Capering & Kickery

April 2013 Gig Calendar

April will be a crazy travel month for me, flitting between Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New York repeatedly over the course of the month.  The schedule as it stands now is below.  I tend to add DJ gigs to my schedule at the relative last minute, so check back to see when those appear.

Tuesday, April 2nd ~ Middletown, Connecticut
Civil War Era Dancing (Facebook event page)
Beginner-friendly lesson 8:15-9:30pm.  No costume needed.

Friday, April 5th ~ New York City
Friday Night Blues
7:00pm-2:00am.  DJing blues for some part of 10:00pm-2:00am.

Saturday, April 6th ~ New York City
The Gentlemanly Art of Tying the Cravat (Facebook event page)
2:00-4:00pm.  Not a dance workshop, but of interest to Regency/1820s reenactors and costumers!  An overview and how-to session on men's neckwear in the first few decades of the 19th century.  Limited to twenty people; sign up in advance!  For The New York Nineteenth Century Society.

Sunday, April 7th ~ New York City
Regency Dance Workshop (Facebook event page)
Beginner-friendly lesson 3:00-5:00pm

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

Friday-Sunday, April 12-14 and Saturday-Sunday, April 20-21 ~ Simsbury, Connecticut
Pride & Prejudice at the Theatre Guild of Simsbury (Facebook event page)
Community theatre production for which I choreographed the dances.

Sunday, April 14th ~ Middletown, Connecticut
A Regency Tea Dance (Facebook event page)
2:00-5:00pm.  Costumes encouraged!

Saturday & Sunday, April 20-21 ~ Mansfield, Massachusetts (Boston area)
New England Folk Festival (Facebook event page)
Saturday, 11:00am-12:20pm: Unusual Variations for Cross-Step Waltz (plus open waltz time!)
Sunday, 3:00-4:05pm: Introduction to Ragtime Foxtrot
Sunday, 4:15-5:15pm: Introduction to Renaissance Dance

Tuesday, April 23rd ~ Cambridge, Massachusetts (Boston area)
Bluesy Tuesy
7:30-11:00pm.  DJing a double set of blues from 8:30-11:00.

Friday, April 26th ~ Brooklyn, New York
1880s Fancy Dress (Masquerade) Ball (Facebook event)
for The New York Nineteenth Century Society as part of The New York City 19th Century Extravaganza.

Sunday, April 28th ~ Middletown, Connecticut
Nineteenth-Century Waltz Workshop (scroll down the page) (Facebook event)
Beginner-friendly lesson 3:00-5:00pm.

Sunday, April 28th ~ New Haven, Connecticut
Swing & Blues Practicum for Yale Swing & Blues (Facebook group)
8:00-11:00pm  DJing blues 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 Haven & Middletown, Connecticut: April 1-4, 8-12, 28-30
New York City: April 5-6, 26-27
Boston: April 20-21 (at NEFFA), 23-24

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Coming in May:
The Sailing Masters 1814 Commemoration Ball! (tickets available now!)

Dance Cards: Solon, Maine, 1918-1919

Pictured at left (click to enlarge) are two dance cards which I purchased as a set.  The first is clearly as the card as the Programme from the Annual Alumni Ball of Solon High School held on June 23, 1918.  Music was provided by Lyon's Orchestra, and the location was Caratunk Hall.  There are several Solons in the United States, but the hall name enabled me to trace this card to a tiny town in western Maine. 

Caratunk Hall, built in 1840, was named after the Caratunk Falls, and was standing at least through 2005 as the "Solon Flea Market".  The card is printed in color, and a green cord and tassel for an attached pencil are still present.

The Norma Waltz and the Newman Family

In A Complete Practical Guide to Modern Society Dancing (Philadelphia, 1903), dancing master Albert W. Newman, billed as the President of Newman's Normal School and Academy of Dancing, published a short waltz sequence that fits neatly into the late-nineteenth-century development of what would eventually come to be called hesitation waltz. 

The Norma Waltz uses the same elements as appeared variously in a trio of dances described in M. B. Gilbert's Round Dancing (Portland, Maine, 1890): the Military Waltz, Le Metropole, and the Gavotte Glide: the sideways slide and close; the step (or leap) and hop, and the turning waltz.

The sequence itself is very simple.  The dancers start in normal closed ballroom position, with the gentleman facing the nearest wall and the lady facing the center of the room.  Steps below are given for the gentleman; the lady dances opposite.

Norma Waltz (8 bars)
1b    Slide left foot to second (1), slowly close right foot to third (2, 3)
1b    Repeat slide and close
    (release joined hands and open up side by side in "military" position)
1b    Step left foot forward to fourth (1), raise right foot in front (2), hop on left (3)
1b    Repeat, stepping and hopping on right foot with left foot raised
    (gentleman swings in front of lady, his back to line of dance; take waltz position)
4b    Turning waltz
    (underturn on fourth bar to end with gentleman facing the wall ready to restart) 

Newman was a consistent partisan of the "new waltz" of the late nineteenth century rather than the older style, though he describes it as a series of steps rather than the lively leaps and cuts of the late nineteenth century.  One may presume that this is the waltz intended.

The only instruction for music is, simply, "Waltz music".  A "Norma Waltz", attributed to Johann Strauss, was published in the nineteenth century, but I've been unable to locate it on any official list of Strauss' works.  It appeared in an 1855 music catalog, and period sheet music for it survives, as well as in modern settings.  A digital interpretation may be heard here.  I am not particularly convinced that the Norma Waltz sequence is necessarily associated with this piece, though, given the vagueness of the music note.

While I've taught the Norma Waltz as an introductory hesitation waltz, I probably wouldn't have bothered writing it up if not for the interesting window it opened on the Newman family in the nineteenth and early twentieth century.

Traveling Step for Reels: the extended Kemshóole

Along with the standard traveling step for early nineteenth-century Scotch reels, the Kemshóole, Scottish dancing master Francis Peacock, in Sketches relative to the history and theory, but more especially to the practice of dancing (Aberdeen, 1805), also describes a possible variation:

...if you wish to vary the step, in repeating the measure, you may introduce a very lively one, by making a smart rise, or gentle spring, forward, upon the right foot, placing the left foot behind it: this you do four times, With this difference, that instead of going a fourth time behind with the left foot, you disengage it from the ground, adding a hop to the last spring. You finish the promenade, by doing the same step, beginning it with the left foot.

This is very much like an extra-lively version of the "four-slide galop" of the later nineteenth century: spring-close-spring-close-spring-close-spring-hop.  Dancers should be careful not to turn it into a simple shuffling along. 

As in the basic Kemshóole, lead with the shoulder matching the lead foot.

While Peacock recommends this step for the "promenade", the reeling (hey) part of a reel, this extended Kemshóole actually does not always work as well as the regular version.

For a non-progressive reel of three with all three dancers returning to their original places, four extended Kemshóole steps work splendidly and feel graceful to the dancers.  The four changes of place match up nicely with the longer step.  It works equally well in a "corner reel", such as those found in London dancing master Thomas Wilson's first new reel of six.

For a progressive reel of three, however, there are five changes of place, and the dancers must move further on each step, and the extended Kemshóole becomes rather awkward; the dancers will end up taking tight curves on the ends in mid-step.

For a reel of four, it doesn't work at all.  There are six changes of place, resulting in faster and sharper turns, and there just isn't enough forward motion without the extra momentum provided by the hops in the standard Kemshóole.

Despite its limited utility, it adds some pleasant variation to a figure which doesn't allow for much.  Lately I have been encouraging its use whenever practical.