hands
across halfway (ends with all couples halfway around)
4b All forward to same couple and back, opening into square again
8b All balance
to corners: forward four steps to right shoulders, back, two-hand turn
The figure is repeated once, bringing all back to places. [Not included in the original instructions: repeat twice more, this time on the "second diagonal" with the side couples turning to the right and heads to the left to begin and all couples progressing in the opposite direction around the set.]
There's a superficial similarity between this and the original in the forward & back figures and in the final eight-bar balance to corners, but Dodworth makes several major changes:
(1) As in the Saratoga Lancers, the figure is not danced on the straight axes of the set but rather on diagonal lines between neighboring couple. In the Saratoga, however, the reorientation of the couples is the only change made in the figure; all the actual moves are the same.
(2) Apparently taking a page from the noted English dance teacher Mrs. Nicholas Henderson, the couples actually progress entirely around the set in two iterations of the figure and there are repeated figures within the overall figure itself. The dance pattern is effectively "aabaab" rather than the "abcabc" of the original.
(3) The use of a right hands across (right hand star, in modern terminology) halfway for couples to change places is unusual in a nineteenth-century quadrille.
Reconstruction notes
Because Dodworth doesn't give any information regarding salutations, I have added the standard bows to partners and corners at the beginning.
Likewise, for most of the figures he says nothing about the number of repeats, so dancing this figure four times rather than two is somewhat speculative, added by me entirely for the sake of symmetry. Limiting it to the first two iterations would be entirely justifiable.
Dodworth also does not specify on the "forward and back" moves whether the couples are moving toward the couple with whom they have just changed places or whether all the couples are advancing straight into the center. I prefer the former interpretation because it echoes the change of places on the diagonal, but the latter is also a reasonable interpretation.
Figures two through five of the New York Lancers will be examined in future posts in this series.
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