Several years ago I wrote about starting the "new waltz" of the late nineteenth century in the way recommended by Allen Dodworth, who suggested a preparatory measure of music in which the dancers move from the usual starting orientation for couple dances, gentleman facing the wall/lady facing the center of the room, to one in which the gentleman's back is to line of dance, making it easier for him to accomplish a clean leap backward on the first step of the waltz, while the lady faces forward and can easily perform her forward leap. I'd thought at the time to make that post part of a series addressing different ways recommended for starting various forms of waltz over the course of the nineteenth century, but for one reason or another never got back to the topic.
Here's another short installment in what is now a very drawn-out series.
The mid-century valse à trois temps creates a different problem in starting than the "new waltz". The dance begins with the gentleman facing the wall in the usual way; no issue with that. But the first step of the dance is actually an interesting problem in leading. Much of the mid-nineteenth-century couple dance repertoire starts out with a sideways motion, the two dancers moving in parallel along the line of dance. The galop, valse à deux temps, schottische, and five-step waltz (Saracco/Angelina social version) all have a first step that is a step or slide sideways along the line of dance. Sometimes the first step is on the diagonal, if the dancers are doing a non-turning "pursuit" movement (one forward, the other backward) or in some versions of the early schottische in which the first half does not turn, but the motion is still sideways. Other dances, such as the polka, polka mazurka, and the Cellarius (mazurka) waltz, have an initial hop followed by a slide or step traveling along the line of dance. And both the hop and the step are very easy to lead in the physical sense. If the gentleman hops, the lady will feel it through their frame and at least rise slightly along with him. A step or slide along the line of dance can be easily physically cued by the gentleman's right arm around the lady.
The valse à trois temps is an interesting exception. The gentleman's initial step is across the line of dance, around the lady, while she steps forward between his feet. Unlike hops and slides sideways, this is not really physically leadable. The gentleman cannot guide the lady into that precise step; the only option is to pull her toward him with his right arm, which is rather awkward with the couple face to face in a closed position. So how is he to cue her to start?
Now, in actual practice, this is not a significant issue. If both dancers know that they are planning to perform the valse à trois temps, the lady can be cued the way I learned to do it early on, with a drawing up of the body that physically communicates "we are about to start" at the appropriate point in the music. I usually explain this as doing the same thing that happens when one takes a deep breath (expanding the chest and raising the shoulders), except without necessarily taking the deep breath. The lady receives the cue and, knowing what her first step is, simply makes it.
But what if the lady doesn't know what the first step should be? What if, for example, she doesn't know whether they will be dancing the valse à trois temps or à deux temps? The noted French dancing master and author Cellarius made it clear that both styles of waltz might be sharing the same dance floor:
If he at all jostles the other dancers, if he can not keep clear of the most inexperienced, even of the couples à trois temps, which are so great an impediment to those à deux temps--if he is not sufficiently sure of the music to keep time when the orchestra quickens or slackens it, or even when his partner loses it--then he can not be considered as a skilful waltzer.
The quotation above is drawn from The drawing-room dances, a contemporary English translation of Cellarius' influential La danse des salons. The translation was published in London in 1847. It is reasonably accurate to the original French:
Mille écueils se présentent à lui dés qu'il se trouve lancé dans le tourbillon d'un bal. Pour peu qu'un cavalier heurte les autres couples, ne sache pas se garer même des plus inexpérimentés, même des couples à trois temps, qui sont pour les valseurs à deux un si grand empêchement; qu'il ne soit pas assez sûr de son pas pour conserver la mesure quand l'orchestre presse ou ralentit, ou quand la valseuse perd la mesure elle-même, il ne saurait être considéré comme un valseur habile.
It's mildly awkward if the lady steps straight out to the side (as in the deux temps) when the gentleman is trying to step around her (as in the trois temps). Perhaps that is the circumstance Cellarius had in mind when he suggested a "preparation" by the gentlemen to give the lady the "signal for setting out". It is also possible that this "preparation" is simply the remnant of the various promenades with which the waltz was started earlier in the century, which is a much larger topic that I plan to discuss at length at some point in the future. For now, let's just look at the practical aspects.
Once again quoting Cellarius' original French and the 1847 English translation:
La préparation se fait par le cavalier: il pose le pied droit un peu en avant sur le premier temps de la mesure, laisse passer le deuxième, et saute sur le pied droit en levant la jambe gauche pour se trouver au troisième temps et emboîter le premier pas de la valse. Cette préparation donne à la dame le signal du départ.
The preliminary step is made by the gentleman; he places the right foot a little in advance at the first position, lets the second pass, and springs upon the right foot, raising the left leg to meet the third note of the music, and unites the first step of the waltze. This preparation gives the lady the signal for setting out.
The English translation of Cellarius is notoriously ridden with errors. "First position" above should be "first beat of the measure". But the action is not very complicated. On, presumably, the last bar of a musical phrase, the gentleman steps forward on his right foot (count one), pauses (count two), and then hops on the right foot, raising the left foot (count three). They then begin to waltz on the first beat of the next measure.
The only real question in performance is how closed up the partners are at this point. If the partners are face-to-face in the normal position for waltzing, the gentleman stepping forward directly towards the lady and hopping is rather awkward. Unless he thought it through enough to initially be standing abnormally far away from her when they take closed position (likewise awkward, unless he has very long arms), he's going to end up right in her face and not well placed to step easily around her at the beginning of the waltz. I think it is much more likely that the partners are actually turned out slightly, both facing line of dance, and his step forward is along the line of dance, turning toward the lady on the hop on count three.
The obvious next question is how the dancers just happen to find themselves in that position, with the gentleman's right foot free, especially when his right foot is not the standard starting foot. And what is the lady doing?
This is where I see the connection with the earlier promenade starts, variations of which are described by, e.g., Thomas Wilson in his A description of the correct method of waltzing (London, 1816) and a number of continental (French and German) sources. Without going into the technical details, Wilson, for his slow French waltz, described taking four slow steps forward along the line of dance, one per measure, gentleman starting left foot and lady right, before beginning the actual waltz. The last step of that series would be very similar to my interpretation of Cellarius: a step by the gentleman, on the right foot, along the line of dance, following which the partners turn toward each other to start the dance. This idea of preceding the waltz with a short promenade turns up over and over in early descriptions.
It is possible to do this preparatory measure in isolation, but I think it is also conceivable that Cellarius simply assumed that people would automatically know a few standard practices he did not bother to spell out: that the dancers would already be promenading along and that the lady would be making the opposite steps from the gentleman. In this context, Cellarius' hop and lift of the left foot on the third beat of the measure are just an added flourish.
I had it hammered into my head early on that it is somewhere between silly and improper to stand around on the dance floor in closed position waiting to start moving, so if one wanted to incorporate this particular detail into the mid-century valse à trois temps, my suggested format, filling a standard eight-measure musical phrase, would be a four-measure honors (bow/courtesy), coming into closed position at the end, and four promenade steps along line of dance, the last one ending with the hop and lift of the foot by the gentleman. The lady will hop, or at least rise along with him, by physical necessity when his body moves. Then swing directly into the waltz on the first beat of the next phrase of music.
For the most part, other French, English, and American dancing masters of the mid- to late nineteenth century did not incorporate this preparatory measure into their own descriptions of the waltz. It does appear in the works of (Paris-based) Gawlikowski, whose Guide complet de la danse had numerous editions from the late 1850s to the end of the century. Much of Gawlikowski's book is loosely rewritten from Cellarius. His description of the "preparation" from the 1858 edition is so similar that it was likely one of the borrowed bits:
Pour avertir sa dame, le cavalier fait précéder le pas d'une préparation.
Cette préparation consiste à poser le pied droit en avant (1er temps), à rester dans cette position pendant le deuxième temps, puis, pour le troisième, à sauter légèrement sur le même pied droit, en levant aussitôt la jambe gauche en avant; e'est alors que l'on commence le pas de Valse pour lequel on n'a qu'à poser le pied gauche.
Since most people manage to start waltzing without all this extra fuss, this is, practically speaking, a solution in search of a problem. But it is a pleasant bit of extra detail to add to one's performance, and the hint it gives of connection to earlier descriptions of waltz is intriguing.
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