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.
That Dodworth saw the waltz as started in the usual position, with the gentleman's back to the center of the room, is confirmed in the second paragraph, where in the actual instructions for the move he states "with these two movements the gentleman places himself in front of the lady, so that his first leap may be backward". Obviously if the gentleman is placing himself in front of the lady, he wasn't there to start with!
I had always thought it a little odd that this waltz, unlike other dances of its era, was (in modern practice) generally begun with the gentleman's back to the line of dance. Why was this dance different from all the others?
In Dodworth's eyes, apparently, it wasn't.
Sadly, I have yet to find any other dancing master of the late nineteenth century suggesting this start, or specifying exactly how one stands before the waltz begins. The latter may well have fallen under the heading of "things everyone knows, so no need to explain them". It is mildly suggestive (though by no means definitive) that no other dancing master felt a need to describe a different starting position for this waltz. This void might imply that there was nothing different about it, and that people just accepted the awkwardness of the initial leap, or that they simply altered their starting position informally. Dodworth's starting method may have been his own innovation, though he does not credit himself with it, or a local development among New York City dancers that he simply observed and reported.
Having practiced Dodworth's start regularly with my students, I find it much easier than trying to make a quarter turn and a clean leap along line of dance on the first count, and more aesthetically pleasing than starting with the gentleman's back to the line of dance.
A final note:
The same technique, changing the "leap, cut" to "slide, close-with-weight", can be applied to starting the "glide" versions of this waltz and the hesitation waltz of the 1910s. The same basic combination is the building block of 1880s waltz variations such as the Gavotte Glide and Le Metropole (as published by Dodworth's contemporary, M. B. Gilbert) and the Five-Step Boston described by Philadelphia dancing master Albert W. Newman in 1914.
It also works nicely in the original leaping version with the waltz-galop in 2/4 or 6/8; the leap and cut are done on the two strong beats of a measure. The first and third measures of the 6/8 Pasadena, published in the 1900 edition of Dodworth's manual, are a variation of this start with an initiating hop added in.
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