A while back, a friend sent me a flyer and the dance program for a "Regency ball" (the organizers' term, not mine) in their area. I'm not going to tell you where, or when, or who the caller was, because there are plenty of similar events going on all over (at least) the English-speaking world. But I am going to tell you one thing:
This program is utter bullshit.
Yeah, that's some strong language. Sorry about that. But let me show you the program, which they helpfully put online in advance so folks could study up:
The Black Nag
Braes of Dornoch
The Duke of Kent’s Waltz
First of April
Hit & Miss
Hole in the Wall
Indian Queen
Jack’s Maggot
Mr. Beveridge’s Maggot
Mr. Isaac’s Maggot
Ramsgate Assembly
Rufty Tufty
Sellenger’s Round
Sprigs of Laurel
Upon a Summer’s Day
Now, I'm not critiquing them for not running a Regency ball in historical style, which would start with not having a list of named dances, since that entire concept is ahistorical. I'm sure they weren't doing period steps or period progressions, either, or making the slightest effort at any historical practices. I expect the reconstructions were modern ones and that a large percentage of them were lousy from a historical perspective. All that is normal for groups that don't study historical dance seriously, and it wouldn't rate a blog post. I could spend the rest of my life making blog posts like that, but I have much more interesting things to do with my time.
But just in case anyone reading this doesn't recognize all these dance names (I recognized all but one immediately), let me help you out with the dates of their publication. I'll even put them in chronological order.
1651 Hit & Miss
1651 Rufty Tufty
1651 Upon a Summer’s Day
1653 Sellenger’s Round
1670 The Black Nag
1695 Mr. Beveridge’s Maggot
1695 Mr. Isaac’s Maggot
1698 Hole in the Wall
1701 Indian Queen
1701 Jack’s Maggot
1753 Braes of Dornoch
1775 First of April
1794 Sprigs of Laurel
1801 The Duke of Kent’s Waltz
1807 Ramsgate Assembly
Notice anything...special...about this list? Let me give you a hint. The Regency era was from 1811-1820.
Look at that list again. Do you see any dances from the Regency era? You know, the Regency, as in Regency Ball?
Me neither!
But surely, some fool will suggest, country dancing is country dancing and, as with literature and language and music and food and costume and philosophy and technology and society, it didn't change in the slightest between 1651 and 1811 (or 2013), right?
No, wait...that's not right! Like everything else, dance evolved over time! Imagine that!
Let's do it by numbers.
Dances actually from the Regency era: 0
Well, that was easy. Let me repeat it again with a helpful pointer in case you missed it.
Dances actually from the Regency era: 0 <---- ZERO!!!!
But let's not fuss over a few years here and there!
Dances 100+ years off: 10
Dances 50-100 years off: 1
For those for whom arithmetic is almost as hard as history, that would be eleven out of fifteen dances that are not within fifty years of the Regency era. Ten of them are more than a century too early. Four of them, in fact, are more than a century and a half too old!
Folks, that's not even trying. That's not even a bad joke. It's just pathetic, and possibly dishonest, depending on whether presenting these as Regency-era dances is rampaging ignorance or knowing deception.
Is it possible that the caller is just clueless and doesn't actually know when the Regency era is?
Well, maybe. More on that below. Is it possible that they don't know when the dances are from? Most people who call modern English country dance (and this appears to be an experienced caller) will at least recognize some of these dances on sight from the first edition (1651) of Playford's The Dancing Master and have a general idea about most of the rest. Many of them can be found in modern English country dance compilations like The Playford Ball (which gives the sources and dates for each dance) and are listed online in databases like the Dance Figures Index: English Country Dances, 1651-1827. And, you know, there's Google and all.
Now, just to be fair, dancing did in fact have a reasonably stable style between the late eighteenth century and the early nineteenth century. And four, count 'em, four of these dances are close enough to be reasonable in the loose "extended Regency era" sense, which is to say they wouldn't stand out as freakish at a ball during the actual Regency, though some of the modern reconstructions would of course look pretty insane. One of them is the one I use as exhibit A of bad modern reconstruction practice. So the program is roughly 26% more-or-less-Regency, which I guess beats 0%. That would make it 74% bullshit.
Seriously, guys?
Seriously?
But hey, there are even worse "Regency" ball programs in the world. I've seen them! I've even been to worse balls! So why pick on this one?
Well, you see, it's being sponsored by a university as part of a conference on Jane Austen. And I feel that universities, being educational institutions, should be held to higher standards than purely social groups. And that if you're offering a ball as part of a conference on Austen, it ought to offer a dance program with dances drawn from, at a minimum, something approximating her lifetime. And that the percentage of such dances should be more like 100% than 26%.
Also, note that this removes any possible excuse of not knowing when the Regency era was, because Jane Austen is kind of famous. Hence the many conferences devoted to her. Her biographical details are easy to find, and the organizers have obviously made the connection between Austen and the Regency era (during which she died), or they wouldn't be having a (supposed) Regency ball at a Jane Austen conference, now, would they? I can guarantee that the conference organizers are in possession of these basic historical facts.
So what's the university folks' excuse?
I'm not going to contact them and ask, but I can safely bet that it's one or more of the following:
1. We don't know anything about this field of history!
2. We hired someone and didn't realize they didn't know anything about this field of history!
3. We don't care about this field of history!
I don't find any of these to be terribly reassuring positions for people at an institution that presumably prides itself on transmitting knowledge. Ignorance, carelessness, or disinterest? Maybe all three? That would be quite the trifecta.
Would you want to send your kid somewhere like that?
Me neither.
Now, is it unfair to expect university faculty to know something about dance history in particular, or at least to vet their hires for relevant knowledge? Maybe, on the grounds that perhaps they just don't care about it as an academic discipline. It's certainly a specialized one, so maybe they consider it unimportant. Obviously, I can hardly be expected to sympathize with that idea.
But I don't actually find it very admirable for a university to blithely offer up such hogwash in areas it doesn't find important, or, to put it as charitably as I can, for its scholars to be so unaware of decades of scholarly activity that they don't bother having standards for it.
I'm not going to name the conference, or the university, or even what country it's in, so don't bother asking, but they really ought to be ashamed of themselves.
Special thanks to the nice folks who helped me date Braes of Dornoch. I'm leaving your names off so you don't end up associated with this rant.
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