Twin Sisters (1 of 2)

"Country dances are usually known by the name of the music to which the figures are set."
       --Thomas Hillgrove, A complete practical guide to the art of dancing (New York, 1863)

As country (contra) dancing faded from its former domination of the most fashionable ballrooms in favor of quadrilles and couple dances, Hillgrove's statement reflected the transition in progress from the interchangeability of country dance figures and tunes earlier in the century to more fixed pairings of music and dance as the repertoire shrank to a small set.  Many of these survivors would become today's "chestnuts".  

But in this particular case, I think Hillgrove may be incorrect.  I've found no tune called "Twin Sisters", and since the dance has a history under a different name, I would speculate that it acquired its popular title because of its opening figure. in which two ladies take hands and dance together.

Twin Sisters was well-known enough in the mid-nineteenth century to appear on a list of a "portion of the country dances still in vogue" included by name only, without figures, by Lawrence De Garmo Brookes in his Brookes on Modern Dancing (New York, 1867):

HULL'S VICTORY.
DEVIL'S DREAM.
LADIES' TRIUMPH.
HEWITT'S FANCY.
PORTLAND FANCY.
TWIN SISTERS.
CIRCASSIAN CIRCLE.
CAMPTOWN HORNPIPE.
ETC., ETC., ETC.

The figures are not particularly complicated, but its appearance in such a short list makes it worth some attention.

The mid-nineteenth century
My base instructions for Twin Sisters are taken from one of its first appearances by that name, in Elias Howe's Complete ball-room handbook (Boston, 1858):

First two ladies join hands and chassee across the set and back (two first gentlemen chassee across single on the outside at the same time and back) two first gentlemen join hands chassee across, (ladies on the outside at same time) back--first couple down the centre, back cast off--right and left.

These instructions, with minor terminology and punctuation variations, appear in Howe's other mid-century dance manuals and music books, including The pocket ball-room prompter (Boston, 1858), American dancing master, and ball-room prompter (Boston,1862 and 1866), and Parlor Dances (Boston, c1871).  They also appear in non-Howe manuals such as The Ball Room Guide (Laconia, New Hampshire, 1858) and H. G. O. Washburn's The ball-room manual of contra dances and social cotillons (Belfast, Maine, and Boston, 1863).

There are some complications, however, which I will discuss below and in a later post.  First, let's take a look at the actual dance:

Reconstruction (thirty-two bars) 
The formation is a proper contra dance set, gentlemen on one side and ladies on the other.  

4b    First two ladies, facing, take two hands and gallop sideways across the set; first two gentlemen, facing, gallop sideways across, passing outside ladies
4b    Repeat back to places
8b    Repeat all of the above with gentlemen taking hands and ladies on the outside
8b    Active couple take two hands and gallop down the center and up again (4b), and cast off (4b)
8b    Same two couples right and left

Performance notes
American contra dances of this era would be done with a walking step rather than the more elaborate steps of the early nineteenth century.

My reconstruction of the chassee across the set and down the centre, back for Howe's dances are both influenced by earlier practices.  I interpret both of these moves as sideways slides rather than as a series of literal chassé steps.  Specifically:

• For two opening chassee across figures, I am using an eight-slide galop, counted 1&2&3&4&5&6&7&8, in each direction.  That is a lot of sideways movement, so unless the dancers have a very large hall, they will need to take small steps, lest they be ricocheting off the walls.  If there are several parallel sets, they are likely to interweave entertainingly during these figures.
  
  
• For down the centre, back, when accompanied by casting off as it is in Twin Sisters, I use a four-slide galop (1&2&3&4) down the set and the same up the set.

Note that the opening chassee across figures are not "tiroirs" figures.  The ladies move across and back on the inside, keeping hands throughout, then the gentlemen do the same.

I prefer right and left with hands for proper contra dances of this era.

Progression and repeats
The default in this era was still triple minor, even though in this case the figures involve only two couples, and only the top couples in the set beginning the dance.  By the 1850s, Howe was advocating the use of simultaneous starts, though he stuck with the triple minor format:

It is usual for those at the foot of the set to wait until the first couple has passed down, and they have arrived at the head of the set; but there is no good reason why they should so wait, as every fourth couple commence at the same time as the first couple.

In a dance with so much galloping, couples may not mind having nothing to do every other iteration as they move up the set (especially if they have just danced down it), so the modern reenactor has several valid options:

• the "usual" progression, with only the top two couples starting and a new active couple beginning once three couples have accumulated at the top (leaving one couple completely inactive between pairs of dancing couples)
  
  
• a slightly modernized adaptation, with only two couples starting but a new active couple beginning once two couples have accumulated
  
  
• Howe's suggested format, with every third fourth couple starting at once, but still leaving an inactive ("neutral") couple
  
  
• the most modern, every second couple starting at once, no inactive couples between them.  

I lean toward the second or third option myself, unless the dancers are very, very impatient.

The dance would last until all dancers are back to their original places -- if using the classic progression, the number of times through may be calculated using the formulas here.  

The late nineteenth century
The same instructions for Twin Sisters reappear in Howe's New American dancing master (1882 and 1892) and New ball-room guide (1891) as well as in Bonstein's Dancing and prompting, etiquette and deportment of society and ball room (Boston & Chicago, 1884),  Schell's Prompting: How to do it (Boston, 1890), Elmwell’s Prompter’s Pocket Instruction Book (Boston, 1892), and French's The prompter's handbook (Boston, 1893).

Gems of the Ball Room (Chicago, 1896) does not include the "cast off" in the instructions, and instead describes the dance as follows:

Form six couples in a set.
[8b] First two ladies chasse across (gents outside)       
[8b] Gents chasse across (ladies outside)                     
[8b] Head couple down the center and back                
[8b] Right and left with second couples                       
Cast off one couple and repeat.  Play six times.

The casting off has been placed at the end of the dance, and it is now to be danced in a six-couple set and played only six times through.

I don't actually believe any of this.  

Forming a six-couple set and playing the music only six times are the sort of instructions one sees in full-set dances, where the top couple moves to the bottom of the set at the end of each iteration of the dance, as in Sir Roger de Coverley or the Virginia Reel.  They work very poorly for a normally progressing country dance.  Even with a simultaneous start, it is a ridiculously short dance, and one third of the time, including the final iteration, two of the six couples will not be dancing.  Without a simultaneous start, as is implied by the directions, it is even worse.  Moving the casting off to the end does allow for a more leisurely promenade down the center of the set and back, but at the cost of squeezing the progression awkwardly into the end of the right and left.

Since literally every other nineteenth-century source I have puts the casting off in the traditional place after the down-the-middle-and-back, as does one of the two early twentieth-century ones, I think this is simply poor editing, and the dance should be done as described above.

Into the twentieth century
Gott's Old Familiar Dances with Figures (Boston, 1918) is somewhat out of date for its time in that it is still using Howe's music plates and most of Howe's language.  In the instructions for Twin Sisters, otherwise word-for-word Howe's, the casting off is omitted.  That could be interpreted as meaning that the dancers do a four-bar promenade down the middle, then turn individually and do the same back up, shortening their steps to arrive in the second place, in the style of the progressive figure of the early nineteenth century.  But I think it is more likely just an editing error.

Elizabeth Burchenal's American Country Dances, Volume I (New York and Boston, 1918) is a much more useful source if one wants to follow 1910s practice, since she actually provides an entire page of instructions and full details of a style almost completely transitioned to modern practice.  She claims that some of the dances she includes were drawn from her personal experience at New England contra dances, others were "resurrected for me, from memory, by old fiddlers and others who used to attend the old-time 'kitchen dances' forty years or so ago", and still others were "from some of the numerous old 'call books' of that time" that she has interpreted using current (1918) practices.  Unfortunately, she does not say which category Twin Sisters falls into.

The sequence of figures given by Burchenal is the same as the Howe figures, but her instructions (both general and specific to Twin Sisters) include:

• Every second couple starting at once.
  
  
• Holding crossed hands and using chassé steps (step-close-step-pause) to move forward across the set during the first two figures; the dancers moving single use the same step
  
  
• A crossed-hand promenade down the center, with walking steps, for four measures, then coming back up and casting off in the next four.
  
  
• The right and left is done by passing right shoulders (no hands) and then "keeping side by side as if their inside hands were joined...continue to the opposite side, wheeling half around (to do this, the one on the left makes a left-about-face and walks backward, keeping the
  right shoulder toward the other's left shoulder)".
  
  
• The dance continues "as long as desired" and finishes with "Forward and Swing Partners" (this would be a buzz-step swing) and "Promenade around the Hall".

Ricky Holden, in his invaluable work The Contra Dance Book (1956), does list other sources for the dance from the 1920s through 1940s that appear to have some of the same details as Burchenal.  But pursuing the dance further into the twentieth century is beyond the scope of this post.

Music
As I stated at the beginning of this post, I have been unable to locate any name tune for "Twin Sisters".  Instead, I stumbled into a maze of cross-referenced music and dance figures that sent me all the way back to the middle of the eighteenth century trying to sort them all out.  It's a sufficiently long and tangled tale that it will be continued in a follow-up post.

(Continue to the second Twin Sisters post)

Comments

[Rostik]

There's ambiguity in your description of Howe's start. Howe's text states every fourth couple, you write every third. I can see some way to reconcile these. But maybe that's just "editing error".

[Susan de Guardiola]

Editing error. We both mean couples # 1, 4, 7. I'll fix it, thanks!

[Ростислав Кондратенко]

Thank you.