The Eugénie, or Eugenie-Trot, is yet another of the many variations published in M. B. Gilbert's book of couple dances, Round Dancing (Portland, Maine, 1890) and later, in translation to French, in G. W. Lopp's La Danse (Paris, 1903). It was attributed by both authors to St. Louis dancing master Jacob Mahler, as is confirmed by the cover of the sheet music shown at left (click to enlarge). I would not regard it as a particularly important or significant variation; it warrants a reconstruction only as part of my overall progress through every dance in those two books.
The Eugénie begins in the "military" position (described at length, with a photo, here) with the dancers opened up side by side, the gentleman's right arm around the lady's waist and her left hand resting on his shoulder or upper arm, depending on their relative heights. The gentleman starts with the left foot and the lady with the right. The gentleman's steps are given; the lady dances opposite.
Reconstruction (eight measures of waltz)
4b Leap forward onto left foot (1), pause (2), and close right to fifth position behind (3)
Repeat three more times with the same foot; the fourth time, the gentleman swings in front of the lady to put his back to line of dance and take closed position
4b Waltz two complete turns, opening up at the end to restart
Not very exciting, eh? I personally prefer the extremely similar Military Waltz (described here), which uses a leap-pause-hop/point instead of a leap-pause-close and alternates feet rather than this lame-duck-like repetition four times with the same foot. The Eugénie is really nothing but a less-pleasing variation.
Lopp's version (La Eugénie) doesn't offer much improvement, but it does have two differences:
- The general sequence is the same, but Lopp specified closing to third position behind instead of fifth and mixed it up a little bit in the first part: he had the dancers leap forward on their first foot on the first, second, and fourth bars...but on the third, use the other foot! I don't find this to be any real improvement; it makes things a little more confusing and not significantly more interesting.
- Lopp used the word "Boston" for the waltz segment. "Boston" is one of those unhelpful terms that was used for more than one style of waltzing over the years -- in fact, it's used differently by Gilbert and Lopp. Lopp's version is step-step-close, making a sort of zigzag rather than full turns every two bars; he noted that "La premiere et la deuxieme partie s'exécutent en faisant un quart au plus, demi-tour à droite" ("The first and the second part are executed by making a quarter at most, half turn to the right") and "Moins on tourne, mieux ça va. Allonger en avant et en arrière" ("The less one turns, the better it goes. Lengthen [one's steps] forward and backward.") This is not a conflicting description of the waltz. It's actually a different step, representing an evolution in dance style over the two or three decades between the original creation of the dance in America and Lopp's inclusion of it in his French book. He made a similar Boston-for-waltz replacement in other dances. I would regard the version with a Gilbert-style leaping (or glide) "new" waltz to be the original, with Lopp's version a later French style. Which one chooses depends on how, or in what geographical/temporal context, one wishes to dance
Music
What's interesting to me, and the other reason (beyond Gilbert/Lopp-completism) that I've bothered with the Eugénie is that we actually have the music for this dance, composed by Miss Mamie Gavin and published in 1885 under the unlikely name "Eugenie-Trot", as shown on the sheet music cover above. It may be found on the Library of Congress website here. Despite the "trot" in the title, it is, in fact, a waltz.
Dance instructions are not given in the sheet music, but I feel reasonably confident that the Eugénie and the Eugenie-Trot are one and the same; I just don't believe that Mahler would have written another waltz-time dance with such a similar name. Additionally, the melody line of the music mostly has a "1-pause-3" rhythm (quarter note, rest, quarter note) in each measure, which is consistent with the pattern of the first part of the dance above.
Lopp gave a tempo of 184 beats per minute (standard for him for waltzes). That is a bit brisk with a leap waltz (it's easier with Lopp's Boston), but the speed is helpful in the first part -- with music that is too slow, it drags terribly.
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