I don't often get asked to write about particular topics on Kickery, but I recently received, via the comments here, a request from a teacher at Mrs. Bennet's Ballroom, a historical dance group in London, UK, for a few of my favorite figures for mescolanzes, the four-facing-four country dance format I surveyed earlier this year. Since the focus of the group seems to be the Regency era, I'll stick with figures from manuals by London dancing master G. M. S. Chivers, which are from the very tail end of the official Regency period (1811-1820) and a few years after.
As I discussed in my earlier survey, Chivers seems to have really liked the mescolanze format, and a few other dancing masters and authors picked it up, but other than the special case of La Tempête, I can't really say with confidence that mescolanzes were a popular or even common dance form in nineteenth-century England. But the format appears across enough different sources that I'm comfortable with using it sparingly to add variety for the late Regency and immediate post-Regency era. I don't ever do more than one mescolanze at a ball, however.
Mescolanze figures are derived from country dances and quadrilles, with some figures from the latter descending from much older French contredanse (cotillon) figures. A characteristic figure, of course, is the famous chassé-by-couples featured prominently in La Tempête. Since the group already has that dance in its repertoire, I'll not include any others with the same figure.
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