In honor of America's Independence Day, a patriotic cotillion figure!
"Fair Light of Liberty" is taken from H. Layton Walker's Twentieth Century Cotillion Figures, published by Two Step Publishing Company in Buffalo, New York, in 1912. Walker was, by 1912, the editor of a monthly dance journal, The Two Step, started by H. N. Grant in 1890.
Figures like this were usually danced as part of a cotillion (or "German") at the end of a ball or sometimes as an entirely separate event. This usage of "cotillion" is distinct from the eighteenth-century square dance that was ancestral to the quadrille and modern square dancing. Cotillion figures often involved a mixer element, props, and some sort of silliness. "Fair Light of Liberty" has all three!
Here's the original description:
Eight couples up and dance. At a signal the eight ladies stand at sides of hall at eight different places, that is one at each corner and one between the space from corner to corner. The leader then gives a lighted candle to each lady which she holds high. The eight gentlemen partners each select another gentleman and the sixteen men arrange themselves in a ring at center. The leader has previously numbered the ladies from one to eight and has placed into envelopes two cards of each number and the gentlemen draw. At a signal they dance around the left, hands joined in a ring, and at another signal run for station indicated on card they have drawn, and the first of the two who are to run to that special corner and blow out light first dances with the fair "light house." Eight gentlemen are left, they dance with each other.
This follows the general format of such figures: couples dance, split up, play some sort of game, and then dance again in new combinations. The instructions are a bit light on the practical details, so here's a detailed guide to how I would interpret and apply them:
Props needed:
- Eight candles (with some way to light them)
- Sixteen cards numbered one through eight (two of each), placed individually in small envelopes
- Eight small, easily portable, standing signs of some sort with numbers large enough to be easily visible
- A third set of eight numbered cards for the ladies to draw from (optional; see note below)
I am assuming that the leader of the cotillion already has some standard way of signaling (a whistle is typical) that is used throughout the evening.
Procedure
- Select eight couples. The ladies draw numbers, but keep them secret (or see note below for another option). The gentlemen draw two envelopes each, but do not open them yet.
- The couples dance. Light the candles and have them ready.
- Signal to break up the couples.
- Ladies: collect your sign and a lighted candle and take it to either a corner or the center of a wall. Keep the number on the sign hidden!
- Gentlemen: find another gentlemen and give him one of your two envelopes. Open the envelopes to discover your numbers.
- Gentlemen make a ring (facing inward) and circle to the left. Ladies, in your places, reveal your signs.
- Signal to break up the circle of gentlemen.
- Ladies, hold your candles high like Lady Liberty!
- Pairs of gentlemen, race to your matching-numbered lady to see who can blow out her candle first!
- Winners dance with the ladies. The other eight gentlemen pair off and dance with each other.
Where there are ambiguities in the instructions, I am generally in favor of maximizing the potential for chaos:
- The ladies' numbers need to be visible so the gentlemen know where to run. One could simply number the spots in order around the room, but it's much more fun to have them in a random order. Having the numbers on signs rather than some sort of wearable badge, and making the signs visible at the last possible minute, means that even a lady's first partner will not know her number in advance.
- A further refinement: though the directions say to assign the ladies numbers in advance, if the ladies may be depended upon not squabble over particular numbers, one could eliminate the drawing of numbers and have them just grab signs at random when they collect their candle.
- Likewise, having the gentlemen not know either their number or the number they are giving to the gentleman they select means they cannot deliberately choose an easy opponent for themselves, and in fact will not know who they are racing until the circle breaks.
Walker does not specify what sort of dance the couples should be doing, but the most commonly mentioned in his book are waltz and two-step. Since this is a particularly American and patriotically-themed figure, I personally feel that a two-step done to a jig-time Sousa march (such as "El Capitan", "The Bride Elect", or "Semper Fidelis") would be the most appropriate.
Happy Fourth of July!
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The image above (click to enlarge) is a Cunard Line ship passing the Statue of Liberty, apparently taken from a 1912 postcard. The Cunard Line was a competitor of the White Star Line, of Titanic fame. If you like the image, it's available from Olde America Antiques (source of the image) as a quilt block or at any number of websites as a poster.
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