(Seventh in a series of posts discussing and analyzing the Swedish dances. The first post may be found here.)
While never a prominent format, the Swedish dances became enough of a success to outlast their originator. In the second edition of his Companion to La Terpsichore Moderne (London, c1830), dancing master J. S. Pollock, “Professor of Dancing, late of Paris” gives figures for many of the unusual country dance formats originating in the late 1810s and early 1820s, among them three different sets of figures for Swedish dances.
Pollock describes the Swedish dances as being suited to either a lady between two gentlemen or a gentleman between two ladies, though his instructions are invariably for the latter configuration. His diagram suggests a set of trios all of the same configuration. Interestingly, Pollock explicitly states that “no change of places is to be made either at the top or bottom of the same,” meaning at the ends of the set. This means that a right-hand dancer going down the set would become a left-hand dancer coming back up, a minor complication which Pollock was either indifferent to or regarded as a feature.
Pollock’s three dances, each thirty-two bars in length, are not given associated tune-names, only numbers, consistent with his descriptions of other types of dances. Any tune of the proper length might be used. My reconstructions are as follows:
No. 1
8b Hands six round and back again
8b The two top ladies and opposite gentleman cross right hands around then left hands back
8b The other three the same
8b All six advance and retire and pass through
No. 2
8b All six advance and retire twice
8b The top two ladies and opposite gentlemen hands three round and back
8b The other three the same
8b All six advance and retire and pass through
No. 3
8b Hands six round and back again
8b Top gentleman swing the lady opposite on the right with his right hand, then the lady opposite on the left with his left
8b Bottom gentleman the same with the top ladies
8b All six advance and retire and pass through
Reconstruction notes
The issues of reconstructing passing through in Chivers’ Swedish dances were discussed in my second post in this series. For Pollock’s Swedish dances, one could use either version, but I lean toward the simpler one without the taking hands or the setting after passing through. Those details appear to have faded with Chivers; I have never seen them elsewhere, and they seem a bit elaborate to be simply assumed.
Pollock opens his second dance with “All six advance and retire”, but to fit the music, it must be done twice. Chivers was also inconsistent about mentioning this in his instructions.
A notable characteristic of Pollock’s dances is their use of figures which distinguish between the top trio (nearest the head of the set) and bottom trio, a distinction never made by Chivers. His third dance is also the earliest appearance I have found of the center dancer interacting with diagonal opposites in sequence (right-hand opposite then left-hand opposite).
The next appearance of a Swedish dance that I have found is in manuscript form in Scotland about a decade later, in Frederick Hill’s Book of Quadrilles & Country Dances &c &c., dated March 22, 1841. Hill gives both a small diagram and the note “Requires two Gentlemen to one Lady”, followed by a single set of dance instructions:
The first Lady turns the Gentleman opposite on her right with her right, & then the Gent on her left with her left. The second or opposite L turns the Gent opposite in the same manner and retires to her place. Six hands full round _ advance & retire change sides.
The instructions appear to be simply a slight variation on Pollock’s third dance above, with the genders reversed and the hands six round altered to move only one direction then placed later in the dance:
8b First (top) lady turns right-hand opposite gent by right hands, then left-hand opposite gent by left hands
8b Second (bottom) lady does the same
8b Hands six and circle completely around to the left
8b All six advance and retire, then pass through
This produces a thirty-two bar dance. For the pass through (“change sides” in the mansucript), I would have the dancers simply pass through by right shoulders.
It’s also possible to interpret Hill’s instructions as implying that the two ladies move simultaneously rather than sequentially, producing a twenty-four bar dance as follows:
4b Each lady turns the right-hand opposite gentleman by right hands
4b Each lady turns the left-hand opposite gentleman by left hands
8b Hands six and circle completely around to the left
8b All six advance and retire, then pass through
This is noticeably livelier, with four dancers moving at any given moment during the first eight bars of the dance, and suggests an interesting choreographic link with another dance. Variations on the idea of both center dancers interacting simultaneously with their right and then left opposite diagonals are also the most characteristic figure of the mid-century American dance called the Rustic Reel (as described in a previous Kickery article), a twenty-four-bar trio-facing-trio dance found in American dance manuals as early as 1841. While the Rustic Reel’s descent from the Swedish dances was always suggested by its unusual trio format, Pollock and Hill’s instructions provide the most compelling evidence yet that the American dance is a very close descendent of the earlier English genre of Swedish dances.
Comments