Capering & Kickery

Two-Stepping en français

As previously noted, European descriptions of American dances like the late nineteenth-century two-step are sometimes more helpful than American ones.  Having spent more time than expected this past weekend speaking French in Toronto (with a bunch of folks from Montréal), I'm inspired today to point out a couple of American-influenced descriptions of the two-step from Paris around 1900.

A Two-Step Quadrille, Pittsburgh, 1894

Here's a simple two-step quadrille that can be introduced with minimal practice time to any group of dancers familiar with the two-step of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. 

This three-figure set was published in 1894 by H. R. Basler, a music publisher in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  The figures are by Professor J. P. Brooks, presumably the James P. Brooks listed in a directory of dance teachers in M. B. Gilbert's Round Dancing as a Pittsburgh dancing master.  Brooks is listed as the creator of the American Gavotte, a bland little polka sequence also published in Gilbert's tome.  This quadrille is not wildly original either, but it's easy and a fun little excuse to two-step with everyone of the opposite sex in the set.

The sheet music for this quadrille is held in the Ralph Page Collection (Milne Special Collections, University of New Hampshire Library, Durham, New Hampshire).  The music is by Horace Basler himself, who was apparently a composer as well as a music publisher.  The Pittsburgh Sheet Music Collection at the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh holds quite a few pieces of music published, variously, by H. R. Basler; the Basler Music Publishing Co.; and Basler's Music House, all between 1879 and 1901, and many also composed by Basler.  

While dance instructions are on the sheet music, a slightly more detailed version appears in the 1917-1918 edition of Clendenen's Quadrille Book and Guide to Etiquette, which incorporates  B. Coanacher's Fashionable Quadrille Call Book and Guide to Etiquette, 1909.  Both the Clenenden and the Coanacher collections were published in Chicago, so the quadrille did get some exposure outside Pittsburgh.

Despite the reprint in Clendenen, I would not consider this quadrille a fashionable dance for 1917.  I don't know when the first edition of the Clendenen manual was published (one earlier edition is online), but judging from the fashions on the cover, I would guess the mid-1890s, and it does not appear that Clendenen cared much about current dance trends in the later editions. The instructions in the book note that the quadrille was adopted by the American Society of Professors of Dancing in the September of 1894.

Here's how to dance it:

Jig-Saw Step

The Jig-Saw Step is a hesitation waltz variation published by Albert Newman in his 1914 book, Dances of to-day.  It is a sort of reversed double hesitation done in waltz time with some added dipping.  Each step occupies one bar of music.  More specifically:

Jig-Saw Step (four bars in 3/4)
1b    step back left
1b    step back right and dip
1b    shift weight to left foot
1b    step forward right and dip

This can be repeated as long as the dancers desire.  The feet given are the gentleman's feet; the lady dances opposite, stepping forward-forward-shift-back, starting with her right foot.

Newman noted that "the right foot is the most active, while the left foot virtually remains on the spot" and that the step can also be performed turning to the right.  To turn, pivot slightly clockwise on each step or change of weight, similar to a spin turn in one-step.  

In Dance Mad, the first step is described as "slightly to side" rather than "back" and the potential turning is not specifically to the right.  It's no harder to turn to the left; just pivot counter-clockwise.

CD Review: Grandview Victorian Orchestra

I ordered the Grandview Victorian Orchestra's CD Elegant Music from Times Gone By in the wake of a pleasant email exchange with musical director John Reading about quadrille music last autumn.  The album is a mix of country (contra) dance medleys of various sorts mixed with a few other tunes and played on an interesting instrumental mix of piano, fiddle, hammered dulcimer, bodhran, shaker, banjo, and acoustic bass.  I'm not sure about the acoustic bass, but the other instruments are legitimate for late nineteenth-century America and provide a more "rural" sound than most of the music I use, very appropriate for country dance tunes. 

The music mix is definitely from "times gone by", though not all of those times are actually Victorian and will need to be considered on a case-by-case basis for historical events.  The arrangements are really lovely, though, and it makes a great listening CD even if not every track is strictly correct and/or usable for historical dancing.

My comments on the individual tracks follow.

True Lovers Knot

Sometime between first edition of An Analysis of Country Dancing in 1808 and the third edition in 1811, London dancing master Thomas Wilson started creating his own original country dance figures.  Not sequences of figures, which anyone could do, but actual new floor patterns:

As novelty in Dancing as in every other amusement, is the author and promoter of an enlivening vivacity...it is equally irksome for good Dancers to be always using the same Figures, as for a professed musician to be continually playing the tunes of “God Save the King,” and “Foot’s Minuet;” and from the repeated suggestions of several good Dancers, and at the particular request of a great number of the author’s Friends and Pupils; and in order to answer the purposes of novelty and variety...The author has been induced to compose and arrange a variety of New Figures...

I wouldn’t take the “particular request” part too seriously; almost every nineteenth-century dancing master who comes up with something new modestly attributes its publication to requests by his students.  I suspect Wilson himself was the one finding it “irksome” to use the same figures over and over again.

Most of Wilson’s new figures are not terribly exciting.  Overwhelmingly, they involve only the active couple making increasingly elaborate loops and circles around the other couples, leaving four dancers with nothing to do for eight or even sixteen bars.  There are only a few which I’ve found worth bothering with over the years.  The latest of these is the True Lovers Knot, shown at left (click to enlarge).  

Let me be perfectly clear: this is not a typical Regency-era country dance figure.  It is very specific to one dance teacher and his students and customers.  Wilson himself rarely used it in his published works, and I have never seen it used by any other author or publisher.

That said, it’s a really lovely figure.  So I finally decided to work out how to dance it.

A is for April

One of the delightful eccentricities of ballrooms of the late nineteenth century was the addition of fanciful figures to the usual geometric perambulations of the Grand March.  Having spent three years in the flag team of a competitive marching band with a flair for interesting formations, I love making shapes out of lines of people and have duly led dancers into number formations at balls ("05" for a 1905 event).  But I have never made letters of the alphabet.  So I was pleased and amused to come across a strong recommendation to form letters, complete with some basic instructions for doing so, in George E. Wilson's The Little Dancing Master (New York, 1898).  

Wilson recommends starting the Grand March with a counter-clockwise promenade around the room to top-center (B), from whence the couples march down the center of the room to bottom-center (C), where they split, the ladies turning right and the gentlemen turning left.  The two lines process around the edges of the room back to B, where they meet to begin forming the first letter.  For a choice of letters, Wilson mentions the initials of the host or of the name of the ball.  By way of example, he uses the letter A, the diagram for which may be seen at left (click to enlarge).