I am not a big collector of dance cards, but occasionally I buy one or get given one as a gift. I plan to post them occasionally as examples of the order of dances at actual balls of their eras.
This dance card, for a "Public Installation" of the Improved Order of Red Men, is dated January 6, 1881, and is divided between the a ceremony for a fraternal order and the following ball. (Click to enlarge the front cover image at left.)
The Improved Order of Red Men is still in existence and claims a history going back as far as 1765 and a descent from the Sons of Liberty who perpetrated, in Mohawk disguise, the Boston Tea Party in 1773. The current name dates from 1834. Details of the order's history may be found on its website. Two of the three "tribes" (local organizations) listed seem still to be in existence, though perhaps not in the same cities: Red Cloud (Indianapolis) and Minnewa (Philadelphia). Polmete seems to have vanished.
The card is mildly unusual in opening vertically rather than horizontally; the pictures at left are, left to right, the inside top, inside bottom, and back of the card. (Click to enlarge the images.)
The material is an off-white and now discolored cardstock printed with red ink. A scrap of cord formerly used to hold a pencil remains attached to the lower half. It seems to have been unused; no names of dance partners are filled in.
The ceremony on the inside top half of the card is not of direct interest to me as a dancer, though I'm amused that it lists songs by the "No Name Glee Club." The bottom half of the card, however, is a good example of a dance list of the 1880s, when the dances were a standard Victorian mix of couple dances and quadrilles. The card lists a grand march and then three waltzes, two schottisches, one polka, a mazourka, and a varsouvienne (a waltz variation) as couple dances interspersed with no fewer than five quadrilles: one listed simply as "quadrille," two as "quadrille-plain," one as "waltz-quadrille," and the final "Home Sweet Home Quadrille."
The nature of the mazurka listed is unclear: it could have been the original mazurka danced freestyle in quadrille formation but seems more likely to have been a couple dance, with the dancers perhaps doing the Cellarius (mazurka waltz) or some of the numerous other mazurka-styled waltz variations of the mid-19th century (redowa, polka mazurka, polka redowa, La Koska, etc.)
The quadrille and quadrilles-plain could well have all been repetitions of the first set of quadrilles with different music used for each, or they could have been some of the numerous variations on the quadrille theme published over the course of the century. In the latter case, the figures might well have been called by a preceptor.
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