Despite the name, the Castle Glide is a short one-step sequence which, despite its name, was composed not by Vernon and Irene Castle, but by Philadelphia dancing master Albert W. Newman. It appeared in Newman's 1914 manual Dances of To-Day. Newman called it "quite a jolly dance and easy to execute".
The Castle Glide features the galop step I discussed last week in its classic nineteenth-century version of slide-close-slide-close-slide-close-slide, with a half-turn on the final slide, repeated for a full turn overall. Note that there's no hop, either initiating or on the turn! It also includes the spin turn (explained here) in Newman's exit-with-a-dip variation.
"Easy to execute" is a bit of an understatement; the Castle Glide is very, very easy and well-suited to beginning dancers. It makes a particularly good practice sequence for galops and spin turns. Its only even slightly weird characteristic is that it is ten bars long, which is not terribly musical. Newman says to repeat it, which makes it a slightly better twenty bars, but it would need a total of four times through to line up nicely on the typical eight-bar musical phrases.
If the Castle Glide is being used as a one-step variation rather than a sequence dance and not immediately repeated, one can simply walk out of it with four more steps to at least get onto a four-bar half-phrase.
The sequence begins with the dancers in a normal closed ballroom hold, the gentleman moving forward along the line of dance and the lady backward. The gentleman's steps (L=left, R=right) are given below; the lady dances opposite.
The Castle Glide
1234 Forward four steps (L, R, L, R)
1&2&3&4 Four-slide galop with half-turn (LRLRLRL)
1&2&3&4 Four-slide galop "over elbows" with half-turn (RLRLRLR)
1234 1 Five counts of spin turn (back L, forward R, back L, forward R, back L)
234 Dip back on R foot, rise and shift weight forward to L foot, walk forward on R foot
The spin turn, dip, and walk out should between them make up a full rotation, or close to, if the dancers are to continue along the line of dance. That isn't particularly difficult, but doing the spin turn in a corner of the room will make it even easier.
The most important transition in the dance is from the second galop sequence into the spin turn.
There is no specific music for this dance; Newman suggested only 2/4 ragtime music a bit slower than the peak one-step tempo of the Castle Walk.
Enjoy!
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