Capering & Kickery

June 2017 Gig Calendar

Back in the U.S.A. at last!  I'm going to be keeping a very light teaching schedule with minimal travel this summer while I try to catch up on research and writing and various things I've neglected while living in Russia, but I'll be emerging from my warm-weather hibernation for a few little events here and there.

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Friday-Saturday, June 9th-10th ~ East Durham, New York (Catskills)
Steampunk in the Catskills III (Facebook event)
Friendly, low-key steampunk weekend with two workshops in Victorian dancing at the Blackthorne Resort!

Wednesday, June 14th ~ Middletown, Connecticut
Jane Austen Era Dancing  (Facebook event)
Beginner-friendly lesson 7:00-8:30pm.  Informal dancing, no costume needed.  

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I am available for private lessons in Connecticut or on my various travels; during the latter, you must provide the dance space.  Email me directly if you would like to schedule a private lesson.

New York City: TBD
New Haven and Middletown, Connecticut: June 1-8, 13-30
Catskills (near Cairo): June 9-10
Lebanon, New Hampshire: June 11-12

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Megunticook Reel

Megunticook Reel is a mid-nineteenth century American contra dance that first appears in at least two editions of The ball-room manual of contra dances and social cotillons: the second edition, published in 1856, and the "Vest Pocket Edition" copyright 1862 and published 1863, which is available online here.  The original introduction was signed by "W. H. Q.", presumed to be one William Henry Quimby (1831-1857).  The posthumous Vest Pocket Edition has additional unsigned introductory material.  It is likely that the dance appeared in the first edition as well, but I don't have a copy of that one to check.

There appears to be no tune by the name "Megunticook Reel", so the name presumably belongs to the dance.  Maine is home to Mount Megunticook, Megunticook Lake, and the Megunticook River, from one or all of which the dance takes its name.  The photo at left, from SummitPost.Org, shows a view of Megunticook Lake from an overlook on Mount Megunticook.

There are three other sources for the dance, all from New England.  Eben's Order Book of Dancing (New Hampshire, 1877) is cited by Ralph Page as his source for the figures.  Page's outline of the dance was published in 1951 in Northern Junket, Vol. 8, No. 3.  I don't have a copy of Eben's either, but judging from Page's writeup, I doubt that it differs substantially from the Quimby one.  

The dance also turns up in Howe's New American Dancing Master (Boston, 1882 and 1892) with text identical to the Quimby one other than punctuaton.  The 1892 edition has only minor changes from the 1882 one.  It's interesting that, as far as I can tell, the dance does not appear in any earlier books by Elias Howe.  California Reel has the same publication history (Quimby and late Howe), though I don't know whether or not it appears in Eben's.

Laces and Graces

Laces and Graces is an American two-step sequence dance described by seminal American folk dance collector, teacher, caller, and historian Lloyd Shaw in his invaluable work, The Round Dance Book (1948).  Shaw gives no specific date for Laces and Graces, so the best I can suggest is early 1940s.  It does not appear in Shaw's earlier work, Cowboy Dances (1939).

Laces and Graces is easy for anyone who knows two-step and, importantly, has available music, including both sheet music and the very recording cited by Shaw in 1948.

Shaw called Laces and Graces a "dance built to fit an old-time piece of popular music", but didn't say anything else about the music, which was originally composed by Gustav(e) Salzer and John W. Bratton and published in 1903.  

Out in Oregon, the Polk County Observer made note of the new hit in a short article entitled "Popular New Music" on November 27, 1903:

"Laces and Graces," an instrumental novelty by Gustav Salzer and John W. Bratton, is just what its title would suggest its being; that is, a dainty, graceful melody, full of the atmosphere of the ball room and reminiscent of frills and flirtations. It is a companion piece to Mr. Bratton's "In Cozy Corner," and while it has none of tho odd little twists and turns of its famous predecessor, it yet possesses an originality and charm which is already making it a great "go," although it has only been out a few months. The title page of this composition, gotten up by the house of M. Witmark & Sons, in the most artistic manner, represents a white lace handkerchief upon a dark back ground, and the design, though simple, is so remarkably striking that it is already a prominent feature of the window displays of most of the prominent dealers.

A scan of the original article may be found at Historic Oregon Newspapers.  "Popular New Music" starts about a third of the way down the third column from the left.  Part of the same text had appeared in the Democrat and Chronicle of Rochester, New York, on November 15, 1903 (here), suggesting that it was at least partly copied from some major newspaper or syndicated piece.  A little digging turned up a copy of the original sheet music at the Parlor Salon Sheet Music Collection at the University of Maine, from which the image above, complete with its charmingly irrelevant picture of pseudo-1830s dancers practicing their steps, is taken.  The lace handkerchief suggests that "laces" refers to lace in the sense of trim or fabric, not to shoelaces or corset laces.

CD Review: Magnetic Rags

I snapped up Magnetic Rags: Ragtime for Brass (2000), from the Avatar Brass Quintet, years and years and years ago, but I had never made much use of it in dancing.  But this spring I've found myself needing ragtime music much more frequently than usual for classes and workshops, so I've been digging deep into my playlists for something other than Spare Parts and the Paragon Ragtime Orchestra.  Magnetic Rags was not intended for dancing, and it's certainly a dandy listening album, but it has enough tracks usable for dancing to make it a worthwhile purchase for dancers as well.  The exclusively brass instrumentation (trumpet, flügelhorn, horn, trombone, and tuba) gives it a pleasantly different sound from most ragtime recordings.  

The arrangements and one of the pieces are by noted modern ragtime composer William Ryden, who also provided the extensive liner notes, including an explanation of his selections for the album:

Ragtime is not easy to define.  Perhaps the closest I can come in a musicological sense is to call it a dance-based American folk music that features a syncopated melody against a regular accompaniment.  In another sense it is a melding of African and Western musical cultures.  These definitions apply, however, to all the ragtime songs, dances and even some marches written from the middle 1890s to about 1920.  What we think of today as classic ragtime are the more formal instrumental compositions, mostly for piano, written during that period.

The album program is all "classic rags", including works by a cornucopia of well-known composers as Scott Joplin (of course), George Gershwin, James Reese Europe, Eubie Blake, Irving Berlin, as well as a few by more obscure artists.  

Le Four Step Schottisch

Winding up my little schottische mini-series, I have a simple little variation found, as far as I can tell, only in George Washington Lopp's La Danse (Paris, 1903).  Le Four Step Schottische is composed solely of -- you guessed it -- sequences of four steps (walking or slide-close-slide-closing) and turning two-steps.  This is schottische deconstructed to the point of having almost completely lost any distinctive characteristics of the dance, foreshadowing the simple schottisches of the ragtime era.  The variation itself is negligible, but fitting it in among related schottisches of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century is interesting.

But first, how to do it:

The dancers begin in a regular ballroom hold, both turned slightly outwards to face along line of dance.  The gentleman begins with the left foot and the lady with the right.

Le Four Step Schottisch (four bars)
1b    Four steps forward along line of dance
1b    One complete turn of two-step
1b    Slide lead foot sideways along line of dance; close trailing foot to 1st; slide lead foot again; close trailing foot to 5th
1b    One complete turn of two-step

Most of Lopp's schottische are given a metronome count of 72, but Le Four Step gets a brisk 84, presumably because its steps are so simple that it is easy to dance quickly.  In the general theory of turning couple dances, one could reverse the direction of the turning two-steps.

This schottische looks like quite the outlier, but it's actually a fairly logical development within schottische's evolution in the last two decades of the nineteenth century and first two decades of the twentieth. 

A L'Avenir

The five-step schottische was not E. Woodworth Masters' only choreographic effort.  

Interestingly, considering its American origin, I first ran across A L'Avenir in the pages of Dancing, a London periodical similar to The Director, Galop, The Two-Step, and other efforts by dancing masters to establish dance journals.  In the December, 1892, issue, the editor notes that the November issue of their "transatlantic contemporary" included the editor's version of the "Waltz Menuet" and that (therefore?) they include in this issue instructions for a new American dance, "L'Avenir", by "Mr. W. Masters, of Boston, United States".  The editor in question was probably R. M. Crompton, creator of one of several late nineteenth-century "waltz minuets".  

I located the sheet music (left; click to enlarge) in the online collection of Goucher College.  It does not have the dance instructions, but it includes some useful background information:

• The music seems also to have been composed by Masters; no one else is credited.
• A L'Avenir (the full name) was adopted by the American National Association of Teachers of Dancing at their convention in Washington, D.C., held from June 10-13, 1890.
• The sheet music is copyright 1891.

A L'Avenir is described as "A New Round Dance, Combination of Dance Movements".  It certainly is that.  The name means "for the future" or "henceforth", which raises the terrifying possibility that this is what Masters thought dancing would or should look like in the future.  The hodgepodge of movements he created is interesting, at least: a twenty-four-bar sequence in schottische (4/4) time.  Twenty-four bars is an unusual length for a sequence dance, but a quick check of the music reveals that it consists of twelve eight-bar strains, with the first, fourth, seventh, and tenth all being the same.  So the dance done four times through would match the sheet music nicely.

Here's how to do it:

Imperial Gavotte

The Imperial Gavotte is one of the many schottische variations included in M. B. Gilbert's book of couple dances, Round Dancing (Portland, Maine, 1890) and in G. W. Lopp's La Danse (Paris, 1903).  It is attributed to Professor A. T. Graves of Albany, New York, and noted by Gilbert to have been accepted by the American Society of Professors of Dancing in New York on September 4, 1889.  The Society endorsement gave it enough exposure for it to turn up outside Graves' own studio: in the October 26, 1890, issue of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (St. Louis, Missouri), it is listed as one of the new dances to be taught by John Mahler.