Capering & Kickery

November 2018 Gig Calendar

November will be rather hectic, with a journey to Kyiv, Ukraine, for our third Kyiv Waltz Weekend and a grueling weekend trip back to the USA for the Remembrance Day Balls in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.  See you on the dance floor!

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Thursdays, November 1st, 8th, 22nd, 29th ~ Moscow, Russia
Belle Epoque (VK post - in Russian)
7:00-8:30pm
Continuing my autumn course of dances of late 19th century France.  Pay by the week or by the month.  NOTE: no class on the 15th as I will be in Gettysburg!

Thursdays, November 1st, 8th, 22nd, 29th ~ Moscow, Russia
Unusual 1910s Dances (VK post - in Russian)
8:30-10:00pm
First in my autumn course on the more unusual dances of the 1910s, including improvisation in the maxixe and hesitation waltz, the social dances of Anna Pavlova, and perhaps a few small surprises!  Pay by the week or by the month.  NOTE: no class on the 15th as I will be in Gettysburg!

Saturday-Sunday, November 3rd-4th ~ Kyiv, Ukraine
Kyiv Waltz Weekend (Facebook event for weekend) (Facebook event for afterparty)
Weekend of waltz workshops and dances, primarily cross-step.  Four hours of classes per day and a Sunday afterparty with DJ music - a combination of waltz and other social dances.

Tuesdays, November 6th, 13th, 20th  ~ Moscow, Russia
Cross-Step Waltz for Beginners (VK post - in Russian)
7:00-8:30pm
Introduction to all basic figures of cross-step waltz.  Pay by the week or for a full month including the waltz party on the 26th.

Tuesdays, November 6th, 13th, 20th ~ Moscow, Russia
Intermediate Cross-Step Waltz (VK post - in Russian)
8:30-10:00pm 
More complex figures and techniques for cross-step waltz.  Pay by the week or for a full month including the waltz party on the 26th.

Friday & Saturday, November 16th & 17th ~ Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
The 16th Annual Remembrance Day Dinner & Ball (Facebook community) 
5:30pm-midnight each day.  TWO nights!  TWO formal dinners!  TWO balls!  Both evenings are formal Civil War-era events with pre-1865 costume (civilian or military) required.  Advance reservations (dinner and ball or ball-only) are needed, and this event generally sells out well in advance!  Friday night's ball is Fancy Dress/Masquerade with a Scottish/Tartan theme, complete with a piper to lead the Grand March.  Saturday will feature a patriotic theme.  I will be calling both evenings this year, with live music both nights and different dance programs!

Tuesday, November 26th ~ Moscow, Russia
Themeless Waltz Party
7:00-10:00pm.  Waltz, waltz, and more waltz.  Light refreshments.

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I am available for private lessons in Moscow, or while 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.

Moscow, Russia: November 1, 6-14, 19-30
Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, USA: November 17

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Coming in December: a weekend of historical dance in Vladimir!

An Incident of Parisian Society, 1885

...or, at least, a story about an incident.  I don't have any way to prove that it actually occurred.  But true or not, the story illustrates something I've been noticing about fancy dress balls over the course of the last month.  The story was published in issue #40 (March, 1885) of The Nassau Literary Magazine, which was and is associated with Princeton University and is fully indexed online.  The author was John Cass (J. C.) Mathis, Princeton class of 1886, the author of twenty-eight pieces for the magazine from 1884 to 1886.  These appear to have included fiction, non-fiction, and poetry, so it's hard to say from his publication record whether this story was memoir or fiction.  I lean toward thinking it was the latter, but even as fiction, it's an interesting example of what was seen to be realistic at the time.

The story was supposedly related to Mathis by a friend who had just returned from a tour of Europe.  While there, this nameless friend and become close to Victor, son of a prominent family.  It was ball season in Paris, between New Year's and Lent, and Mathis' friend was invited to a fancy dress ball at the home of Victor's mother, Madam de Brissac.  Apparently masks were worn as well as costumes.  Details are given only of one: a lady in Spanish costume with whom Mathis' friend was quite taken:

There was one face and form that was especially attractive from amongst them all.  She was of a southern type of beauty, dark, tall and graceful.  She wore a Spanish costume of rich black good, cut low in front, and sleeveless, with diamond ornaments.  I approached her.  We strolled into the conservatory, we promenaded, we danced.  I was struck with her beauty and many charms; but, in the whirl of excitement, soon found myself at the side of another.  Throughout the evening, however, I kept my eyes upon this lady in black.  She was always prominent, always surrounded by admirers, always smiling, always pleasing those around her.  I was deeply interested, and that night I dreamt of sunny Spain.

Mathis' friend left out a few pertinent details here, presumably for storytelling effect. 

Halloween Cotillion Figures

I'd previously avoided posting any of the actual Halloween figures given in H. Layton Walker's Twentieth Century Cotillion Figures (Two Step Publishing Company, Buffalo, New York, 1912), simply because each one is so short that any one didn't seem like enough material to make a decent blog post.  But in combination, these four figures actually touch on different elements that might be useful for anyone planning an early twentieth century Halloween-themed event.

Taking the four figures in the order in which they appear in Walker:

Say boo!

What would a Halloween ball be without some weird early twentieth-century cotillion figures?  Here's a pair from St. Louis dancing master Jacob Mahler's 1900 compilation Original Cotillion Figures.  One is, I think, genuinely creepy.  The other isn't as scary, but requires a ridiculously complex prop.  Both would require substantial preparation and stage-managing and are best suited to small events.

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Camping.
Adolph Newberger, New York City, N. Y.

Eight couple dance to the merry strains of a two-step.  Each participant selects a new partner, and the sixteen couple arrange themselves around tent.  All now dance toward tents, constructed of thin paper and erected for the purpose in the four corners of the room, the gentlemen concealing themselves within, as the ladies dance once around the tents.  Four masculine hands are thrust through the paper walls; at a given signal each lady seizes one of the protruding hands, and proceeds to draw its owner through the tent, making him captive for the dance.

Perhaps I'm oversensitive to things suddenly bursting out of walls, but I have some trouble with this figure.  Sure, why doesn't everyone just two-step merrily around the room until the ball suddenly turns into a scene out of Repulsion...

A Fancy Dress Ball, Singapore, 1884

Originally posted in substantially similar form on February 11, 2011, at Historical Fancy Dress.

As can be seen from my other posts about fancy dress and masquerade balls, newspapers from the eighteenth century well into the twentieth often published lists of the costumes worn by the guests.  The lists were often provided in advance of the actual event, so it's possible not all of the costumes worked out, as anyone who's ever tried to finish a costume at the last minute before a ball will understand. 

The costumes were evidently more important than the dancing; while lists of outfits are routine in these writeups, full dance programs are rare and any information at all is not very common.  This apparently held true even halfway around the world.  The excerpts and costume lists below are from a fancy dress ball held by British expatriates in Singapore (!) in 1884.  The sole mention of dancing is the opening quadrille.

A Calico Ball, British Columbia, 1885

As described by Lucie Armstrong in The Ball-Room Guide (London and New York, c1880):

The Calico Ball is a fancy ball at which the dresses are made of calico.  Sateen, chintz and velveteen are allowable, and any other material which is made of cotton.  The invitation, of course, states the nature of the ball.

It really seems to have been primarily about the fabric rather than any costume theme, though obviously some costumes will work better when made out of cottons than others.  She goes on to make some suggestions.  For ladies: a dairymaid, a charity girl from St. Giles', or a Dresden shepherdess.  For gentlemen: a Maltese peasant, Albanian costume, Saxon dress, or an Italian peasant.

The anonymous author of Masquerades, tableaux and drills (New York, 1906) added more details:

Gloves are mitts are seldom used at calico balls, although they are permissible.  Regarding materials for calico-ball costumes -- there are, besides calico, many dainty fabrics, cotton crêpes and the like, which may be made up most artistically; however, there is most fun when all the costumes are made of the old-fashioned calico.  Ribbon, net, and tinsel trimmings are allowable.  Among the costumes most generally chosen for calico balls are peasant and shepherdess dresses, and those for fish girls, flower girls and charity girls; poudré and watteau costumes and those for Cinderella, Mother Hubbard, waiting-maids, Bo-Peep, Dolly Varden or almost any of those suggested and pictured throughout these pages.  The men at such balls wear simply made character costumes or dress suits made of "calico"; or sometimes ordinary dress suits faced with bright cambric or flowered fabrics.  

So how did they do in Victoria, British Columbia, on the evening of Wednesday, December 9th, 1885?  As reported by the Daily Colonist on the morning of the 10th, at the calico party held by Mr. and Mrs. Robert Dunsmuir,

The Hewitts' Plant Party, 1898

Originally posted in substantially similar form on September 24, 2010, at Historical Fancy Dress.

Jumping forward in time, from The New York Times on February 18, 1898 comes a full description of a very successful themed fancy dress event: a "Plant Party".  The ladies were asked to dress in some "representative" costume, while the gentlemen were expected to appear in ordinary evening clothes and were given something like a vegetable boutonniere at the door.  Supposedly, this was copied from something that Louis XVI did it at Versailles.  I'd certainly like to see a description of that!

Sadly, very little information is given about the dancing: there was some, informal, after supper, and with no cotillion.

No full list of costumes was published, but there are some excellent examples at the end of how the ladies trimmed their gowns to match the theme.

I've transcribed the entire article below.

Mrs. Walker's Masqued Ball, 1804

Jumping from the mid-eighteenth to the early nineteenth century:

I first came across a description of Mrs. Walker's Masqued Ball as it was published in a Philadelphia journal, The Port-Folio, on January 19, 1805, with a credit to the The Morning Post, a noted London newspaper which famously covered the social activities of the upper classes in Regency England. 

For several years, I had the article filed under the date 1805, but with a suspicious note attached because the outdoor party described (with a hostess concerned about the possibility of the heat being "oppressive") didn't sound likely to have occurred in January, even in England.  I still haven't found the original Morning Post article, but I did turn up a shorter version of the same description (minus all the costume information) that was published in The Lancaster Gazette (of Lancaster, England, not Lancaster, Pennsylvania) on Saturday, July 14, 1804, with one critical word present:

on Wednesday se'nnight         [emphasis mine]

In the longer piece in The Port-Folio, this line was altered to "on Wednesday evening", presumably because it was being reprinted seven months later.  I believe that "se'nnight" would make the date of the ball Wednesday, July 4th, 1804, a much more sensible date for an outdoor event.

British newspapers covered many masqued balls, but most of the descriptions weren't quite as detailed as this one.  I've included a transcription of the entire article (Port-Folio version) below.  I'll just pick out a few of the points that really caught my eye.

The Duke of Bolton's Masquerade, 1769

On Thursday, June 1st, 1769, Admiral Harry Powlett (sometimes Paulet), the sixth Duke of Bolton, held a masquerade, or masked ball, at his Hampshire estate, Hackwood Park. 

The sixth duke, shown at left in a portrait by Frances Cotes (courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art; original here), had had an exciting few years.  Widowed in 1764, he remarried early in 1765 and that summer succeeded to the ducal title after the suicide of his brother, the fifth duke.  He had two or three daughters by 1769, one from his first wife who was probably in her teens by then, and at least one toddler by his second wife.  The third daughter's date of birth is unknown, but as she was by the second wife, it was sometime after 1765, so there may have been another young girl in the family in 1769.  More biographical information and details about his naval career may be found at Wikipedia.

The ducal title went extinct after the sixth duke died with no male children -- the Lord Bolton referred to by Jane Austen in 1799 ("One of my gayest actions was sitting down two dances in preference to having Lord Bolton's eldest son for my partner, who danced too ill to be endured.") was the husband of the sixth duke's heiress, an illegitimate niece.  He was created Baron Bolton upon marriage.  The ill-dancing eldest son was William, later the second Baron Bolton.

Though it is no longer owned by Bolton descendants, Hackwood Park has survived and continues to this day to be one of England's most famous estates.  Its history goes back to the thirteenth century, with the current house having been built in the late seventeenth century and undergone significant changes to the facade in the early nineteenth.  It is particularly famous for its "garden wood", which was to have been used for the Masquerade, though the plan didn't work out due to weather.  The park was painted by Paul Sandby in the early 1760s.  More information about the estate and its history may be found here and here.  For those with money to burn, Hackwood Park has been on sale since 2016 (asking price then, around £65 million) and is currently listed by Christie's, with many gorgeous pictures, here.

The description of the Duke's masquerade was published on pages 296-297 of The Court Miscellany for June, 1769, a copy of which is held by the Watkinson Library at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut.  All quotes below are from this article.