Capering & Kickery

Doin' the Lambeth Walk, 1938

The Lambeth Walk was the first of the "romping" sequence dances that became popular in England between the first and second World Wars.  Referring to a particular street in the Lambeth section of London, the song and dance number originated in the successful 1937 musical Me and My Girl.  When Noel Gay's music was published with dance instructions included, a fad was born which remains a living tradition today.  The dance turns up in all sorts of odd places, and the song is still traditional in the Pearly community of charitable organizations.  A quick search on the term "Lambeth walk" will turn up plenty of metaphorical usages along with references to the street, which still exists, though mostly rebuilt after being bombed in during World War II.

The musical itself has been revived several times, though the Broadway choreography of the Lambeth Walk scene in the 1980s revival was only loosely inspired by the original dance.  Follow that link for the wonderful performance by Robert Lindsay and Maryann Plunkett, and to get a a feel for the tune.

Simonet's Parisian Quadrilles, Third Set, c1820

There are many, many sets of early nineteenth-century quadrilles, most of which are simply new music for the First Set or include only minor variations on the standard figures.  While I don't normally publish reconstructions of the figures for random sets of quadrille music, this set is of particular interest because a high-quality recording of it is available on The Regency Ballroom CD by Spare Parts.

The music is from the first series of T. Simonet's Fashionable Parisian Quadrilles, Performed by the Bands of Messrs. Michau, Musard and Collinet, with their appropriate Figures as danced at Almack's, the Argyll Rooms and at the Bath & Cheltenham Assemblies.  The manual is undated, but in February, 1823, the fashionable magazine La Belle Assemblée reported the publication of "Nos. 42 and 43" of the series, commenting positively:

This is really an elegant little work both in its contents and its typography.  We recognize many of the quadrilles as being great favorites in the French metropolis, and the whole of them are composed in a very characteristic and original style.

The typography of this edition is certainly eye-popping by modern standards of design; the front cover alone features a dozen different fonts.  The first series includes only sets one through six and presumably is dated somewhat earlier.  

Starting the Waltz, Dodworth Style

Sometimes very brief instructions provide more information about ballroom practice than one would expect. 

Speaking of the "new waltz" of the late nineteenth century, New York City dancing master Allen Dodworth wrote in  his 1885 manual, Dancing and its relations to education and social life (link is to the 1900 edition), the following suggestion about starting the waltz:

To begin the waltz with the leap is somewhat awkward, and for that reason many dancers adopt the following excellent expedient:

Immediately upon taking position for waltzing, the gentleman slides the left foot, occupying two of the three notes of the measure; at the third, a change is made from the left to the right foot, leaving the left elevated for the leap which follows; with these two movements the gentleman places himself in front of the lady, so that his first leap may be backward. At the same time the lady makes a very short slide with the right, then a change to the left foot, raising the right preparatory to the first forward leap, which occurs simultaneously with the gentleman's backward leap.

It must not be forgotten that a waltz is written in phrases of two bars each, the lady beginning each phrase with the right, the gentleman with the left foot; as the foregoing method of starting requires but one bar, it is necessary to wait for the second bar of a phrase before beginning.

The move is easy enough to reconstruct; the dancers wait for one bar (three counts), then the dancers slide their first foot (gentleman's left, lady's right) (1-2) and cut with their second foot (3), turning a quarter clockwise so that the lady faces line of dance and the gentleman has his back to line of dance.  They are then ready with their first foot (still elevated from the cut) to leap along the line of dance for the first step of the waltz. 

But Dodworth gives us more here than just the dance instructions.  Offering a fix reveals what the problem was that he thought needed one.

Dodworth's Bolero

The Bolero, or Dodworth Schottisch, is a real oddity in mid-nineteenth century American dance.  For starters, it is neither a Bolero in the sense of the Spanish dance nor, technically, a schottische in either music or dance pattern.  It's a weird little schottische-mazurka mashup created by Allen Dodworth himself, and I can't imagine it was ever danced outside his own dance studio.  Actually, I'm not sure it was ever danced, period, since some aspects of the dance seem rather poorly thought out.  But I find it oddly intriguing and no stranger than the five-step waltz, which did catch on to some extent.  It's an interesting example of early creativity in developing new couple dances before the  mid-nineteenth century repertoire achieved some degree of standardization.

The sheet music for the Bolero, "Dodworth's New Schottisch", was published in New York in 1850.  Covers varied; along with the one pictured at left (click to enlarge), courtesy of the 19th-Century American Sheet Music collection at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, there is one without the fancy scrollwork border in the Library of Congress's Music for the Nation collection, and I have a copy of one other with a different border printed in red.  The printing is exactly the same in each other than the cover decoration or lack of it.

(Edited 6/12/14 to add: There is another copy with a green scrollwork border at the Lester Levy Sheet Music Collection at Johns Hopkins.) 

Baden-Baden Polka

The "Baden-Baden Polka" is another polka contra dance that appears in both Elias Howe's Complete Ball-Room Hand Book (Boston, 1858) and his American Dancing Master and Ball-Room Prompter (Boston, 1862).  I have no other sources for the dance, which is not unusual; my suspicion is that most of the contras in his books were Howe's own calls rather than any sort of universally accepted choreography. 

Howe seems to have been willing to put contra dance or quadrille figures to just about any piece of music. He presumably named this contra after the "Baden Baden Polka", generally attributed to Philippe Musard, though some music lists him only as the arranger, rather than the composer.

It is not a particularly unusual or challenging contra dance, but it is a good example of a "generic" American contra with very popular figures and a bit of polka attached.

CD Review: The Pride & Prejudice Collection Volume II

After my experience with the first Pride & Prejudice Collection from the Pemberley Players I wasn't in a big hurry to get their second CD, The Pride & Prejudice Collection Volume II, which is subtitled "The Jane Austen Dance Kit".  Once again, the music is beautiful and the playing expert...and the selection of tunes bizarre (though better than the first collection) and the repeat structures unusable for actual historical dancing without modification.  Since I knew what to expect this time, I was not as disappointed as before, but I remain exasperated at the gap between the advertising and the actual music.  This is a nice collection for modern English country dancers doing dances modern-style from a wide range of eras, but it is not by any stretch of the imagination a "Jane Austen Dance Kit".

CD Review: The Civil War Grand Military Ball

The Civil War Grand Military Ball dates back to 2007, but I only recently encountered it while looking for new nineteenth century dance music.  It is the fourth recording by the Tennessee-based 52nd Regimental String Band and the first to consist specifically of dance music.

The most immediately noticeable difference between this album and most of my others is that most of the tracks include vocals, which may or may not be to everyone's taste for dancing.  I have mixed feelings about it, myself.  I prefer my nineteenth-century dance music instrumental rather than vocal, but with a couple of notable exceptions (see below) I enjoyed the singing and was amused to realize that the two songs ("Polly Wolly Doodle" and "Kemo Kimo") in one medley are ones I remember singing versions of as a little girl growing up in Texas.