Capering & Kickery

July 2017 Gig Calendar

Still in catchup/hibernation mode this month, but I will emerge briefly for a long-awaited return to DJing at Bluesy Tuesy, my blues and fusion dance home, and a Regency dance class.  Otherwise, find me online or not at all!

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Tuesday, July 18th ~ Cambridge, Massachusetts (Boston area)
Bluesy Tuesy (Facebook event)
7:30-11:00pm (lesson then dancing).  DJing blues for the second set, 9:45-11:00pm.

Wednesday, July 26th ~ Middletown, Connecticut
Jane Austen Era Dancing (Facebook event)
Beginner-friendly lesson 7:00-8:30pm.  Informal dancing, no costume needed.  

Friday, July 28th ~ Boston area
Private event. 

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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 Haven and Middletown, Connecticut: July 1-5, 8-17, 20, 23-27, 30-31
New York City: July 6-7
Boston area: July 18-19, July 28-29
New London (CT) area: July 21

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Political Dance Jokes: The Italian Quadrille, 1859

The humor piece at left, "The Italian Quadrille" (click to enlarge), appeared in the June 4, 1859, issue of the famous British humor magazine, Punch.  It's obvious from the timing that it's satirizing the brief Franco-Austrian War of 1859, also known as the Second Italian War of Independence.  I love it when dance terms get used this way.  This one isn't as clever overall as the near-contemporaneous Quadrille Nautically Described (1856), but what it lacks in clever figures it makes up for in real-world meaning.

Some quick background on the war: it lasted from late April until early July of 1859 and featured a French-Sardinian alliance led by Napoleon III (Louis Napoleon) and Victor Emmanuel II fighting against Austria under Franz Josef I and the Hungarian general Ferencz Gyulai.  The Austrians were defeated, and major steps were taken toward the eventual unification of Italy and its establishment as an independent kingdom a couple of years later.

I'm no expert on this particular bit of history, but my understanding from secondary sources is that the English government was officially neutral, but quietly favored Austria, and that there was some popular sympathy for Italy.  The quadrille-based description here favors neither side, but the accompanying cartoon appears to me to be anti-Italian, at least: a British coin spinning toward an obvious racist caricature (short, ugly, swarthy, hairy) of an Italian organ-grinder.  I'm undecided as to whether the face is actually meant to represent anyone; Victor Emmanuel would be most logical, but it looks to me more like Louis Napoleon (especially in this picture).  The wider implication is presumably that the Franco-Italian side was interested in financial support from Britain.

Now, let's look at the actual text of the "quadrille".

Military Schottische Series

The Military Schottische Series is a "class dance", a practice or exercise series to work on the movements of a particular dance.  It is a particular characteristic of the Military Schottische (briefly described here) and its descendants that the first part is done side by side, both dancers facing forward, and the second turning, the dancers in closed position.  The Series doesn't follow that pattern precisely (there is no closed position turn at all), but it keeps the general concept of the first half traveling along line of dance and the second doing some sort of turn.

The Series is described in gender-neutral terms: the "dancer on the left" and the "dancer on the right".  In a dance school setting it would be quite normal to have two girls or two boys dance together.  

It would also be possible to use this as a performance or recital piece.

I have two sources for the Series, with the same general sequence of figures:

• The Director, June 1898.  This was a short-lived dance periodical edited by M. B. Gilbert.
• School Dances, 1913.  This is a posthumous publication  attributed to M. B. Gilbert but edited by Susan Hoffman Gilman.

Gilbert was a major figure in American dance of the late nineteenth century and is best known today from his collection of couple dances, Round Dancing (Portland, Maine, 1890).  I talked a bit more about his various pursuits here.  The Military Schottische Series is uncredited, but I think it very possible that he wrote it himself.

Cross Step Polka

Here's an intriguing little polka variation from late nineteenth century America: the cross step polka, which is found in both M. B. Gilbert's Round Dancing (Portland, Maine, 1890) and William B. DeGarmo's The Dance of Society, Fifth Edition, Revised and Enlarged (New York, 1892).  It's quite easy to do and is particularly interesting because the partners dance different steps at the same time while in a close ballroom hold, which is quite unusual in late-nineteenth century couple dancing.  

Some earlier examples of this kind of mismatched footwork include the slow French waltz and sauteuse described by Thomas Wilson in 1816, the old valse à trois temps, and Cellarius' valse à cinq temps of the 1840s.  But in all of those cases, the mismatched steps are the basic steps of the dance rather than a variation.  That suggests an unusual problem: how does one lead one's partner into different footwork for a variation when one is not doing the same footwork oneself?

Pretty easily, it turns out!  

Early Foxtrot: Catch Steps

I spent a lot of time teaching foxtrot this spring, and after going through my usual repertoire of easy foxtrot variations with several different groups, I feel I need to add a few new steps.  Nothing complicated, just something to spice up my standard set.  Both of these steps are taken from Edna Stuart Lee's Thirty Fox Trot Steps (New York, 1916).

The basic catch step is just a simple way to change the lead foot, either because it's needed for a variation or just for fun.  It's so easy I can explain it without a little numbered chart: 

Gentleman starts left forward.  Walk for awhile.  When you want to change lead foot, make a single two-step.  Keep walking with the lead (odd count; the strong beat of the music) on the other foot.  The lady does the same thing, but backward and starting on the right foot.

More formally:

The Catch Step
1234    Four walking steps (LRLR)
5&6     Two-step (LRL)
7...       Continue walking (R...)

The Scissors Catch is a more elaborate way of accomplishing the same thing, with a tango-inspired tight cross of the feet:

The Scissors Catch
1234    Four walking steps (LRLR)
5          One more walking step (L)
6&7     Cross right over left and chassé left behind right, bringing right forward again, still crossed
8...       Continue walking (L...)

6&7 are a two-step done in a crossed position.

According to Lee, this step "is attractive and has the appearance of being difficult."  She's right; it's flashy but really not that hard.  On a normal catch step (two-step), you step outward at a slight diagonal.  On the scissors catch, you step inward, crossing the feet and maintaining that cross throughout the chassé.  So instead of stepping out to the right with the right foot on 6, the gentleman steps to the left.  The lady, dancing backward, steps with her left foot to her right, crossing behind.  After the step-chassé (crossed two-step), the dancers will need to twist a bit to free the trailing foot to make the next step.

The relation between the two catch steps is the same as that of the Snake Dip to the Zig Zag in the one-step -- the Snake Dip initiates by stepping out to the left on the first step while the Zig Zag initiates with a cross by the right foot over the left on the second step.

Lee notes that you can vary the Scissors Catch (and, of course, the regular Catch Step) by doing it on the other foot, and that you can vary the Scissors Catch by doing two in a row, which will mean no change of lead foot.  This will require a noticeable twist clockwise by both dancers on the second Scissors Catch, since they have to free the crossed foot (behind for the gentleman, in front for the lady) and bring it all the way around to cross the other way (gentleman: in front, lady: behind).  This isn't all that hard, but it needs a bit more vigor, well-controlled, than a series of normal two-steps.

One can dance the Scissors Catch keeping the body facing more-or-less straight along or against line of dance, or one can do it with more turn, making small diagonals to the side and coming close to Yale position.  Either way is interesting and attractive.

For both steps, note that the four walking steps at the beginning are Lee's introduction to just about every variation in her book.  While it is nice to space out the fancier foxtrot variations with a few walking steps in between, it's not necessary to have it be precisely four or to always do a catch step on a particular beat.