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.
Moving on to Figure 2, here's the standard Lancers as given by Dodworth:
Lancers,as danced at the present time: Second Figure (8b + 24bx4)8b Wait
4b Head couples forward and back
4b Head gentlemen hand ladies into the center back to back (face partner) (2b) & salutations (2b)
4b Head couples forward and back to partner (balancé)
4b Head couples turn two hands bringing ladies back to places
Side couples separate to join the nearest head couples, joining hands in lines of four along the top and bottom of the set.
8b Lines forward and back; all turn partners two hands to place
The figure is repeated three more times. The second iteration is exactly the same as the first, but on the third and fourth iterations the side couples perform the first four movements and the head couples separate to join the side couples and form lines on the sides of the set.
Although there is some variation in the form of the balancé to partners (some sources suggests a chassé right and left rather than moving forward and back), this is once again a fairly typical mid-nineteenth-century Lancers figure. Dodworth gets a little confused on the formation of lines; his instructions first say that the heads split and then note that in the first and second iterations the sides split, with the heads doing so the third and fourth times. Other mid-century sources confirm that the sides divide first.
Dodworth's choreography:
New York Lancers: Second Figure (8b + 24bx4)
[8b Wait; not included but standard practice]
4b Head couples forward (2b) and salutations to opposite
(2b)
These four turn individually to face their corners, taking inside hands with their opposites.
4b Salute corners (2b), then move individually to stand next to corners (2b)
This forms lines of four along the sides of the set; take hands along lines.
8b Lines forward and back; all turn partners two hands to place
8b Hands eight half round and back
The repeats for this figure are not specified; it could be done twice, with the heads leading once and the sides leading once, or four times, with the heads leading the first two times and the sides the second two. My personal preference is for the older rule, meaning two repeats only since otherwise the first/second and third/fourth repetitions would be exact duplicates of each other. But since Dodworth gives four repeats in his standard Lancers, despite the duplication, I've gone with that in the New York Lancers as well.
Once again, Dodworth keeps a signature figure (the lines of four) from the original but tweaks how it is achieved. I think this version is actually more elegant than the original for three reasons:
(1) The movement into lines has assigned music and is performed by the couples which are already in action, rather than being something done by the inactive couples solely to get them in place for the next figure.
(2) There is less forward-and-back monotony than in the original, in which the active couples go forward and back three times per iteration!
(3) I like the flow from the two-hand turn with partners into the whole set circling to the left.
Reconstruction notes
I have added the standard eight-bar wait at the beginning of the figure and once again am speculating on the repeats, taking his standard Lancers as my model.
It's not entirely clear whether the salutations to corners are returned by the corners; my mild preference is to have them done only by the active couples as part of their continuous chain of actions in the first sixteen bars of the figure. Having the side couples return them is not unreasonable, however, and possibly unavoidable, since people instinctively return salutations whether they are told to or not.
Figures three through five of the New York Lancers will be examined in future posts in this series.
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