Capering & Kickery

October 2017 Gig Calendar

As of October I am back in teaching mode in Moscow!  This will be a light month as I get myself settled, but I will be teaching a six-week class series on a variety of twentieth century American dances and am actively working on setting up a few more things -- check back for possible additions later in the month.  (10/29/17: schedule is now complete.)  Moscow groups interested in workshops should  contact me directly.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Thursdays, October 5th, 12th, 19th, 26th ~ Moscow, Russia
Twentieth Century American Social Dance Course (VKontakte community - Russian)
For Studio "Танец весны".  First four lessons in a six-week course covering basic cross-step waltz (1990s-present) and early ragtime dances (1890s-1910s): two-step, five-step (schottische), and 1910s-style New England contra dance.  Some previous couple dance experience required.  Sample at the first class or take the whole course.  Details (Russian) at the VK community!

Saturday, October 21st ~ Moscow, Russia
Waltz Kaleidoscope Class (Вальсовый калейдоскоп)  (VKontakte event - Russian)
15:00-17:00.  Workshop in combining and shifting between cross-step waltz and valse à trois temps (rotary waltz).  Basic knowledge of both waltzes required.  

Saturday, October 28th ~ Moscow, Russia
Children`s Festival Competition "Planet of Arts"
Jury member plus a master-class.  Details TBA.

Tuesday, October 31st ~ Moscow, Russia
Private class

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I am available for private lessons in Moscow, 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.

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Coming up in November: Moscow classes continue, and I return to the USA briefly for a ball and a workshop in Pennsylvania!

A Different Reel of Five

This alternate reel of five comes from  Lowe's Ball-Conductor and Assembly Guide, third edition (Edinburgh, c1830), where it is the only reel of five given.  The formation is the same as that of the "common" reel for five described by Thomas Wilson during the Regency era and by me in my previous post.  Lowe's original description reads:

Reel of Five.
(Places -- one Lady at the top of the room, one at the bottom, one at each side, and the Gentleman in the middle.)  The Gentleman, with two of the Ladies, makes a reel of three, while the other two Ladies circle round them; all set, during which the Gentleman turns to each Lady alternately; he then forms the reel of three with the other two Ladies.

Although the source for this reel is about a decade post-Regency, the reel itself is in keeping with Regency style and would not be obtrusively out of place in a Regency ballroom.  And, unlike London-based Thomas Wilson's provenance-free "common reel of five", this one appeared in a Scottish dance manual and thus can be more confidently documented as actually Scottish for those concerned about authenticity of place as well as time.

Wilson's diagram for the common reel of five is so useful that I'm reproducing it at left and will use the same letters to describe the dancers in this reel.  Like Wilson's New Reel of Five and unlike his so-called common Reel of Five, this is a reel for four ladies and one gentleman.  As with those other reels, the genders of the dancers don't make any difference in the actual dancing.

Lowe's original description offers no progression, just a brief twenty-four bar sequence of hey, set, and hey again.  The most obvious interpretation of this would be that it is just as simple as classic reels of three and reels of four: alternate heying and setting indefinitely, the center dancer just shifting his or her starting direction each time.  

Common Reel of Five

Having started out with the complex "New Reel of Five" created by Regency London dancing master Thomas Wilson, it seems that it would be useful to go back and discuss the "common" reel of five which Wilson included in his books along with his own inventions "to render the work more complete."  It's hard to say how "common" this reel actually was, as I have no sources for it other than Wilson.  It's possible that it was simply so common that no one else saw any need to write it down.  I certainly see no reason for Wilson to have presented it falsely; he was not the least bit shy about taking credit for his own choreography.

The diagram given by Wilson in his  The Complete System of English Country Dancing (London, c1815) is above at left.  The original text, from the same source:

The Lady in the middle at B, heys with the Ladies at A C, then sets to them, then heys with the two Gentlemen at F D, and takes the place of the Gentleman at F, who will then occupy the centre: he then finishes the Reel by setting to the persons at F D, then hey with the Ladies at C A, and leaves one of them in the centre, so that they all progressively occupy every situation in the figure.  

That's reasonably straightforward, though his blithe assurance that "they all progressively occupy every situation in the figure", if taken to the extreme of dancing until everyone is back in their precise original places, will require an awful lot of repeats.  Wilson gives his reel specifically for either three gentlemen and two ladies or vice-versa, but the gender of the five dancers has no effect on the dance.  Any combination, or five of one gender, will work fine.

The Social Parliament, 1848

It's quite evident from the banner across the top of Act the First of The Social Parliament that it's a satire.  Victoria and Albert as the unicorn and lion supporters.  The English coat of arms replaced by, literally, cakes and ale^*, or at least drink of some sort, in the upper quarters and musical instruments in the lower ones.  And the motto of the Order of the Garter (Honi soit qui mal y pense, Middle French for "Shame on him who thinks ill of it") turned into Honi soit qui mal y danse.

The Social Parliament, Act the First, is dated August 2, 1848, and an announcement of its publication appeared in The Spectator on August 5, 1848; it can be seen near the bottom of the center column here.  It was written by humorist Albert Richard Smith (1816-1860), and its conceit was that an imaginary "Social Parliament" would address all the difficulties of society by passing its own Acts.  It's basically an extended expression of "there ought to be a law!"

Interestingly, considering how much of the dance section concerns polka, the publisher was David Bogue, who had earlier published a Ballroom Preceptor and Polka Guide (1846).

Act the First (and only; this was a one-shot joke) was "An Act to amend the Laws relating to the giving of Dinner and Evening Parties."  Conveniently for me, this included parties with dancing, aspects of which he addressed directly.  Although his tone was satirical, and occasionally mean-spirited, Smith made some very reasonable points about dance issues and dropped an intriguing hint about changing styles in waltz.

I'm not going to transcribe all of The Social Parliament, which is seven pages long, but I'll include all the dance-related sections and illustrations below.  Follow me down the rabbit hole:

Whereas, for many Years, going as far back as the Momentous Period of "Once upon a Time," it has been the Custom for certain persons to invite Certain other Persons to their Houses, for the Purposes of Eating, Drinking, Dancing, Talking, and promoting Flirtations Connexions, Proposals, Marriages, Interests, and Festivity generally: but, forasmuch as the aforesaid certain persons, at Times, err grievously in their Notions of what is Right or Wrong, to be done on such Occasions, to the Discomfort of the aforesaid certain other Persons invited...

Harvard Caprice

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.  

Exeter Caprice

The Exeter Caprice is one of a small number of schottisches and schottische-like dances included in the second edition of F. Leslie Clendenen's 1914 compilation, Dance Mad, for which Clendenen solicited dances from dancing masters across the United States and in Europe and South America.  One of those who responded was George F. Walters.  The Dance Mad index of dancing masters lists him as based in Waltham, Massachusetts, about sixty miles south of Exeter, New Hampshire, and the famous Phillips Exeter Academy, more commonly known just as "Exeter".  I suspect that Walters' Exeter Caprice and Exeter Waltz might be named for the school, either because he taught dance there or because he hoped to.

While the classic schottische seems to decline in popularity towards the end of the nineteenth century, dances in schottische time still turn up on dance cards and in dance manuals under names such as gavotte, caprice, barn dance, and five-step.  It's not clear to me what choreographic or musical trait, if any, distinguishes a caprice from a schottische, but I have found more than a dozen examples of them on New England dance cards from the mid-1880s into the 1890s.  "Caprice" on a dance card might refer specifically to the mazurka-like Caprice (or Caprice Schottische) described by M. B. Gilbert in Round Dancing (Portland, Maine, 1890) or to one of the occasional named caprices.  Or perhaps "caprice" was simply another term for a schottische, as implied by sheet music such as the 1906 "The Famous Princess Royal", shown at left, that listed both dances.

CD Review: Ragtime Dance Party

Ragtime Dance Party is the one and only album released by the Crown Syncopators, a San Francisco-based trio that performs at ragtime music festivals on the West Coast.  I've never had the pleasure of dancing to their music in person, which this album makes me very much regret.  Per the title, every single tune is danceable as well as a joy to listen to.  I highly recommend it for anyone who enjoys American music and dance of the 1890-1920 era.

The Crown Syncopators consist of Frederick Hodges (piano), Victoria Tichenor (drums), and Marty Eggers (tuba).  They don't seem to have a website, but their appearances are listed on Hodges' event schedule here.

The CD comes with ten pages of liner notes that contain the background on each piece and reproductions of the original sheet music covers.  Along with familiar favorites like Scott Joplin, James Reese Europe, and James Scott, I was especially pleased to see in the mix a couple of less-familiar female composers, Grace Marie Bolen and Adeline (or Adaline) Shepherd, both of whose careers were cut short by marriage.

As usual with ragtime, the boundaries between dances are quite fuzzy.  The same piece played at a different speed can be a one-step or two-step, or even a foxtrot.  Style counts as well; some pieces that are in the right tempo range just don't "feel" foxtrot to me, and some pieces "feel" like cakewalks and others don't.  With an experienced group of dancers, I'd just play the tunes and let the dancers find their own way, but for those who are looking for music for specific dances or need a little more guidance, here's how I've categorized each piece.  Note that some are listed in multiple categories!