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.
First, a little bit about the dance.
The Bon Ton Gavotte is a schottische-based sequence dance choreographed by Pittsburgh dancing master J. S. Christy with original music by Geo(rge?) L. Wells. Like other late nineteenth-century dances that use "gavotte" in their titles, it has no choreographic connection with the older dances of that name. I classify it as a sequence dance because some of the time it moves against the line of dance, which means that unlike many named variations it cannot conveniently be done in a ballroom unless the whole room is doing it together.
We can date the dance fairly precisely via the image below, which is from an advertisement appearing on the back of a different piece of music (also by Wells with a sequence dance by Christy) and shows a copyright date of 1888 in the fine print below the staff lines.
From Pittsburgh, the Bon Ton Gavotte made its way to California fairly quickly. Below is an advertisement (click to enlarge) from the Sacramento Daily Union, Volume 80, Number 100, 16 December 1890, in which one Professor O'Malley announces a social event at his dancing academy during which he and his wife will dance the Bon Ton Gavotte along with Le Rêve, the Oxford Minuet, and a Gavotte.
Lest it be dismissed as solely a display dance for teachers, below is an excerpt (click to enlarge) from a lengthy description of an exhibition ball held at a dance school run by Mrs. H. S. Pettes in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It's taken from the Cambridge Chronicle, Volume XLVIII, Number 15, 15 April 1893. Note that the Bon Ton Gavotte is included among the social dances, not the exhibition dances.
The dance also made its way to Canada. Here's an advertisement for sheet music (click to enlarge) from The Canadian Bookseller and Library Journal, Vol XVII, No. 3 (June, 1903) which mentions the Bon Ton Gavotte. A similar ad appeared several other times in that journal that year.
The Wells music was reprinted all over the place. Numerous libraries hold copies, and it is available online via the IMSLP/Petrucci Music Library. Their copy was scanned from a 1930 reprint of an 1892 London edition and has one version of the dance instructions at the bottom of the first page.
There are also other pieces of music called or subtitled Bon Ton Gavotte. These are different tunes which may or may not have any relation to the Christy dance. There is also occasionally music noted as "suitable for the dance, Bon Ton", which may refer to the Bon Ton Gavotte. The dance will work to any schottische tune with a regular structure.
Dance instructions are found on some editions of the sheet music and in at least three dance manuals published from 1890-1903, two in the United States and one in Paris. The dance's history in Canada extends as a living tradition into the mid-twentieth century.
And if one now feels that as a stylish reenactor of the ballrooms of the 1890s and early 1900s one should in fact learn to dance the Bon Ton Gavotte? The actual sequence has some interesting little complications in the reconstruction, so I'll save the details for later this week!
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