The Harvard Caprice was created by dancing master Melvin Ballou (M. B.) Gilbert of Portland, Maine, matching the music of the same name by Albert L. Ryser. I don't know whether the dance was created for the music or the music commissioned to match the dance, but the earliest publication of the sheet music that I have (cover shown at left; click to enlarge) is part of a series specifically for Gilbert's dances. This was not the only Harvard-themed dance created by Gilbert; two years later, he went on to create the Harvard Dip.
The Harvard Caprice can be dated precisely both by the sheet music (1896) and its being mentioned in newspaper articles late in 1896 as one of the dances for the upcoming season: "Five new dances will be introduced this fall and winter. They are the Landler, Harvard Caprice, the waltz two-step, La Zarina, and a modification of the old Varsouviana...The Harvard Caprice is also danced to four-four time, and is slightly akin to the old-fashioned schottische." ("Saturday Social Review", Indianapolis News. Indianapolis, Indiana. September 19, 1896. p. 5.)
The sheet music advertises the dance as adopted by the American Society of Professors of Dancing, New York, as was reported with some cynicism by the Los Angeles Herald on November 15, 1896, under a series of subtitles including "ORIGINALITY A SCARCITY", "Why New Creations in the Art Generally Fail", and "The American Association of Professors Convened and Added Many Tributes to Terpsichore":
NEW YORK, Oct. 30. — Every year a number of agile and graceful gentlemen composing the American Association of Professors of Dancing come together, and, after deep thought and considerable wrangling, of course, in a most polite way, decide what the fashionable dances will be for the coming year. Each of these gentlemen is an inventor of the terpsichorean order, and he attends the conclave with elaborately drawn diagrams of the dance with which he expects to convulse society later on.
In nine cases out of ten this dance is never heard of again, although it may receive the richest possible indorsement [sic] of the American Association of the Professors of Dancing. The fault is not with the Association. The members certainly recognize a graceful dance wen they see it; the trouble lies with the public.
The association has just had its annual meeting for 1896 and some terpsichorean wonders are ready to be thrust upon the dancing public. The official titles of these wonders are: The Harvard Caprice, the X-ray Lanciers, the Hanover Quadrille, the Esprit d’Amerique, the Waltz Two-Step, and La Czarina. It will be a matter of interest for those who pay attention to such things to memorize these titles and then observe how popular they become during the approaching winter season.
Instructions for the Harvard Carprice were not included with the sheet music in the University of Maine's collection, but they were presumably published somewhere for teachers like Mrs. Pettes. The earliest source I have for them is the June, 1898, issue (Volume I, No. 7) of The Director, a trade magazine for dancing masters edited by none other than Gilbert himself. Instructions were also included in the posthumously published Gilbert Dances, Volume I, (1913) with almost identical wording, presumably because both publications worked directly from Gilbert's notes. As a social dance rather than a school dance, I would consider it more a dance of the 1890s than the 1910s.
The Harvard Caprice is an exceptionally short step-sequence with the typical late nineteenth-century ornamentation of adding extra slides via chassé steps, but, interestingly, incorporating the old sauteuse (leap-hop) schottische turn rather than the later waltz-galop more typical of other late nineteenth-century schottische-time dances. Two bars are repeated, leading once with each foot, to make a full turn in only four bars of 4/4 time.
The sequence begins with the dancers in a normal closed ballroom hold, the gentleman facing the wall and starting with his left foot, the lady facing the center and starting with her right foot. The steps below are for the gentleman; the lady dances opposite.
Harvard Caprice (four bars of schottische)
1b Slide left foot to side with a long step and slight dip (1)
Close right to left with weight (2)
Slide left to side (3)
Chassé, closing right to left (&) and sliding left to side with a short step (4)
1b Chassé, closing right to left (&) and sliding left to side with a long step and slight dip (1)
Close right to left with weight (2)
Leap or slide left to side, crossing line of dance and beginning to turn (3)
Hop on left, finishing the half-turn (4)
(the gentleman is now facing the center and the lady the wall)
2b Repeat all of the above beginning "over elbows" with the right foot to complete the turn
Reconstruction and Performance Notes
There are no reconstruction issues with the Harvard Caprice; Gilbert's instructions are precise and clear.
Gilbert describes the turn as being made on the final leap/slide and hop and the following slide on the first beat of the repeat. To make the leap-hop turn, the gentleman leaps onto his left foot across the line of dance while the lady leaps gently straight between his feet. On the second iteration, the lady leaps across while the gentleman leaps between her feet. This is the standard "sauteuse" turn that goes back to the earliest versions of the schottische. Gilbert explicitly gives the option of either leaping or simply sliding the foot on these half-turns.
The counts for the sequence once through are: 123&4&1234. I would suggest memorizing a chant for the rhythm when first learning: "slide, close, three-and-four-and-slide, close, leap, hop."
The instructions for the longer and shorter steps and dips are taken directly from Gilbert:
The first slide (which is made during 1st count in first measure), should be made long, with a slight dipping movement. The first chassé should be made short. The second chassé (which is made on first count of second measure) should be made long, with slight dipping movement, which will give accent to the 1st count in that measure.
The Harvard Caprice is so short that it doesn't really have the feel of a sequence dance, so I would be open to treating it like other late nineteenth-century turning dances and improvising at will using reverse turns (the lady crosses the line of dance on the first iteration and the gentleman leaps between her feet, and even forward/backward travel with the dancers moving on the diagonal, one moving generally forward along line of dance and the other backward.
Music
I do not have a recording of the Harvard Caprice, but the sheet music is available online at the University of Maine's Sheet Music Collection. In the absence of the actual tune, the dance works to any schottische music.
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