There's a perception that doing the 1910s one-step is always a matter of stepping precisely once per beat, no more and no less. As can be seen in the half fade-away, which leaves one foot in the air for a beat, that isn't always strictly true. And while that sort of pause is unusual, the one-step also incorporates skipping steps of various kinds in moves like the polka skip and pony step, as described by the leading dancers of the era, Vernon and Irene Castle, and other dancing masters in dance manuals published in 1914.
The Polka Skip
The polka skip is recommended by the Castles in their manual, Modern Dancing, (New York, 1914) as "a little step which is quite new, very effective, and very easy." It's not actually all that new; the polka is more than a half-century old at that point, and the similar two-step was all the rage a decade earlier. But perhaps putting it into the one-step was an innovation in 1914.
The principle of the polka skip is quite easy: while walking along in the one-step (1-2-3-4), backing the lady, the gentleman gives the lady a "slight lift" on the upbeat and with his left foot initiates a pair of polka steps (step-close-step, step-close-step; 1&2-3&4) before continuing on with walking steps. The lead for the move is the combination of the slight lift on the upbeat and a certain amount of diagonal angling on the polka steps. The Castles describe it as "to one side" and the other, but that does not mean a 90-degree angle to line of dance. The dancers should keep moving along the line of dance in a zigzag pattern, angling toward the the leading foot of each polka step. Make sure it is a true polka step rather than a quick three-step shuffle; as the illustration at left is captioned, "You must really skip and not walk this step."
A variation incorporating exactly the walk-polka skip-walk sequence described by the Castles, though using "two-step" rather than "polka step" to described the step-close-step movements, was described in an earlier post.
The Pony Step
The pony step was described by the Castles in a short brochure entitled Three Modern Dances which was published by The Stewart Dry Goods Company's "Victrola Section" in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1914 and is described as simply backing the lady while "hopping slightly" on each step: step-hop-step-hop..., counted 1&2&... This travels briskly along the line of dance. The lead is simply to begin hopping after each step. The lady will miss the first hop but should pick up the pattern with the second one.
The idea of using step-hops in the one-step was picked up by other dancing masters. Albert Newman, in Dances of to-day, (Philadelphia, 1914) describes the same move as a "slight hop...without raising the foot from the floor...The hop is much condensed and the movement continued with much rapidity." Newman calls this move the Fish Walk and does not much approve of it:
It is not particularly graceful, but it is being performed by many who have the reputation of being quite expert dancers.
One objection to it is that it is most fatiguing when long continued.
Newman was significantly older than the Castles and so old-fashioned that his manual is illustrated with pictures of men in knee breeches. Interestingly, however, he notes in passing that this "little skip step" can also be performed while turning to the right. I believe that this refers to traveling turns, which would make it a gentle version of the turning step-hops used in the second part of the nineteenth-century schottische. It's possible it refers to the turn in place, making it a sort of rocking step-hop back and forth from one foot to the other, keeping the right foot forward while using the left foot to propel the dancers in a clockwise turn on the spot.
A final mention of a skipping step in the one-step comes in F. Leslie Clendenen's compilation manual, Dance Mad (St. Louis, 1914), where a description of a Castle Walk (a fast one-step where the dancers maintain a very straight posture and dance up on the ball of the foot) by I. C. Sampson includes the instruction to:
"Skip" eight steps, moving forward in a straight line.
The skip is a hop-step and 1, hop-step and 2, etc.
This version of skipping starts with a hop on the upbeat, rather like the "slight lift" that initiates the polka skip, but in practice, in a series of steps, it becomes indistinguishable from the step-hop version. Whether one starts with an upbeat hop or not does not strike me as terribly significant. Thought it may provide a slightly better lead for the lady, it also means the lead must be clear about following it with either step-hops or polka skips, since the upbeat hop alone could initiate either move.
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