Capering & Kickery

Seasonal Cotillions

Once more, some cotillions, this time to wrap up the year with midwinter cheer!  As with the North Pole figures, these are taken from H. Layton Walker's Twentieth Century Cotillion Figures (Buffalo, New York, 1912).  This trio of figures is pure fun, however, with no special historical significance.  Three figures aren't enough to comprise an entire party on their own, but mixed with standard, non-winter-themed figures, they add a nice seasonal touch.

But first, let's let's decorate the ballroom with a winter theme...

Snow Flake Dance (party decor)
I can do know better than to quote Walker on the details:

Produce a winter scene that would cheer rather than chill the dancers.  Ceiling to be festooned with crepe paper, and hung with ornaments.  Under these decorations have network of wires loaded down with artificial snow.  Provide serpentine [long, string-like confetti] to the participants which is to be thrown over the snow-laden festoons and wires, sending down the shower of flakes.  The effect is very pretty.  Souvenirs for the dance are caps for the ladies and hugh [sic] chrysanthemums for the gentlemen.  Orchestra can occupy an ice cave at the end of the hall and all the decorations of the room are to be consistent with the snow-flake effect.

Presumably those are huge chrysanthemums for the gents.  

As is often the case, I am bemused by the level of effort and money this description implies.  The orchestra can occupy an ice cave?  A real ice cave?  A fake one seems like it would be less messy and less likely to result in frozen fingers wrecking the music, but with the conspicuous-consumption aspect of cotillions, one can't be quite certain they didn't actually consider building the orchestra a giant igloo.  But least the whole thing seems safer than decorating with evergreens.

On to some figures...

Seeking the North Pole...

In honor of the freezing cold winter weather, I'm returning to H. Layton Walker's Twentieth Century Cotillion Figures (Two Step Publishing Company, Buffalo, New York, 1912) for a pair of cotillion figures themed around the then-current news of the attempts by explorers Robert Peary and Frederick Cook to be the first to reach the North Pole in 1908-1909.  At the time Walker's book was written, there was a lively conflict going on between the two men as to who could claim the polar laurels.  Since then, both accounts have been discredited to varying degrees, but it seems to still be something of an ongoing debate among scholars.  There's an interesting account of the two expeditions and the contemporary debate at the Smithsonian Magazine website, which I recommend for anyone wanting more historical perspective.

What interests me about these figures, along with generally appreciating ballroom silliness, is how, as with Admiral Dewey and the Spanish-American War, current events were turned into ballroom party games.  It's also worth noting for general timeline purposes that, in a book published in 1912, so many of the figures specify the use of the two-step, which was then on the verge of being swept away by the new dances of the 1910s.

On to the figures!

Down and up, differently

This is turning into a miniseries of posts on technique for 1910s American contra dances, as helpfully described by Elizabeth Burchenal in American Country-Dances, Volume I (New York & Boston, 1918). 

In general, Burchenal is a treasure.  But her instructions aren't always perfectly correct or clear, and there's one figure where I've got some real problems with Burchenal's descriptions: "Down the Center and Back".

Here's how Burchenal describes it in her glossary of figures:

Down the Centre and Back
In ordinary position (or sometimes with crossed hands joined) a couple go eight steps down the centre of the set toward the foot; then swing half around (or when crossed hands are joined, they face about without releasing hands and without swinging around) so as to face up the set, and return eight steps toward the head of the set (8 measures).

That's a very clear description, but there are a couple of problems with it. 

One problem is that when the dancers turn as a couple rather than individually: if you go eight steps (four measures) down the set, then try to turn as a couple and come back up to the top in the same eight steps, you have to turn really fast and make some big steps coming back (or perhaps make tiny steps going down, which no one ever does).  It can be done, but it's awkward, even though it's facilitated by having the dancers go down the center in "ordinary position", meaning ballroom hold, which at least lets the man help the woman swing around quickly.  It's rushed and ungraceful and I don't like it.

But the bigger problem is that in her actual dance instructions down the center and back is used in five different ways by Burchenal, and she gives the same timing (eight steps) for the "down the centre" segment in every single one of them:

• down with crossed hands, turn individually, up to original places
• down with crossed hands, turn individually, up to second place
• down with crossed hands, turn individually, up, cast off
• down in ordinary position, turn as a couple, up to second place
• down in ordinary position, turn as a couple, up, cast off

So in four measures (eight steps), one is variously supposed to:

• return to original places
• return to second place
• return to original places and cast off
• turn as a couple and return to second place
• turn as a couple, return to original places, and cast off

I'm particularly unenthused by that last one.  Even assuming that one can turn as a couple in two steps (whee!), that gives the couple only six steps to travel the distance they just covered in eight steps and cast off.  And Burchenal does not mention the common modern trick of having the second couple catch the active couple around the waist as they come back up and swing them around to help them cast.  The cast is unassisted.  

At least they're not wearing hoop skirts.

No really, no hands!

Along with the development of the buzz swing, another mystery I've wondered about in the evolution of modern contra dancing is just when the figure "right and left" acquired one of its twentieth-century forms, in which two couples (or two men facing two women) cross over, passing right shoulders rather than taking hands, followed by the person on the left walking backward, not in a "courtesy turn", but simply shoulder to shoulder with the person on the right as they turn halfway to change places.  Ricky Holden gave the following description of right and left in The Contra Dance Book (Newark, New Jersey, 1956):

All move forward to opposite place, passing right shoulders with opposite person; keeping side by side as though inside hands were joined, pivot half around as a couple and reface the center of the set.  The one on the left of each pair pivots backwards around while the one on the right moves forward.

It can be clearly seen in, e.g., this video of the modern contra version of Money Musk, starting at about :23.  

This isn't the only way to do a right and left nowadays.  I believe the standard modern version involves either passing right shoulders or taking right hands and then taking left hands with a courtesy turn (see, for example, the lists of figures here and here; search for "right and left").  The no-hands version with the shoulder-to-shoulder pivot seems to be regarded as "old-fashioned" or "chestnut style", which tells you something about how much contra has evolved since the 1950s! 

I've been told with great assurance that the no-hands version is the "nineteenth-century style" of right and left.  But I've seen no evidence that it predates the twentieth century, and it's certainly not the original way of doing right and left, either in country dances or squares (quadrilles).  I don't believe it's nineteenth century at all.  But when did it become popular?

Getting into the swing of things

There's a dance history question that comes up periodically that I have never been able to satisfactorily answer:

When did the "buzz step" swing become common in contra dance?

As I've been working my way through more and more American contra/country dance history, I've become more interested in this problem and kept track of a few useful clues.  

First, let's be clear about what the buzz-step swing is.  Here's a good demonstration of it as performed in contra dancing today.  Watch the feet closely.

The earliest clear description of the buzz swing in a contra/country dance source that I am aware of is by Elizabeth Burchenal, who published the explanation and diagram (click to enlarge) below in 1918, in her American Country-Dances, Volume I:

Buzz Step
This is a sort of pivoting step, used when swinging partners in place.  The man holds his partner in ordinary dance position, but well out to his right, so that they are practically side by side, with right shoulder to right shoulder.  

In fitting the step to the music, each measure should be counted ("one, and, two, and").  On "one," put down the right foot in place; on "and," step forward on the ball of the left foot; on "two," put down the right foot on the same spot as before; on "and," step forward on the ball of the left foot, and so on.  The step is usually continued for eight measures, and is merely a quick walk (or run) with the right foot always put down in the same place and the left foot always advancing.  More weight is put on the right foot than on the left, which gives a slight emphasis on "one" and "two."  With this step the man swings his partner around very vigorously.

Balance and Swing (or, "Swing Partners")
The most usual way of executing the "Balance and Swing" to-day, is for partners to meet, take "ordinary dance position" (the usual way of holding partner for waltzing), and swing around vigorously with the buzz step.  Originally the "Balance" was executed before the swing, but for some reason this has been almost universally abandoned, so that the expression "Balance and Swing" now means nothing more than "Swing Partners."

It's clear that at the time she was researching her dances and writing the buzz-step swing was already standard in contra.

Ladies leading, 1898

Almost exactly a year ago, I wrote about some of the tidbits of evidence of ladies or gentlemen dancing in same-gender couples in Regency-era ballrooms.  I'm returning to the topic of same-gender dancing with an interesting article I discovered in an issue of a late-nineteenth-century American dance magazine, The Two Step, published at the time by dancing master and author H. N. Grant, out of Buffalo, New York.  

The June, 1898, issue (Vol. 5, No. 47) includes a short essay on an important topic: "May a Lady Dance Backward."  It opens with a strong statement in favor:

Should a lady be taught to use the backward step in the waltz?

Yes we say, most emphatically yes.

That opens up all sorts of interesting questions, doesn't it?  Were ladies not generally even taught to waltz backward?  Was that actually controversial?

Apparently, it was not a problem in the anonymous author's school:

We have taught the ladies to retreat with the waltz step ad lib., for ten years or more, yet its excessive use is seldom ever seen in our establishment.  In all our experience, we have yet to find a lady who objects to dancing backward or a change.  They even ask for the practice.  

I've certainly seen it considered impolite for a gentleman to force a lady to go backward for any length of time, and the article does support that etiquette tip:

We are not advocating the fad of rushing the lady half way, or completely across, or around the hall in a backward position.  We know that this is done in some places and is entirely wrong.  All things become wrong when carried to excess.

But done in moderation, it should be quite acceptable:

Would it be an unpardonable breach of etiquette for the gentleman to occasionally allow his partner to make two or three retreating movements?  We hardly think so.

A fuss over ladies dancing backward would be generally amusing as a nineteenth-century tempest in a teapot, but it's the author's other argument for ladies learning to dance backward that really makes this essay noteworthy: