Capering & Kickery

December 2018 Gig Calendar

I'll have just one short trip in December, plus a Christmas waltz party and wrapping up my classes for the year!  Plus, I'll be teaching a quick lesson in cross-step waltz (probably the standard mixer) at a Russian-organized ball.  I'm hoping to do this entirely in my still-fragmented but (hopefully) comprehensible Russian, with no English at all and without using a translator.    We'll see how that goes...

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Sunday, December 2nd ~ Moscow, Russia
Cross-Step Waltz Lesson at "Back to the USSR" Ball  (VK event - in Russian)
4:00pm (ball begins)
A brief (10-minute) introductory lesson as part of a much larger multi-teacher event to be held in a Soviet-era bunker!

Tuesdays, December 4th, 11th, 18th  ~ 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 25th.

Tuesdays, December 4th, 11th, 18th ~ 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 25th.

Thursdays, December 6th, 13th, 20th, 27th ~ 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.

Thursdays, December 6th, 13th, 20th, 27th ~ Moscow, Russia
Unusual 1910s Dances (VK post - in Russian)
8:30-10:00pm
My ongoing 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. 

Saturday-Sunday, December 15-16th ~ Vladimir, Russia
Dance Weekend (VK group - in Russian)
Classes Saturday (2:00-9:00pm) and Sunday (10:00am-12:00pm) and a "Journey Around the World" party Sunday afternoon/evening (3:00-9:00pm) (VK party event - in Russian).  Saturday classes will cover late nineteenth century French schottische and Pas de Quatre, several group dances of the era, and some American mixer dances from the 1940s.  Sunday's classes will be primarily 1910s Half & Half and sequences (tango and hesitation waltz), possibly with some French group dances spilling over from Saturday.  Party dress code: 1880s-1910s or modern formal or military uniform.

Tuesday, December 25th ~ Moscow, Russia
[Western] Christmas Waltz Party (VK event - in Russian)
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: December 1-14, 17-31

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Dancing to "Mr. Chivers' Whim"

I recently had a request in email for anything I had on the Regency-era dance tune "Mr. Chivers' Whim" from a questioner who had some mismatched figures (twenty-four bars) and music (thirty-two bars) but no original sources.  A little back-and-forth established that he wanted the most historical answer, which is presumably why the question came to me and not whoever popularized what they're doing under that name in eastern Europe.  This isn't the first time I've had this topic come up in conversation!

So, what's going on with "Mr. Chivers' Whim"?  Well, at some point in the last decade or two, the name became firmly attached to a twenty-four bar "Swedish dance", meaning a trio country dance.  People in Russia are mostly dancing it to the tune "Mrs. Chivers' Favorite Waltz", which is of course a different tune, and a waltz, not a reel.  Switching tunes is not inappropriate to do in a historical context, but it's incorrect to call it "Mr. Chivers' Whim" when they're dancing to "Mrs. Chivers' Favorite Waltz".  The name goes with the tune, not the figures.

To compound the problem, they're often using the Spare Parts recording of "Mrs. Chivers' Favorite Waltz" from the CD The Regency Ballroom, on which it is played with a forty-eight bar repeat structure, which means that the figures cross the music oddly; it's alternately danced to AAB and BC strains (the C strain is sixteen bars long).  That is actually wrong, from a historical perspective.  Take a look at this video and you can see/hear the problem clearly, though I am not singling out that group in particular; there are several similar videos from different groups in different cities.  That one just happened to come up first in my search results. 

I'm not sure where the thirty-two bar music comes in, but there's certainly a problem here.

Giving Thanks!

It's that time of year again!  America celebrates Thanksgiving, and this American living abroad, sans turkey and trimmings, celebrates by thanking two sets of organizers who have hired me regularly for events. 

As everyone who knows me understands, I love visiting new places and teaching new groups.  But it's also a special delight to have places and events I return to regularly, making friends and developing communities and watching dancers progress over time.

First, my thanks to John and Nancy Newbold, who have hired me every year since 2007 (with me missing 2016 through no fault of theirs) to conduct one or both of their balls for the Remembrance Day Weekend in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.  I just returned from Gettysburg a few days ago after conducting both balls, and I was reminded once again how wonderful it is to be welcomed year after year by the Remembrance Day Ball regulars and to be able to bring new material to such a friendly group, savor the joy of leading groups of such varied skill levels successfully through dances, and simply see everyone having such a good time.  (And those chocolate-framed favors...mmm!)

Second, my thanks to Oleksii Kryvenko and Svetlana Evsyukova, organizers of three Vintage Dance Exchanges and three Waltz Weekends in Kyiv, Ukraine, from the spring of 2016 to just a few weeks ago.  My being able to visit and teach the same core group repeatedly half a dozen times over a few years has resulted in a small group of dancers with the skill set that makes me happiest, understanding both the common and the distinct elements of modern (cross-step) and historical (19th and early 20th century) dances and being able to combine them smoothly and switch easily between different styles and types of music.  That's something I haven't had since the end of a seven-year stretch of regulars in my old Monday night classes.  It makes me unbelievably happy as a teacher to see a group of dancers really work at these fundamental skills (not always the most fun process!) until practice pays off with this level of achievement.  All credit to Oleksii and Svetlana as organizers and as teachers who review and reinforce what I teach when I visit. And extra thanks to Svetlana for her superb partnering as well!

Having events with both sets of organizers in one month this year was magic.

Thanks.

The Mid-Twentieth-Century Virginia Reel

"The chief trouble, as I said, with the Virginia Reel is the monotonous repetition and waiting for your turn on the corners. This can be obviated by a new form of the dance which is gradually growing in favor. In this form, instead of having corners bow, turn, etc., each gentleman, and all at once, crosses directly over and does all the moves with his own partner. Done carelessly, this leads to wild confusion (but fun). However, if the line of men all advance as a straight line, the ladies the same, and all return to places in straight lines it can be very effective. And everyone is active all the time up to the point when the head couple reels the set."
        -- Lloyd Shaw, in Cowboy Dances: A Collection of Western Square Dances (1939)

It's unclear among whom, exactly, this version was "gradually growing in favor", since one page earlier Shaw had also noted that he had "never seen it with the country folk.  It has strangely survived in schools and in society groups..."  Shaw's mention is the earliest reference I have to this "all-active" (for the opening figures, anyway) version of the Virginia Reel.  The earliest descriptions I have are from somewhat later, though I wouldn't want to make any promises about these being the earliest; my collection of mid-twentieth century dance books is fairly thin.  But by the 1950s, this style of dancing the Virginia Reel seems to have become well-established. 

The Game

That's what it's called among Harvard and Yale students, alumni, and associated parties: The Game.  The annual November football game between the two famous universities is one of the oldest rivalries in collegiate sports, having been played one hundred and thirty-three times, beginning in 1875; the next meeting is Saturday.  It has so much lingering cultural significance that it has its own Wikipedia page.

So, naturally, it also has its own cotillon (dance game) figure, published in St. Louis dancing master Jacob Mahler's Original Cotillion Figures (St. Louis, 1900) back when The Game was a mere quarter-century old.  Mahler attributed "Yale and Harvard Contest" to H. K. Lackland, also of St. Louis.  Interestingly, and unlike other football-related figures I've seen, it doesn't include any actual football.  I can't even be certain it's meant to be associated with The Game, as opposed to the more general rivalry between the schools.  But in November, anything associated with the rivalry becomes part of the Game-related fuss.

Before I describe "Yale and Harvard Contest", let me look at a pair of figures which definitely do involve football (of some kind), both taken from H. Layton Walker's Twentieth Century Cotillion Figures (Two Step Publishing Company, Buffalo, New York, 1912):

La Lyonnaise

Third in my impromptu mini-series of late-nineteenth century French dances based on the schottische or pas-de-quatre is La Lyonnaise, which appears to me to be unimportant in and of itself but somewhat interesting as an example of typical variations and a source for variations to use in improvisation.  Despite having been published in 1890, it does not appear in the seventh edition of Eugène Giraudet's Traité de la danse, published in the early 1890s.  It does turn up by the 58th edition (c1900), which informs us (via the extensive dance glossary in volume II) that Giraudet choreographed it himself.  I don't think it does him any particular credit; it's just a mishmash of steps.

La Franco-Russe

La Franco-Russe is another of the short French schottische-based sequences of the late nineteenth-century France.  Like La Stéphanoise, it is a double-length sequence, eight bars of schottische music, and presumably had its own special tune which has, alas not surfaced during my searches.  Unlike La Stéphanoise, it is more of the Pas-de-Quatre style of schottische (with the dancers holding only inside hands to start and coming together in the second half) and has a clearly-explained reason for its name.  It also differs in having a true "double" (AABB) schottische pattern and no ambiguity in its timing.  And, finally, it may have had a bit more success than La Stéphanoise, or at least been more favored by Giraudet himself.

Giraudet stated that La Franco-Russe was "créée en l'honneur des officiers russes à leur visite à Paris en 1893."  This visit was part of a series of negotiations between France and Russia that led to the Dual Alliance, also known in the west as the Franco-Russian Alliance and in Russia as the Russian-French Alliance.  At left, a French political cartoon from 1893 (click to enlarge) shows the French symbol, Marianne, cuddling with the Russian bear.

There was quite a vogue for things Russian, or imagined to be Russian, in Paris during the early 1890s, and La Franco-Russe is one of several dances with a Russian or Alliance theme.

La Stéphanoise

La Stéphanoise is a schottische-style sequence created and published in the late nineteenth century by French dancing master and writer Eugène Giraudet.  The first reference I have to it is in the seventh edition of Giraudet's Traité de la danse, published in the early 1890s.  Since I do not have any earlier editions, I don't know precisely when it was first included in Traité.  More specifics come from the lengthy dance list in the second volume of the gigantic 58th edition (c1900), where it is attributed to Giraudet himself, with "Hamel" given as the composer of the music and a date of 1892.  The description of the sequence is word-for-word identical in both editions.

The first publication of La Stéphanoise was probably in the form of instructions printed on the eponymous sheet music.  I believe that the full name of the composer was Camille Hamel, who composed other dance music in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, including pieces associated with Giraudet, but I have not been able to locate the original sheet music, though there are quite a few pieces with a title that is some variation of La Stéphanoise.  Fortunately, Giraudet specifically stated that "Au cas ou l'on n'aurait pas la musique spécialement réservée à cette danse, il suffira de prendre la musique d'une schottisch quelconque."  (My translation: "In case one does not have the music specially reserved for this dance, the music of any schottische will suffice.")  

Giraudet, never shy about promoting his own works, helpfully explained that:

Cette danse, bien que de création récente, a obtenu dès ses débuts un véritable succès, surtout chez les connaisseurs; aussi les professeurs et artistes, l'ont-il adoptée avec un empressement significatif. L'effet produit par cette nouvelle danse est des plus gracieux, et il n'est pas de bonne société, qui ne la possède dans son répertoire. Le succès, qui l'a accueillie à ses débuts, ne fera que s'accroître, ce qui sera peut-être difficile étant donné l'engoûment actuel.

My loose translation:

This dance, although of recent creation, has obtained, since its début, genuine success, above all among connoisseurs -- also teachers and artists -- who have adopted it with significant alacrity.  The effect produced by this new dance is of the most gracious, and he who does not have it in his repertoire is not of good society.  The success which has welcomed it since its début can only increase, which may be difficult given its current popularity.