Getting Savage!

When I watched the BBC's general excellent documentary Pride & Prejudice: Having a Ball last year, one of the things that caught my negative attention was this rather astonishing assertion at about the 1:07 mark:

"The Savage Dance was a craze back in 1813, taken from a song-and-dance routine in a musical based on Robinson Crusoe."

Um...really?

Let me note first that this assertion was not made by the documentary's dancing master, but by a narrator.  That's a good thing, because I can give the narrator a pass on the assumption that she doesn't actually know anything about early nineteenth century dance.  It's a shame the BBC let this statement slide in, though, since as far as I can tell it is, shall we say, completely unsupported by any actual evidence.  I expect BBC documentaries to have higher standards than Hollywood movies.

Let's take that statement apart.

I'll start with the origin of the whole thing. 

The pantomime Robinson Crusoe: or Harlequin Friday, more-or-less by Richard Sheridan (author of the famous play The School for Scandal), premiered on January 29, 1781.  I wouldn't call it a musical, exactly; pantomime of that era was a slapstick descendant of commedia dell'arte, as is suggested by the reimagining of Friday in the classic commedia role of Harlequin.  But it did have at least one dance number, a "Dance of Savages", or possibly a "Grand Dance of Savages", appearing at the end of either the first or the second act.

I will point out again the date of this pantomime: it premiered in 1781.  It was indeed a big hit at that time, but that was thirty-two years before 1813.  It was revived fairly regularly, yes, but regular revivals rarely spark crazes.  Think about today's touring productions of Cats, which premiered thirty-two years ago.  I remember the original Cats craze, but I don't see the neverending tours sparking the same level of interest.

W. J. Lawrence's essay "Three Famous Pantomimes", published in 1887, discussed Robinson Crusoe and its association with the famous Grimaldi family of performers and noted that it had a short run ("a few nights") at the Covent Garden Theatre in the July of 1813.  Lawrence's essay is online; the discussion of Robinson Crusoe starts at the bottom of page 20.  Was this brief revival of a decades-old comedy at the tail end of the social season enough to set off a craze?  Did the denizens of London society go to fancy dress balls dressed as savages, humming the music and writing romantic fantasies about the characters?  Well, anything is possible.  Look at The Lord of the Rings.  But I think I'd like to see some actual evidence of such a craze before I take it as a given.  I don't have any, and I suspect the BBC doesn't either.

So how about the dance? 

I don't think there's any surviving choreography, but I'm having some trouble imagining that a dance which a 1782 playbill notes was "Strictly conformable to the Custom which precedes an Act of Sacrifice in those Parts" was actually a decorous English country dance.  Or even a raucous English country dance.  Because I do not think that even theatrical savages generally break off for a spot of country dancing before performing ritual sacrifice.  And I suspect London audiences would have been quite disappointed if the vaunted "Dance of Savages" turned out to be a routine country dance of the sort they did on a regular basis.

I feel pretty safe in stating that the lovely country dance done in the BBC documentary was not, in fact, the "Dance of Savages" from Robinson Crusoe.

What was from the pantomime was the music. 

Taking music from the theatre to use for social dancing is a tradition that goes back at least to Playford's books in the mid-seventeenth century.  Tunes were regularly pulled from operas for country dances and, later, quadrille sets; by the end of the nineteenth century Gilbert and Sullivan operettas were a popular source for dance music.  The musicians on the documentary did a superb job playing "Dance of Savages".  It's a shame that people kept talking over it.

But was "Dance of Savages" really a particularly popular piece of music? 

It does turn up in a few surviving music books and manuscripts.  But the key word there is "few".  Here's a list, taken from the database Early American Music and its Secular Sources (EASMES), which covers over 75,000 European and American music publications and manuscripts, and my own catalog of sources, which has a few things not in EASMES:

• n.d./no location. Gilchrist MS AGG/2/137, a manuscript music copybook held by the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library at Cecil Sharp House in London.
• c1785, Glasgow  James Aird, A Selection of Scotch, English, Irish, and Foreign Airs, Vol 2.
• 1788, Shelburne, Nova Scotia.  Thomas Molyneaux, flute manuscript copybook
• c1790, London.  Thomas Hammersley, manuscript copybook
• 1793, Montreal.  Caroline Frobisher, manuscript copybook
• 1796, Philadelphia. Evening Amuse
• c1800-1825, Washington, DC.  Pierre Duport, manuscript copybook
• c1802, New York.  G. Gilfert, Gentleman’s Pocket Companion for the German Flute or Violin
• c1802-1840, Stonybrook, NY.  Micah Hawkins, manuscript copybook held by the Trinity College Library in Hartford, Connecticut.
• 1807, Dedham, NH.  Oliver Shaw, A Favourite Selection of Instrumental Music...

The EASMES listing (which you may see here) shows exactly eight appearances out of 75,000ish sources.  I've added two.  That's not exactly strong evidence of overwhelming popularity.  By way of comparison, the dance tune "Money in Both Pockets" has sixteen musical appearances in EASMES and several more with suggested dance figures but no music. 

You might also notice a couple of things about this list.  First, almost of the sources are from the Americas.  Exactly one of them is from London and one is from Glasgow.  Both are early; all the nineteenth-century sources are from the United States, where (per the V&A Museum's essay on pantomime history), Robinson Crusoe was the first pantomime ever produced, in 1786.  Where exactly was this supposed craze?

And if you click through to each source in the EASMES list, you will further discover that the number of these sources containing dance figures is...zero.  None.  Zilch. 

This yawning void of possible figures does not suggest that it was a popular tune for dancing, but just in case, I checked two other important databases: Dance Figures in America and Dance Figures in England. 

Guess how many times dance figures for "Savage Dance" were published between these two major databases?

You can check the alphabetical listings for dance figures associated with tunes beginning with S- in America and Sa- in England.  See any savages?  Me neither.  I checked the "D" listings too, just to see if it was under "Dance of Savages".  Nothing there either.  So if you guessed "zero", you would be correct. 

Tell me again how this was a craze in 1813?

My collection of country dance material exceeds the contents of the Dance Figures databases, so back when I first saw the documentary, I took a quick look through my own collection. 

Nothing.

But I do keep collecting sources, and I had mentally flagged "Savage Dance" as something to keep an eye out for.  Earlier this year, I found figures with the tune "Savage Dance" in one source.  And then after a research trip last month, I found figures (no music) in another source.  That makes two.  Two entire sources for dance figures for this supposedly popular tune. 

And, of course, the figures are different from each other, because the crowning stupidity of the statement above is the underlying idea that dance figures were named choreographies locked irrevocably to a particular tune and the tune locked to a particular set of figures.  In reality, the figures were remarkably generic combinations which were used over and over again, and publishers felt free to attach different figures to tunes more or less at random.

Here are the two sources:

A Dance Fan for 1798.  An unmounted fan at the British Museum.  Dance figures with no music.  For "Savage Dance":

Hands across & back again, lead down the middle & swing corners.

Weyland Collection of Favourite Country Dances.  London, n.d.  Music and figures.  There are at least two surviving copies, one of which is at the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library.  For "The Savage Dance":

The first Couple Sett to the Second Lady & hands three round the same with the Second Gentleman lead down the Middle up again cast off & Allemand.

The figures in the documentary were taken from the Weyland book.  The music probably was as well.  It's possible that they have some reason to date it 1813, but I can tell you there is no obvious reason for it in the book itself.  Other tunes in the book ("La Belle Catherine", "La Malbrouk") are more reminiscent of the late eighteenth century.  If I had to guess, I would put it at c1785, fairly soon after the pantomime first appeared, while tunes from it were still fresh and exciting. 

And even if were from 1813, it's only one book, which does not, to me, constitute a craze.

I don't have permission to reproduce images from either Weyland or the dance fan here, but I can share a different musical arrrangement, taken from Oliver Shaw's A Favourite Selection of Instrumental Music (Dedham, NH.  1807.)  It has been transposed into a different key and rewritten in a different time signature, but it's recognizably the same tune as in the Weyland book and is even arranged for five instruments.  Click the image to enlarge.

I'm not going to discuss the figures, other than to say that the reconstruction in the documentary is not quite how I would do it.  Instead, I'll wrap up the way I started:

"The Savage Dance was a craze back in 1813, taken from a song-and-dance routine in a musical based on Robinson Crusoe."

What do you think?

And if anyone is perhaps wondering why I have generated 1500-plus words of critique of a single sentence in a mostly very credible portrayal of Regency-era dancing, by far the best I've ever seen on screen...

Well, I've had two separate people now tell me they want to learn and dance the Savage Dance, because it was one of the most popular dances of 1813.

Really?

Comments

[r cwieka]

...not about this...but something else. Do you/anyone have any illustrations/instructions for the STEPS for/of "LA PATINEURS?"

[Dmitry]

We know that in Russia there was an English country dance called Соваж, and this looks like a transliteration of the French Sauvage. This dance is said to be danced at the end of the 18th century (probably a bit to the beginning of the 19thc). On the other hand I've seen this dance in some German books with choreographies and there it is stated that Sauvage is a special kind of Anglaise just as a Matredour is a special kind of Ecossaise. I've never tried to dance it because I had no music but now it seems to me that it could be a special dance popular in many countries.

[Ann Hinchliffe]

I believe the Savage Dance was used in the documentary because it's probably the only dance ever notated by Jane Austen. Dr Anne Daye, chairman of Dolmetsch Historical Dance Society, was researching the Austen family papers at Chawton for her teaching at the 2012 DHDS Summer School. She came across a scrap of paper headed "Savage Dance" and the figures mentioned above, in what the curator confirmed as JA's writing. The Austen papers have plenty of tunes written in the handwriting of JA and her family but no figures given except for this. I gathered from the anecdote that the curator hadn't recognised it as dance notation, and (therefore?) hadn't published its existence to the historical-dance world.
We in Anne's class, and Stuart Marsden who was acting as repetiteur, found this quite exciting, despite the dance being the reverse of exciting, as you note. Anne also mentioned that the dance appears in a German dance manual -- sorry I can't presently give the reference but perhaps one seen by your correspondent Dmitry -- from which, or maybe the Weyland, JA had presumably copied it, thinking of Mr Darcy's infamous remark.
I imagine Stuart, a knowledgeable and inspired dancing master, will have said all this to the BBC while he was making the documentary with them; he can't be blamed if the narrator got it wrong!

[[email protected]]

Hi,
I am the dancing master that you saw on the programme- Pride & Prejudice Having a Ball.
The reason that the 'Savage Dance' was included in the programme was very simple; it came from J.A's own handwritten collection. The music and dance instructions are in her own neat and economic script hand and we wished to include dances that she either mentions in her books or were from her own collection.
I have also found the same dance figure (exact) also called The Welsh Question and The Princes' Favourite.
Hope this helps.
Stuart Marsden

[Dr. Anne Daye]

Coming late to this conversation. As stated above, the tune and one set of figures are on a scrap of paper in one of the Austen family music books. As the dance advisor to Pride and Prjudice Having a Ball, the choice of dances were mine, and linked to Jane Austen as closely as possible, rather than being merely of the period in general. Austen probably copied the tune and figures from a publication owned by richer family or friends. One of these is Werner 1784, which gives 2 sets of figures, the set Austen did not copy is more unusual. The set of figures she did copy and was danced on the programme is very common, and found with many other tunes. This suggests she was amused or intrigued by the combination of a 'savage' tune and a very familiar dance. The tune originated from the pantomime of Robinson Crusoe, and clearly had some appeal c.1784 for Werner to publish it with dance figures. Exaggeration and distortion by documentary producers is endemic, but at least this one has triggered investigation. The Historical Dance Society (historicaldance.org.uk) sells dance instructions and CDs, with full information on sources, for Jane Austen's era and others. So if you want to enjoy the dance, you can do so, and attend workshops around the country.

[Marnen Laibow-Koser]

To add to the mystery: I have a hard time believing that the tune you reproduced would have been anything like what might have been used for a theatrical "savage dance". The tune is pleasant, even sedate, in a major key, with no noticeable exoticism, violence, or other "savagery" to it that I can see (except perhaps the choice of instruments, but is that original?).

Would theatrical audiences, as you say, have been disappointed to see an ordinary country dance as a "savage dance"? Probably. But they would have been, I think, just as disappointed to hear this tune use in that context.