I first came across Double Grand Chain when flipping through Twentieth Century Cotillion Figures, by H. Layton Walker (Two Step Publishing Company, Buffalo, New York, 1912) for interesting cotillion (dance party game) figures. Like Winthrope, Double Grand Chain is not terribly game-like beyond the basic cotillion setup of dancing with one person and then finding a new partner, but it would make an interesting addition to a grand march for a group of reasonably skilled dancers.
Double Grand Chain was not original to Walker; it also appeared in all the editions of Allen Dodworth's Dancing and its relations to education and social life running from 1885 to 1913 (the link is to the 1900 edition), which puts it firmly in the "late Victorian" category. Since it did reappear in 1912 separately from the Dodworth reprints, I'd still consider it legitimate for a ragtime-era event, and it is sufficiently innocuous in style that I wouldn't be bothered by its use at a mid-nineteenth-century event either.
Here's the version I found in Walker:
DOUBLE GRAND CHAIN.
Six couples dance and select other partners and the twenty-four form six lines of two couples each; one line behind another. The lines march forward and when the first reaches the end of the room the right hand couple turns to the right and the left hand couple to the left, and the following lines divide in the same way. The two columns march down the sides of the room to the other end, and when they meet each file in one column performs a grand chain with the opposite file in the other column. When one column has thus passed entirely through the other, partners join for a general waltz.
77.
Double Grand Chain.
Six couples.—Select other partners; form two couples in a line, one line behind the other; all march forward; when at the end of room, one couple turns to the right, the other to the left, the couples behind following the leading couples; all march down the side of the room to the other end; the two columns, upon approaching each other, form a grand chain until the double lines have passed entirely through when all take selected partners and waltz.
This figure may be danced by more than six couples.
Walker borrowed quite a number of figures from earlier sources, and it's easy to see here how he made only slight changes in the wording. Though he dropped the note about more than six couples, his specifying that each file of each column performs the grand chain with its opposite file actually clarifies the performance of the figure. The basic scheme:
- six (or however many) couples dance
- they separate and seek other partners, then all form lines of four (two couples)
- the lines of four march up the hall and separate at the top, couples casting alternately right and left
- columns of couples march down each side of the hall and along the bottom
- when they meet, the leading gentlemen are facing leading ladies opposite them; couples drop hands and grand chain, gentlemen to ladies and ladies to gentlemen
- when partners emerge from the grand chains, they continue marching around the room until all have passed through the grand chains, at which point the conductor should signal the dancers to waltz (or another couple dance)
In case that's not fully clear, here's how it looks as the couples come face to face to start the chains (using four couples to start instead of six):
G4 G3 G2 G1 L1 L2 L3 L4
L4 L3 L2 L1 G1 G2 G3 G4
A grand chain is so self-explanatory that if the leading couples, or even one leading couple, know what to do, they can probably just make it happen by offering their right hands to the dancers opposite. The only real awkwardness is that less experienced dancers often to try to go through grand chains at high speed, two steps/beats (or fewer!) per change of hands. That's a problem because people going fast never all move at the same speed, which means the lines are going to finish the chains at different times. With only four to six couples involved, the chains are relatively short, and the dancers can probably recover from uneven timing, but the figure is much nicer if everyone can be convinced to take the chains slowly, four steps/beats per change of hands. The leading couples can start off the chains at that pace, and if the dancers are experienced, they will maintain it. If not, well, there will still be less skewing to recover from!
While the final dance is listed as a waltz, and a change to waltz music would be a useful signal to the dancers in a pure cotillion setting, "waltz" could also just mean to take closed position and start the appropriate turning dance. There's no reason this figure couldn't be done to polka or, from the late 1890s onward, two-step music, substituting the appropriate couple dance at the end. If done completely in waltz time, the effect would be rather like a polonaise.
If using this as a figure within a grand march, there would presumably be rather more than six couples involved, and no need for the original mixing element where couples select partners; just get the marching dancers into lines of four marching up the room and go for it. Repeating the figure at the top of the room as well as the bottom would send the dancers marching down the room again, ready to bring up in lines of four again for another figure or to merge at the bottom and come up in a single column.
If the numbers are really unwieldy but the dancers reasonably experienced, one could bring them up in lines of eight instead of four, cast off in fours, and have four parallel grand chains going instead of two. Or, if the hall is big enough to permit it, lines of sixteen and casting off by eights would be quite impressive to see, especially if the chaining dancers could keep their timing and spacing even across all eight lines. That may be optimistic...
I rather like the idea of using Double Grand Chain after or instead of a "passage of the ladies" and "passage of the gentlemen" pair, just as something else interesting to do once one has separated the dancers into two separate columns moving in opposite directions.
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