Capering & Kickery

May 2019 Gig Calendar

Last month in Moscow!  Along with preparing for my homeward migration at the end of the month, I'll be traveling to Odessa for Vintage Dance Exchange 2019 - By the Sea and teaching a full slate of waltz and nineteenth-century classes and private lessons.

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Friday, May 3rd ~ Moscow, Russia
Private class
3:00-6:00pm
Noted here just to hold the date/time.

Sunday, May 5th ~ Moscow, Russia
Private lesson
6:00-8:00pm
Noted here just to hold the date/time.

Thursday-Sunday, May 9-12th ~ Odessa, Ukraine
Vintage Dance Exchange 2019 - By the Sea (Facebook event)
A weekend of classes, balls, and parties with multiple teachers and both historical and folk dance!  My classes will include: Gentle Polka Mazurka Variations (late 19th century American), Dolce Amoroso Fuoco (16th century Italian), Musicality: New Waltz Musical Crossovers (late 19th century American), Quadrille Cinq Parties du Monde (mid-19th century French), and more!  Events will include an open mic dance party, a Renaissance ball, a Regency picnic, a late nineteenth century ball, a trip to the Odessa opera, and an early twentieth century afterparty.

Tuesdays, May 14th & 21st  ~ Moscow, Russia
Intermediate Cross-Step Waltz
7:00-10:00pm; lessons 7:00-8:15/8:30-9:45 + two 15-minute practice sessions.  New variations and review of material from 2018-2019 season.

Thursdays, May 16th, 23rd, 30th ~ Moscow, Russia
Late 19th Century Polka Mazurka Plus
7:00-9:00pm
Improvisation in polka mazurka using steps and sequences from American variations of the 1880s.  Emphasis on musicality.  Steps work with polka-mazurka, redowa, and mazurka music.  Also: applying these variations in galop and jig time!  Pay by the week or for the full four-week course.

Friday, May 24th ~ Moscow, Russia
Beginner's couple dance class
8:00pm
Easy partner dance choreographies from the early 20th century!  Beginner-friendly! 

Saturdays, May 19th & 26th ~ Moscow, Russia
Private lessons
5:15-7:15pm
Noted here just to hold the dates/times.

Tuesday, May 28th ~ Moscow, Russia
Farewell 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 or (Russians) contact me on VK if you would like to schedule a private lesson.

Moscow, Russia: May 1-6, 13-31
Odessa, Ukraine: May 8-12

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Three Tiny Galop Variations

Wrapping up my impromptu miniseries of posts on galop variations found in M. B. Gilbert's Round Dancing (Portland, Maine, 1890) and G. W. Lopp's La Danse (Paris, 1903), here's a trio of galop variations which I don't feel warrant sufficient time or analysis for individual posts:

• Two of the three are short "do something, then some galop" sequences; the other is even shorter and rather dull
• None of them are very challenging to perform, and two have repeated leaps from a complete stop, which, as a dancer, I don't really enjoy. 
• None of them have any conflicts between sources. 
• One has a reconstruction problem, but it's minor and easily resolved. 
• I fully expect that all of them have matching sheet music and that the names of the variations are actually the names of the tunes to which they were choreographed, but I haven't been able to locate any of it, and none of them are sufficiently attractive to inspire me to spend much time searching.

So, in the interest of efficiency, here's the trio together with brief notes about each.

The Gaiety (La Gaité)

This is turning into a miniseries of galop variation posts.  Moving right along, the Gaiety is another one found in both M. B. Gilbert's Round Dancing (Portland, Maine, 1890) and G. W. Lopp's La Danse (Paris, 1903).  The dance was attributed to George T. Wilson by Gilbert and plain George Wilson by Lopp.  I'm familiar with books by George E. Wilson, but not George T. Wilson.  The "T" might be a typo, but I don't think it is.  George E. published rather standard manuals from New York.  The two I have looked at (one that I own, one at the New York Public Library) do not include the Gaiety, and are so pedestrian and derivative that I think it unlikely that he created something as, ah, non-pedestrian as the racket-like Gaiety.  And Gilbert listed George T. as living in Maine.  Possibly the reason they both used their middle initials was to avoid confusion!

Gilbert noted that the Gaiety was accepted by the American Society of Professors of Dancing, New York, on September 4th, 1889.

Allowing for translation issues, the two descriptions are almost identical in wording, and the reconstruction is mostly straightforward.  For the steps given below, the gentleman begins on the left foot and the lady on the right.  The starting position is a normal closed ballroom hold, starting either with the gentleman facing more-or-less along line of dance (if dancing diagonally, which is my preferred reconstruction) or with his back to the center if one is attempting to turn the Gaiety.  See the notes below for more about this issue.

The Puritan Waltz (La Puritan Galop)

The Puritan Waltz is not, actually, a waltz.  It's a galop variation found in both Round Dancing (M. B. Gilbert, Portland, Maine, 1890) and La Danse (G. W. Lopp, Paris, 1903).  Gilbert described it under the name The Puritan Waltz and also referenced it under The Jubilee.  Lopp chose truth in advertising over adherence to the original and went with La Puritan Galop.  The two descriptions match perfectly in the practical aspects, though Gilbert gets a little more poetic in naming the parts of the dance after...a whaling expedition?  I feel like there must be some story behind a dance with parts called "The Calm", "The Fluke", and "The Gale", but I've no idea what it might be.  Nantucket Puritans?

With a title like that, the first question that comes to mind is whether it's mis-listed or mis-described and really meant to be a waltz.  It's not; the sheet music by George Fox (cover image at left; click to enlarge) is online at the Library of Congress, complete with dance instructions that are nearly a word-for-word match with Gilbert.  It's nice to have an outside source for a Gilbert/Lopp-published dance; it doesn't happen as often as I'd like.

Per the sheet music, the dance is by E. Woodworth Masters, was published in 1885, and was accepted by the National Association of Teachers of Dancing.  Gilbert and Lopp both duly credit Masters.

Love's Provocations, 1855

Love's Provocations; being Extracts taken in the most Unmanly and Unmannerly Manner from the Diary of Miss Polly C-- is a comic novel published in 1855 by an English clergyman writing under a pseudonym (cover image at left; click to enlarge).  After some of the painfully earnest and unintentionally hilarious (to a modern reader) Victorian novels I've read for dance research, it's a relief to read one that was actually intended to be funny.  As a bonus, it also has more interesting and valuable dance information than most of the more serious ones!

Cuthbert M. Bede was the pen name of Edward Bradley (1827-1889).  He wrote a number of novels and short pieces for many different publications (notably, The Illustrated London News and Punch) as well as constructing acrostic puzzles.  Biographical information and more about his writing career may be found on his Wikipedia page, but The Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature (1940) provides a much more complete bibliography of his books and confirms the 1855 publication date for Love's Provocations.  

The novel is the story of the romantic tribulations of "Polly", who is madly in love with one Walter Vernon, much to the dismay of her protective parents and her brother Fred, who consider him -- accurately -- to be a scoundrel.  The title of the book is a play on The provocations of Madame Palissy by Anne Manning (1807-1879), which is explicitly referenced by Polly as the inspiration for her journal.  She claims not to have read it; I skimmed it, and there doesn't seem to be any thematic connection.  Madame Palissy's provocations were rather more serious, so the appropriation of the term by Polly is just more evidence of her general silliness.

Polly is abetted in her clandestine love affair by her friend Madge, whose brother Joseph is also in love with Polly.  She is also being courted by an older friend of her father's.  Walter, meanwhile is also flirting heavily with the Madder Brown sisters, Rose and Hyacinth.  "Rose Madder Brown" is a joking reference to the red dye rose madder, one of Bradley's many plays on words.  Others include "a castle in Ayrshire" (castles in the air) for Walter's imaginary wealthy family, and the dancing master "Signor Pussigutti", a reference to catgut, from which violin strings were made.  Dancing masters were often violinists as well, and played for their own dance classes.  The plot is about what you'd expect: Polly plays her suitors against each other and generally acts like a shallow and narcissistic idiot.  She ends up planning to elope with Walter, only to be thwarted by her devoted family.  It's full of over-the-top, buoyantly fake, melodrama:

I saw the gentlemen interfere, and take Mr. Joseph away ; and I thought that I could do no less than go into hysterics. So I sank on the couch, and began to go into them ; but Walter, instead of at once coming to support me through them (as naturally I intended him to do), left me in the most provoking manner, and went out of the conservatory; to attend to his own nose, I suppose. I then, of course, came-to very quickly...

This was after a confrontation between suitors disintegrated into the very drunk Joseph hurling oranges at Walter.  Other amusing scenes involve Walter's wig: long, poetic black locks with which he is covering -- horrors! -- bright red hair, and a moment in a boat when, after being miraculously saved from the incoming tide, Walter and Polly retreat to opposite ends of the boat to be comprehensively seasick.

Interestingly, considering it was written by a clergyman, after Polly is saved from Walter and abandoned by her other suitors for her fickleness, there is no scene of religious repentance and subsequent happy ending, nor does she waste away and die.  She just remains, for the nonce, unmarried and, apparently, unrepentant.

On to the dance material.

Late Victorian Waltz Variations: The College Step

Working my way through the waltz variations in Round Dancing (M. B. Gilbert, Portland, Maine, 1890) and La Danse (G. W. Lopp, Paris, 1903), here's one that can fairly confidently be classified as a step rather than a sequence written for a particular piece of music.  It's actually quite interesting, though less for the step than for the fact that though at first glance it looks like a two-part sequence, it's actually not.  Gilbert specifically (and ungrammatically) wrote:

Repeat ad lib, commencing at the second part.  At the termination of the side movement.  Waltz at pleasure, introducing the second part at will.  

In other words, waltz (the first part) for as long as you like, then do the second part (a set of sideways movements akin to a racket) for as long as you like.  In short, use the second part as a variation in your waltzing.  That's in line with how I suspect many of these variations were actually used, but it's unusual to see it stated so explicitly.

Late Victorian Waltz Variations: The Eugénie

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.