I've been thinking a lot over the last few years about the underlying skills needed for various forms of social dance. A critical one is the ability to shift steps between time signatures, as I discussed a couple of months ago. And one of the best examples of that is what happened with the much-maligned "box step" in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.
The box step doesn't get a lot of respect among historical dancers in America because it is strongly associated with modern ballroom dance studio practices. That's unfortunate, because I'm increasingly convinced that its historical incarnation, the "new waltz" (in contrast to the older valse à trois temps with its pirouette), is extremely important to know for anyone studying American social dancing of the 1880s-1910s. Despite this, it often gets pushed aside in favor of the older style, which is usually taught first and thus becomes the default social waltz in modern reenactment. That's not wrong, exactly; it's not like the older waltz vanished in favor of the new. But I think that we ought to be spending a lot more time on the new waltz, because it appears to be one of the fundamental building blocks of the social dance of the entire late Victorian/Edwardian/ragtime era.
Let's look at how the box step got used historically:
Most obviously, it was the basis of "the" waltz of late nineteenth-century America, with its lively "leap-slide-cut" sequence.
The glide waltz took the same 3/4 rhythm but toned down the movements into a smooth "step-slide-close". This is what evolved into the modern ballroom Viennese waltz and, less obviously, the infamous modern box step, which is essentially the same in its general construction.
The "leap-slide-cut" pattern was translated from an even 1-2-3 rhythm into a 1&2 rhythm for 2/4 or 4/4 time in the form of the waltz-galop, which became the second half of many of the late nineteenth-century schottische variations described in M. B. Gilbert's Round Dancing (1890), where it substituted for the "leap-hop" or "step-hop" turn or the turning galop of the earlier style of schottische. Examples include the Star Schottische and the various "gavottes".
Allen Dodworth took the 1&2 rhythm and adapted it slightly to jig time (6/8) for the Pasadena, moving the "leap-slide-cut" movements to the first, third, and fourth counts of the six beats in each measure (1..3,4....). This is more-or-less indistinguishable when dancing from the 1&2 of the waltz-galop, and most dancers will do it instinctively when presented with jig-time music. I can hardly call the Pasadena a common part of the era's repertoire, but it is one more piece of evidence for how casually the box was adapted across different rhythms.
Moving into the early twentieth century and back to 3/4 time, one of the basic forms of hesitation waltz, what Albert Newman called the Three-Step Boston, involved stretching the steps of the glide waltz (step-slide-close) across two measures (six beats) of music, though in a different manner than in jig time, stepping on 1....4..6.
The half-and-half, a relatively short-lived fad for dancing in 5/4 time, used the same hesitation pattern but shortened it by a beat, so that the steps land on 1....4,5 (as described under "waltzing" here.)
The tango and foxtrot both adopted the box step as well, with timing being either "slow-quick-quick" (1..2&) or "quick-quick-slow" (1&2).
Frankly, it would take significant effort to dance a representative American dance repertoire from c1880-1920 without using the box step!
Even the "Dodworth start" for the new waltz gets into the action: the "slide-close" or "slide-cut" opening which Dodworth recommended for starting the waltz was an integral part of variations in 3/4 time (the Metropole and the Gavotte Glide), in the faster 3/4 of hesitation waltz (Newman's Five-Step Boston), and in the 6/8 Pasadena. It was not pulled out as a named movement, but it was built into each step-sequence. Learning the "slide-close, step-slide-close" and "slide-close, leap-slide-cut" is almost as useful as the waltz pattern alone.
We spend a lot of time nowadays teaching and learning specific dances or variations one by one. I learned like that, and I've taught that way myself many times. But I increasingly think that this is misguided. Who cares if people know a bunch of named variations that for the most part probably had no popularity outside one dance master's studio? Memorizing all those combinations and their names is a modern skill, but I am not convinced it's a historical one.
We need to look more at the common elements between dances and focus on a core set of movements that can then be adapted to many different dances. This happens a fair amount with the ragtime repertoire, with obviously adaptable variations like the eight-step, but usually only indirectly in the late nineteenth-century material.
Over the last couple of years I've been switching my teaching from specific named variations to learning "building blocks", movements or movement combinations that can be combined in different ways and translated between different rhythms. My students and I jokingly call this the "Legos" technique.
And for this approach for the late nineteenth/early twentieth century, the box step/new waltz may well be the single most valuable combination to know, rather than a neglected stepchild of the earlier waltz. We can manage without it in modern recreations of historical dance, due to the quirk of most people knowing the older waltz...but I don't think we should.
Let's give the poor box step the respect it deserves.
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