Same-Gender Couples in the Regency Ballroom

One of the critical elements of serious dance history is cross-checking what the dancing masters says in dance manuals against the evidence we have -- if any -- of what people actually did.  Those two things aren't always the same.  Dancing masters generally explain what people ought to be doing, sometimes interspersed with lengthy complaints about what people are doing instead.  Both rules and complaints are useful guides, depending on whether one wants to strive to dance well and politely by period standards, or dance badly and rudely, as no doubt happened plenty in practice.  

But the very best evidence comes from the letters and diaries of people who actually lived in the relevant era.  Here's a great example of how a letter supports something that dancing masters wrote about in the Regency era: people of the same gender dancing together.

I've rarely been at a historical dance event of any kind, anywhere, where the gentlemen outnumbered the ladies.  Sometimes the numbers are roughly equal, but most often it's the other way around.  That means ladies have two choices -- sit out or dance with each other.  

This is not just a modern problem; dancers of the Regency era had the same problem.  And they had precisely the same solution.  We have a number of suggestions from dancing masters that in the case of an imbalance of genders (either way), the unpaired may dance country dances in same-gender couples.

See, for example, these excerpts from the rules of ballroom etiquette given by two prominent London dancing masters, Thomas Wilson and G. M. S. Chivers, who were dedicated rivals but are pretty much in agreement on this topic:

No two Ladies must dance together, without permission of the Master of Ceremonies.

In the absence of Ladies, Gentlemen sometimes form couples; in that case they must always stand at the bottom.

        -- Thomas Wilson, in An Analysis of Country Dancing, Third Edition (London, 1811); repeated in the Fourth Edition (1822).

This is the embryonic form of the two basic rules: (1) no same-gender couples if there are opposite-gender partners to be had, and (2) any pairs of gentlemen (sometimes ladies as well) have to stand at the bottom of the set.

Wilson elaborated on this in his lengthier works on country dancing:

Two Ladies, or two Gentlemen, cannot Dance together, without permission of the Master of Ceremonies; nor can permission be given while there are an equal number of Ladies and Gentlemen.

In the absence of Gentlemen, when Ladies are permitted to form couples, and in the absence of Ladies, when it occurs that Gentlemen are permitted to form couples, they must always stand at the bottom of the Set.

Ladies or Gentlemen forming couples, are not entitled to a call according to either of their numbers, without the permission of the Master of Ceremonies, as they lose their privilege by standing up together; and it is entirely optional with the Master of the Ceremonies to permit two Gentlemen to stand together.

        -- Thomas Wilson, The Complete System of English Country Dancing (London, c1815); repeated in the The Companion to the Ballroom, Third Edition (c1818)

Now not only pairs of gentlemen but pairs of ladies must stand at the bottom, and neither gender gets to call a dance.  Calling a dance, in this context, means determining what music should be played and what figures should be danced to it (two separate decisions, as the notion of a "dance" as a locked figure/tune pair was barely conceived of in this era).  At a public ball, the privilege of calling would go in order by numbers, the ladies or gentlemen having been issued them at the door.  At a private ball, it would more likely go by rank, and at an informal dance, by whatever system the attendees devised among themselves.

Two gentlemen together seems to also be a little more problematic than two ladies, a trend which may increase over time, as we shall see.

Chivers pretty much agreed with Wilson, although he gives a little more leeway to pairs of ladies:

Two Ladies must not dance together if there are gentlemen in the room.  -- The same rule is to be observed by the Gentlemen.

Two gentlemen dancing together, in the absence of ladies, cannot take a call, and must stand at the bottom of the Set; but, if two ladies are dancing together in the absence of gentlemen, they are not to go to the bottom.

        -- G. M. S. Chivers, in both The Dancers' Guide (London, c1820) and The Modern Dancing Master (London, 1822)

He doesn't actually say that two ladies will get a call, though at least he doesn't banish them to the bottom of the set.  But he gets distinctly more crotchety about the gentlemen over time:

Two Ladies must not dance together if there are gentlemen in the room.  -- The same rule is to be observe by the Gentlemen.

Gentlemen should not dance together, in the absence of ladies, for it is better to see those gentlemen who have no partner keep their seats, than to see them dance. 

        -- G. M. S. Chivers, The Dancing Master in Miniature, or New Dancer's Guide (London, c1825).

All the comments except that last one are from sections on etiquette in Wilson and Chivers' books.  The absolute ban on gentlemen dancing together comes from a separate section of The Dancing Master in Miniature, "Observations on Deportment".  Apparently he didn't bother to reconcile the two sections.  Interestingly, that comment does not appear in the Deportment section of his 1822 book.

Half a dozen books are not a lot of references, but it's enough to draw some conclusions:

• The overwhelming priority was to match people up in opposite-gender couples for dance purposes.  Same-gender pairs were only permitted if there was an imbalance of one gender.
  
  
• There was enough of a concern with ladies and gentlemen wanting to dance in same-gender pairs, even when there were opposite-gender partners available, for dancing masters to have found it worth writing out rules about and to have forbidden dancers to do it without special permission.
  
  
• Same-gender pairs didn't generally get the privileges of the opposite-gender ones, whether that was placement in the set or the opportunity to call a dance.
  
  
• Male pairs were more problematic than female ones, possibly becoming even more so over time.

Both genders would have been accustomed to dancing together at dance classes, which were often segregated by gender; it wouldn't necessarily have struck people as expressing romantic or sexual attraction.  But I would speculate that the issue with gentlemen dancing together was that homosexuality (or at least sodomy; the concept of homosexuality as a specific identity had not yet developed) was an issue in Regency London -- a crime, in fact, for which men were actually executed during the first quarter of the nineteenth century.  So there may have been more sensitivity to gentlemen wanting to dance together for reasons other than an absence of ladies, especially if there were actually enough ladies present.  

Ladies, more often the majority at balls and not such a legal target in any case, would have more leeway in dancing with female friends, though apparently their wanting to do so to the exclusion of gentlemen could be a problem!  I don't think that is evidence of hidden lesbianism in most cases; more likely it was simply that in the not-terribly-romantic setting of a country dance, ladies just enjoyed dancing with their friends.

So that is what we hear about this topic from the dancing masters.  The next question, which comes up whenever I open my mouth to say just about anything about historical dance, is "did they really do that?"  

I doubt that dancing masters would have bothered creating or printing rules about same-gender pairs dancing together if the situation had never come up, but as it happens, we have solid evidence that ladies, at least, did do that.  Specifically, we have twenty-five-year-old Jane Austen describing an example of this practice in a letter to her older sister Cassandra dated Saturday, November 1st, 1800.  Here's the relevant excerpt:

It was a pleasant Ball, & still more good than pleasant, for there were nearly 60 people, & sometimes we had 17 couple.—The Portsmouths, Dorchesters, Boltons, Portals & Clarks were there, & all the meaner & more usual &c. &c.'s.—There was a scarcity of Men in general, & a still greater scarcity of any that were good for much.—I danced nine dances out of ten, five with Stephen Terry, T. Chute & James Digweed & four with Catherine.—There was commonly a couple of ladies standing up together, but not often any so amiable as ourselves.

I believe the Catherine mentioned here was Jane's close friend and age-mate, Catherine Bigg.  Catherine's younger brother Harris Wither-Bigg would later propose to Jane, who was engaged to him for less than twenty-four hours before thinking better of it.

This ball had the common problem of "a scarcity of Men", particularly a scarcity of good or willing dancers.  The scarcity makes it acceptable for ladies to dance together, per Chivers and Wilson above.  But look at the numbers here: there were ten dances, of which Jane danced nine, and four of them she danced with Catherine!  Was there that much of an imbalance?  Were they unpopular?  Or, being good friends -- that is not meant as a euphemism -- were they just happy to keep dancing together?

It wasn't just Jane and Catherine, either; there were "commonly" other pairs of ladies dancing ("standing up") together, though Jane threw in a snide comment about their lesser amiability.  I'm not sure whether she meant that they were less amiable in general or whether they were too-obviously frustrated at dancing with each other instead of with gentlemen, while Jane and Catherine were more patient with the situation, possibly because they were better dancers than many of the available gentlemen, those who were not "good for much"!

I have yet to come across any reference to a situation in which two gentlemen were noted to have danced together, but this is not a topic which can be easily researched.  I've no reason to think it wouldn't have been at least an occasional practice, though, since the dancing masters obviously thought it common enough to require rules.

Excerpt from Jane Austen's letter taken from the transcription appearing in Jane Austen's Letters (Fourth Edition) edited by Deirdre Le Faye.  Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011; online edition 2015.

Comments

[MsH]

This is fascinating. I take her to mean, without saying, that they danced together because they were better dancers than the (theoretically) available men; it seems the most natural interpretation, although perhaps only because it's a familiar situation in my own social dance.

I am curious to know to what extent the roles really differed in the dances in question. Was there any aspect of lead-and-follow or was it simply a matter of knowing steps? How much difference was there in the two sets of steps - could two men dance together simply by using what they knew, or did they have to learn the woman's steps seperately? And how did the process of learning work - would a person taught by a single tutor, and practicing at home, naturally learn both roles?

[Susan de Guardiola]

In general, in a country dance of this era, there is no difference between the figures or steps required of the ladies and the gentlemen. There are occasional exceptions, such as the "triumph" figure. But mostly they dance the same figures and steps, just in mirror image or different order. So it would just be a matter of remembering that the person dancing the lady's role initiates most moves (a change from 18th-century practice) and has the right of way. In practice, the only problems I've seen are memory issues, people forgetting which role they are dancing at the moment.

While there are certain ways a gentleman can tweak his movements a bit to be courteous to a lady, there aren't really lead/follow elements within couples, especially since in this era in England the lady generally initiates figures. But there's an overall visual lead/follow dynamic in the entire set following the model presented by the first couple.

Some dance classes were single-sex (sometimes with a female teacher for the young ladies), so I would expect that to mean people were probably accustomed to practicing with members of the same sex in both roles, or at least not too startled by the idea.

[MsH]

Thank you! In that case it seems very natural that people in trusted company would just get on with it, rather than sit down.

[Brenda Webster]

Regency dancing... does the bow occur outside the music or inside the music when the first couple reaches you and you begin to dance the figures?