Capering & Kickery

June 2014 Gig Calendar

After some welcome downtime at home, I'm back on the road in June with two trips each to New York City and Massachusetts, but keeping a light schedule since I have a rather enormous amount of writing to do this month.  A couple more DJ gigs may pop onto the schedule at some point, but here's how it stands for now:

Sunday, June 1st ~ New York City
Regency Dance Workshop (Facebook event)
Beginner-friendly lesson 3:00-5:00pm.  No costume needed.

Monday June 2nd ~ New Haven, Connecticut
1910s Foxtrot & (modern) Cross-Step Waltz class series begins (five weeks through June 30th)
7:00-8:30pm.  Experience required; inquire for details.

Tuesday, June 3rd ~ Middletown, Connecticut
Jane Austen Era Dancing (Facebook event)
Beginner-friendly lesson 8:15-9:30pm.  No costume needed.

Sunday, June 8th ~ Middletown, Connecticut
Renaissance Dance for All (Facebook event)
Beginner-friendly dancing 2:00-5:00pm.  Costume encouraged but not required.

Tuesday, June 10th ~ Somerville, Massachusetts (Boston area)
Bluesy Tuesy (Facebook event)
7:30-11:00pm (lesson then dancing).  DJing blues from 9:45-11:00.

Thursday, June 12th ~ Somerville, Massachusetts (Boston area)
Blues Union (Facebook event)
7:30-11:30pm (lesson then dancing).  DJing blues from 9:30-10:30.

Sunday, June 15th ~ Boston area
Regency dance workshop -- private event, email for details

Friday-Saturday, June 20th-21st ~ Deerfield, Massachusetts
The Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife: "Let the Games Begin: Sports and Recreation in New England"
Presenting a paper on the evolution of the 19th century New England ballroom Saturday afternoon.
This conference has been cancelled.  Proceedings will still be published.

Sunday, June 22nd ~ Middletown, Connecticut
Nineteenth-Century Waltz Workshop (Facebook event)
Beginner-friendly lesson 3:00-5:00pm.

Sunday, June 22nd ~ New Haven, Connecticut
Yale Swing & Blues Practicum
Free dance time!  DJing swing (8:00-9:30pm) AND blues (9:30-11:00pm).

Sunday, June 29th ~ New York City
Regency Dance Workshop (Facebook event)
Beginner-friendly lesson 3:00-5:00pm.  No costume needed.

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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: June 2-9, 16-28, 30
New York City: June 1, June 29
Boston area: June 10-15

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A Polka Redowa Quadrille

My copy of Trifet's Acme of Dances (Boston, c1900) is a bit of a puzzle to date.  It's at least a second edition; an earlier (1886) version advertised 114 dances, while mine has 214.  It has a copyright date of 1893, but advertises the June, 1900, issue of Trifet's Monthly Budget of Music on the cover.  My best guess is that it is a c1900 reprint of an 1893 edition.

Inside, it is a bizarre mashup of several different sources, as evidenced by the changing fonts and formatting of the music.  The first forty-eight pages are easily recognizable to anyone who works with nineteenth-century dance music from the Boston area as having been printed from Elias Howe's plates; his font and his dance instructions are unmistakeable.  So is his tendency to set figured dances to any piece of music he could lay his hands on.

CD Review: Mozart: German Dances

I've collected a fair number of albums over the years in the optimistic hope that art recordings might somehow be usable for dancing.  Often, that doesn't work out terribly well.  But after teaching a Regency waltz class last weekend and deciding that I absolutely had to have new waltz pieces for this era, I dug up one of my really old CDs, Mozart: German Dances by Capella Istropolitana under the conducting of Johannes Wildner.  This is a 1990 CD from Naxos that features no fewer than twenty-five Mozart "danses allemandes" dated from 1789 and 1791, all between one and four minutes long.  I can't say whether they were specifically intended for waltzes rather than for ländlers or other 3/4 time dances, but they certainly make dandy waltzes.

Cross Steps in the Early Foxtrot

Rounding out my little miniseries celebrating the centennial of the first burst of popularity for the foxtrot, here's another pair of variations from Edna Stuart Lee's Thirty Fox Trot Steps (New York, 1916) that each feature a moment when one foot crosses over the other.

The "Side Swing" starts with the usual four walking steps, followed by a pair of quick-quick-slow moves.  The first quick-quick-slow moves diagonally forward to the left (back to the right for the lady), but instead of being a two-step, the sequence is step forward - cross in front - step forward.  The second quick-quick-slow is an actual two-step, done to the right, with my preference being for a slight diagonal angle rather than directly out toward the wall of the room.  Here's the gentleman's step sequence:

1234    Four walking steps (starting left)
1&2     Step diagonally forward left, cross right over left, step forward left
3&4     Two-step (step-close-step, not turning, starting right)

The lady dances opposite, as usual, with one major exception.  Whether she crosss behind or in front on the cross step is not specified by Lee, but experimentation with both options leads me to believe that a front cross, mirroring the gentleman, is the most likely.  While leading her into a back cross is certainly possible, and not particularly difficult in the context of this variation, it makes a full back step after the cross less natural; the tendency is to just close the feet instead.  Having both partners cross in front works more smoothly and provides a nice contrast to the following two-step.

Lee commended this step to dancers as "producing a swaying motion that relieves the monotony of the forward movement".  She also suggested that it could be danced as a variation for the one-step by making the running steps of equal length to the walking steps.  This produces an odd nine-beat sequence that shifts the lead foot relative to the musical beat:

1234    Four walking steps (starting left)
123      Step forward left, cross right over left, step forward left
4&5     Two-step (starting right)

The Side Swing is entirely leadable for good dancers, even if the follower has never previously tried it.

The more romantically named "Chaplin Trot" features a long walk-trot sequence (four slow steps and eight quick steps) followed by a fast cross and side-to-side hesitation as follows:

1234            Four walking steps (starting left)
1&2&3&4  Seven trotting steps (starting left)
&                 Cross right foot over left
1&2             Step side left, side right, and draw left foot to right without weight

Once again the lady dances opposite except on the cross step, where she also crosses in front.  The final quick-quick-slow moves perpendicular to the line of dance, the couple stepping first toward the center of the room and then toward the wall, closing the free foot without weight.  To lead the "without weight" part, the gentleman should simply keep his weight firmly on the right foot, or even sway just slightly toward the right.  A good follower will pick this up without ever having danced the sequence before.

The final side-side-close (effectively a hesitation, since the dancers make no forward progress for two beats) feels vaguely similar to the box step, which is a legitimate move for 1910s foxtrot.  But I would not recommend teaching the Chaplin Trot in combination with the box step to newer dancers.  The close without weight in this sequence will sow confusion, since in the box step dancers close with weight during the final side-close.

Lee described the step as a good one for "young couples desiring plenty of action and a touch of the spectacular" -- evidently her threshhold for spectacle was somewhat lower than mine --  and notes, accurately, that it is "an excellent ground gainer".

Special thanks to Irene for dance-testing the foxtrot variations for this miniseries!

Two Easy Foxtrot Hesitations

Continuing my little foxtrot miniseries, here are two more very easy hesitation variations from Edna Stuart Lee's Thirty Fox Trot Steps (New York, 1916).

The "Rock-a-Bye" is a single hesitation, as described for the one-step by Albert Newman in Dances of To-day (Philadelphia, 1914), but done twice at double speed with four walking steps as a preface.  What that actually means in practice:

1234    Four walking steps (starting left)
1&       Step forward left, rock back onto right foot
2&       Rock forward onto left, rock back onto right

These are the gentleman's steps; the lady starts on the right foot and moves backward along line of dance.

The rocking steps do not travel; they should be done "as though the feet were held rigidly apart by a rocker and the body tipped gently forward and backward by mechanical means", though Lee also noted that they should be "very light, smooth, and graceful" and that the dancers should "be careful not to rock the shoulders, but sway gently with the entire body."  The free foot is raised slightly off the floor on each weight shift.

The slow, slow, slow, slow, quick-quick-quick-quick pattern of this sequence feels more natural if it follows a walk-trot sequence in that same rhythm pattern, such as the "Fox Trot No. 2" described in the second edition of the compilation Dance Mad (St. Louis, 1914) and danced for the camera by Clay Bassett and Catherine Elliott in a short 1916 film, "The Much Talked About 'Fox Trot'."  These are the third option listed in my previous post on walk-trot patterns in the early foxtrot.

The poetically named "Trot des Artistes" hesitates in a different way.  After the usual four walking steps which Lee put at the front of almost all of her sequences, the dancers perform a two-step followed by an unusual (for the foxtrot) step forward and close without weight for what Lee termed "an attractive pause in the dancing".  Here's the step breakdown for the gentleman:

1234    Four walking steps (starting left)
1&2     Two-step (step-close-step, starting left, not turning)
3          Step forward right
4          Draw left foot to the heel of the right, closing without weight

As usual, the lady dances opposite.

On the draw, the toe should actually lightly skim (but not noisily scrape) the floor.

I prefer to do the two-step on a slight forward diagonal rather than straight out to the side.  On the final step-and-draw, shading the right side of the body diagonally forward with a little bit of sway will make the leading the lack of weight change easier.

Both of these hesitations are completely leadable and followable by good dancers even without learning the sequences in advance.

Twinkle, Twinkle: Fast and Slow

• Era: 1910s
• Dances: Foxtrot, One-Step, Hesitation Waltz

2014 marks one hundred years since the foxtrot made its first big splash, so it's very timely for me to have come across a copy of Edna Stuart Lee's Thirty Fox Trot Steps (New York, 1916).  This is by far the largest single collection of 1910 foxtrot step sequences I've ever found in one place, and many of them are completely new to me.

Lee's sequences were billed as "suitable for the ballroom, gymnasium, or playground, as well as for private exercise at home, either with or without a partner."  While several of them match foxtrot variations that I've previously discussed, they're given a poetic new set of names.  Can anyone guess which common sequences Lee endows with names like the Meditation Glide, Barcarolle, and Viola Dana?

Dancing the Bon Ton Gavotte

Having decided that the Bon Ton Gavotte was popular enough to perhaps be worth doing, how does one actually do it?

Let me start by noting that as reconstruction projects go, the Bon Ton Gavotte is a mess: two sources are ambiguous and the other two contradict each other.  Since they cannot all be reconciled, I cannot produce any really definitive reconstruction.  Instead, I'll go through the sources one by one and give my thoughts about the various options.

The Oddly Popular Bon Ton Gavotte

I mentioned the Bon Ton Gavotte briefly and unflatteringly a couple of months ago in the context of its possible appearance on an 1894 dance card.  I haven't changed my opinion of the dance, but in the course of unrelated research I've accidentally accumulated more information on it than I ever would have expected.  I am apparently fated to try to make sense of it.

One of the common questions I get whenever I teach one of these weird little late nineteenth-century dances is whether it was actually done anywhere outside the creator's dance studio, which in this case was in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  Much to my astonishment, the answer in this case seems to be yes.  Even leaving aside the dance card's ambiguous "Bon Ton", the trail of the Bon Ton Gavotte runs from not only through the northeastern United States but also as far as California, Ontario, Nova Scotia, England, and France. 

May 2014 Gig Calendar

After a perfectly crazy April, I am devoting most of May to staying home and catching up on research and writing as I wind up my fellowship year.  I'm looking forward to sleeping in my own bed, and my cats will be ecstatic!

By some weird coincidence, all of my gigs this month are Regency-era, though I might tag on something else if the opportunity arises.  Here's the calendar:

Sunday, May 4th ~ New York City
Regency Dance Workshop (Facebook event)
Beginner-friendly lesson 3:00-5:00pm.  No costume needed.

Tuesday, May 6th ~ Middletown, Connecticut
Jane Austen Era Dancing (Facebook event) at Vinnie's
Beginner-friendly lesson 8:15-9:30pm.  No costume needed.

Saturday, May 10th ~ Essex, Connecticut
Burning of the Ships Commemmoration Regency Ball (Facebook event)
8:00-11:00pm.  Formal ball with live music.  Costumes strongly encouraged!

Sunday, May 11th ~ Middletown, Connecticut
Nineteenth Century Waltz Workhop (Facebook event) at Vinnie's
Beginner-friendly workshop & dancing 2:00-5:00pm. 

Saturday, May 18th ~ Boston area
Regency dance workshop -- private event, email 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, 5-16, 19-29
New York City: May 3-4, 29-31
Boston: May 17-18

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Coming in June: more Regency, more blues, waltz classes, and the Dublin Seminar, which, sadly, is in Deerfield, not Dublin!