Capering & Kickery

May 2013 Gig Calendar

Along with my usual monthly classes, this month I'll be calling for a Regency-era ball with an American theme and making a trip down south to teach waltz in North Carolina before making my way slowly back up the east coast.  The schedule as it stands now is below.  As usual, I add DJ gigs to my schedule somewhat randomly, so check back to see when those appear.

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

Tuesday, May 7th ~ Middletown, Connecticut
Civil War Era Dancing (Facebook event page)
Beginner-friendly lesson 8:15-9:30pm.  No costume needed.

Saturday, May 11th ~ Essex, Connecticut
The Sailing Masters 1814 Commemoration Ball (Facebook event page)
Formal early nineteenth century ball 8:00-11:00pm.  Period costume strongly encouraged!

Sunday, May 12th ~ New Haven, Connecticut
Swing & Blues Practicum for Yale Swing & Blues (Facebook group)
8:00-11:00pm  DJing swing AND blues from 8:00-9:30 and 9:30-11:00 respectively.

Tuesday, May 14th ~ Middletown, Connecticut
Jane Austen Era Dancing (Facebook event page)
Beginner-friendly lesson 8:15-9:30pm.  No costume needed.

Sunday, May 19th ~ Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina
Waltz workshops for Triangle Vintage Dance
3:00-4:00 Intermediate Rotary Waltz Variations (modern & late 19th century)
4:15-5:15 Intermediate Cross-Step Waltz Variations (turning grapevines!)
5:15-6:00 DJ'ed waltz time

Friday, May 24th ~ Hunt Valley, Maryland (Baltimore area)
Private event

Friday, May 31st ~ New Haven, Connecticut
Blues-Waltz Fusion Birthday Dance (Facebook event page)
8:00-11:30pm; email me for details.

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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: May 1-2, 6-17, 28-31
New York City: May 3-5
Richmond, Virginia: May 21-22
Baltimore area: May 24-26

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Coming in June:
I'll be spending a couple of weeks in Hartford, Connecticut on a special project!

Dance Card: Ocean View Amusement Park, 1917

The dance card at left (click to enlarge) is an interesting one: rather than being for a private event, it is from a public dance hall, the Dance Pavilion at the Ocean View Amusement Park, Norfolk, Virginia, which was one of the first amusement parks in the United States.  Sadly, I do not own this card myself; it slipped by on eBay and is now in unknown hands. 

The card is printed in monochrome, with a small picture of the Dance Pavilion.  No orchestra or dance leader is mentioned, only the name of the company that owned the amusement park and its owner, Otto Wells.  In keeping with its commercial nature, there is actually an advertisement on the inside.  On the back of the card is a note that "objectionable dancing" is "positively prohibited", an admonition which would be unnecessary at a private ball but a potential problem at an event open to the general public, and directions to the check room; ladies' retiring room; and gentlemen's smoking room.  The card is not for a specific evening's event, but instead is a generic dance program for any evening of the 1917 season. Written in pencil at the top of the front page is the date "Saturday, June 9, 1917".

There is no sign of any attachment point for a pencil.

New York, New York

The New York is another of the myriad "redowa and mazurka" variations given in M. B. Gilbert's Round Dancing (Portland, Maine, 1890).  Along with the Fascination, it is one of only a few variations credited to Indianapolis dancing master D. B. Brenneke.  It reappears among the material translated directly from Gilbert in [George] Washington Lopp's La Danse (Paris, 1903), where it is listed as a mazurka and again credited to Brenneke. 

Gilbert gives both this "New York" and another dance called "The New York", making it unclear whether the name refers to the city or whether it is simply a new version of the York.  Lopp lists it as La New York, along with two different dances called La Nouvelle York.  Lopp's translations suggest that the reference is to the city as much as to the popular dance.  That might make it something of a pun, since the New York does include the characteristic sliding sequence found in the first measure of the York. 

Contradicting this is the appearance of the dance in the addenda of the fifth edition of William B. De Garmo's The Dance of Society (New York, 1892), where it is listed simply as "The York, No. 2", which leads one to the new-version-of-the-York interpretation of the title.  De Garmo notes that "This method has become very popular."

The Independent York

The Independent York is an interesting variation on the original York, albeit one that was probably rarely danced outside a studio context.  I have found it in only two sources.  The earlier is Melvin Gilbert's Round Dancing (Portland, Maine, 1890), where it is uncredited, suggesting that Gilbert himself created it.  The later source is La Danse, by [George] Washington Lopp, published in Paris in 1903, much of which is simply a French translation of Gilbert.  It appears there as L'Indépendant York and is credited to Gilbert.  The sequence is identical in both sources.  Gilbert classifies it, as he does the York, under "redowa and mazurka"; Lopp lists it as a mazurka.

The Independent York is danced in 3/4 time, with four repeats of the rhythm "1&2-3 &1-2-3".  Lopp gives a metronome tempo of 144 beats per minute.  The dancers begin in a standard ballroom hold, the gentleman facing the nearest wall and the lady the center of the room. 

The complete sequence takes eight measures.  The first four measures are the same as the York itself:

1        Slide the left foot along line of dance
&2     Close with the right foot and slide the left foot again (chassé)
3        Close with the right foot, displacing left into a raised second position (cut)

&1     Hop on the right foot (optionally, clicking heels) and slide left to side
2        Close with the right foot, displacing left (cut)
3        Leap onto the left foot, crossing the line of dance and making a half-turn

(repeat all, reversing feet)

Above is the gentleman's footwork; the lady dances opposite.  The last &123 is a polka redowa step.  In four measures, one complete turn is made.

The second half of the Independent York repeats exactly the same steps.  What distinguishes it is that, in a very unusual move for a nineteenth century couple dance, the partners separate and turn away from each other, much like casting off as performed in early country dances.  For the first two measures, the dancers release their hold and move parallel to each other, curving away from each other slightly.  On the polka redowa in the second measure, they make a half turn, ending back to back and circling back against line of dance.  On the repeat, they turn halfway at the beginning of the first measure to slide sideways against line of dance, facing each other, then come together again on the polka redowa of the final measure.

The entire eight measures are then repeated as often as the dancers like.

The Independent York is not entirely leadable with a dancer who does not already know what to expect, though a skilled dancer with fast reflexes might figure it out visually if the York step pattern has already been well established.  But with a partner who already knows the move, the lead is easy: do a few normal York sequences to establish the pattern, then simply release the lady with a gentle push along the line of dance.

Since the Independent York travels against the line of dance and takes extra space to each side, the gentleman needs to take care before starting the move to have sufficient room to execute the variation without interfering with other couples on the floor.

A Village Dance Ritual

For those reading this later: please note the original date of this post!

Dance history inevitably skews toward the dances of the upper classes, since only their dancing masters had the leisure, literacy, and financial incentive to record what they were teaching.  Dances of the lower classes are often lost to us.  But in the age of video, we are fortunate that anthropological expeditions have been able to record the native dances of specific cultures, preserving them in their pristine form before they are corrupted by contact with outside cultural influences.

I have recently had the privilege of viewing two videos made in the late 1970s in which male villagers wearing costumes symbolic of their culture's masculine archetypes sing to younger villagers and dance in a ritual mating display responded to even by those entirely unaware of its cultural context.  The first recording was made on location with the dancers in their native area.  For the second, the dancers were transported to a Los Angeles television studio with a live audience for a performance broadcast on television on January 6, 1979.

We are quite lucky to have a dated record of that performance, since it was there, in an act of aggressive cultural appropriation, that the young members of the audience, egged on by the show's host, displayed their own simplified version of the dance.  Unaware of its social significance or the symbolism of the costumes, their superficial interpretation (really only a set of arm movements) focused only on the alphabetic recitative that forms a part of the chorus of the ritual song.  In a moment of stupendous arrogance, the show's host even suggests to the startled dancers that they incorporate this new version into their own performance.

This cultural faux pas would be only a minor footnote in dance history were it not for the national reach of the broadcast and the catchy beat of the song, which caused the simplified version to became a nationwide craze which has survived in various forms to this very day on the social dance floor as well as in non-dance venues.  It is vanishingly rare to have both an unadulterated version of a village dance as well as a recording of the moment in which it was whitewashed into a popular dance fad.

More than three decades after these videos were made, after much careful study, I am pleased to be able to finally present a reconstruction of the original chorus of this ritual village dance.