Capering & Kickery

December 2012 Gig Calendar

Things are calming down for the end of the year here!  Just a few gigs this month, though I'm still happy to give private lessons betwixt and between:

Saturday, December 1st ~ New York City
Cross-Step/Box-Step Fusion Waltz Workshop (Facebook event page)
4:00-6:00pm Beginner-friendly lesson

Sunday, December 2nd ~ New York City
Regency Dance Workshop (Facebook event page)
Beginner-friendly lesson 2:00-4:00pm

Friday, December 7th ~ New Haven, Connecticut
Blues-Waltz Fusion Dance for Yale Swing & Blues (Facebook event page)
8:00pm-12:00midnight  Brief beginner waltz lesson (cross-step) then DJing blues/waltz

Tuesday, December 11th ~ Middletown, Connecticut
Jane Austen Era Dancing (Facebook event page)
Beginner-friendly lesson 8:15-9:30pm.  No costume needed.

Saturday, December 15th ~ Cambridge, Massachusetts (Boston area)
Jane Austen's Birthday Dance (Facebook event page)
2:30-5:30pm.  An afternoon of early 19th century dance with live music.

Saturday, December 15th ~ Cambridge, Massachusetts (Boston area)
Holiday Waltz Party (Facebook event page)
7:00-10:30pm.  Waltz lesson & DJing.

Sunday, December 16th ~ New Haven, Connecticut
Swing & Blues Practicum for Yale Swing & Blues (Facebook group)
8:00-11:00pm  DJing the blues segment from 9:30-11:00.

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I am available for private lessons in Connecticut or on my various travels; during the latter, you must provide the dance space.  Email me directly if you would like to schedule a private lesson.

New York: December 1-2
New Haven & Middletown, Connecticut: December 4-11, 16-31
Boston: December 12-15

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Coming in January: picking things up again after the holidays with workshops in New York City and Connecticut and some blue DJing in Boston!

The Castle Glide

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!

Late 19th Century Jig-Time Dances: The Pasadena

The Pasadena, a would-be replacement for the two-step, appears in the 1900 reprint of New York dancing master Allen Dodworth's 1885 tome, Dancing and its relations to education and social life, but can be dated back to at least 1898.  It appears to have been created as a dancing school dance, as Dodworth's nephew, T. George Dodworth, discussed in his introduction to the new edition of his uncle's manual:

In order to bring the work up to date, I have been requested to write an introduction which will include a list of dances that have come into fashion since my uncle's book was originally published.

As a matter of fact, however, society dances have decreased, rather than increased, during this interval. When this work first appeared most of the round dances described in its pages were fashionable. But Dame Fashion is fickle, and, owing to some unaccountable change in taste, we now have only the Two Step, the Waltz, occasionally a Saratoga Lancers, and the Cotillion. In the dancing-schools the old dances are still taught, but with numerous new combinations, which are composed to improve the pupil and keep alive the interest. From these combinations we have the Tuxedo Lancers, the Amsterdam, Gavotte der Kaiserin, Minuet de la Cour (for four persons), and the Pasedena.