Capering & Kickery

Elite Lanciers (3 of 3)

Wrapping up Gilbert's Elite Lanciers, here are the fourth and fifth figures.  Introductory material and the first figure may be found in my first post in this series; the second and third figures are in the second.

The fourth figure as given in Link:

8b   Introduction [not repeated]
4b   All swing corners with right hand half round address
4b   All turn and swing with left hand half round, address
4b   All join hands, forward & back, address
8b   Four ladies cross right hand, half round, left hand back
Played 4 times
3rd & 4th time gents

This is another figure where Link's brevity completely obscures the interesting part: that this is a mixer figure, in which the dancers change positions and partners every time until they regain their home positions after the fourth time through!

Elite Lanciers (2 of 3)

Continuing along with Gilbert's Elite Lanciers, here are figures two and three!  An introduction and the first figure may be found in my previous post.

The second figure as given in Link:

8b   Introduction [not repeated]
4b   Head ladies forward & back
4b   Cross over
4b   Head couples chassa to the left & right
4b   Head ladies pass to the couples on their left and swing gent with the right hand half round
4b   Chassa
4b   Turn partner to place
Played 4 times
3rd & 4th time gents

The interesting element that is not obvious from these instructions is which dancers do the second "chassa".  Following Rivers, it's meant to be done by six dancers in two trios in "wavy" formation, with the gentleman facing two ladies, holding hands, and all three moving in the same direction.

Eiite Lanciers (1 of 3)

The Elite Lanciers is a variant Lancers set created by M. B. Gilbert, most famous for his couple dance collection, Round Dancing (Portland, Maine, 1890).  The Elite Lanciers does not appear in Round Dancing.  I came across it first in the Unique Dancing Call Book by Charles Link (Rochester, NY, c1893), where it did not impress me as particularly interesting.  What changed my mind about these figures was finding a second source: New Dances, by C. H. Rivers (Brooklyn, c1890), with an attribution to Gilbert.  Link trimmed the calls in his book to a bare minimum (and didn't mention the creators of the figures).  Rivers not only offered more detailed calls but also added some additional notes and gave Gilbert his credit.  Along with being a fun set of figures, this makes the Elite Lanciers an interesting example of how a minimalist set of calls can make what's actually quite a nice set of figures into something that looks too boring to bother with. 

The Latest York

Years ago, when I was working intensely on the "York set" of variations (see here, here, here, here, and here), I somehow skipped The Latest York, possibly because, unlike all those other "Yorks", it does not feature the characteristic York step sequence of slide-close-slide-cut/close in "1&23" rhythm.  

M. B. Gilbert published The Latest York in his Round Dancing (Portland, Maine, 1890) "by permission of Constantine Carpenter, Son, and Charles C. Martel".  This style of credit generally refers to the choreographer of the sequence and/or composer of the music.  The same pair are also credited with the Gavotte Glide.  Carpenter is listed in Gilbert's directory of dancing masters as living in Philadelphia.  Martel is not in Gilbert's directory, but his name appears in Philadelphia newspapers (The Times, October 21, 1894, e.g.) during the 1890s offering parties and lessons. 

Interestingly, The Latest York is one of the few dances from Gilbert that G. W. Lopp did not translate and reprint in La Danse (Paris, 1903).

Rye, just Rye

Moving right along with late nineteenth-century variations from the usual pair of M. B. Gilbert (Round Dancing, Portland, Maine, 1890) and G. W. Lopp (La Danse, Paris, 1903), here's a short one that's classified as a redowa or mazurka.  Lopp attributed La Rye to Gilbert, who had previously printed it in his own work without attribution.  Gilbert did not ever credit himself specifically in his own book, unfortunately, which makes it difficult to be absolutely certain of the attribution.

The name of the variation suggests that it was meant to be danced to a musical setting of the famous Robert Burns poem, "Comin' Thro' the Rye", which was set in both waltz and schottische rhythms (including both alternately in the Rye Waltz, a sequence dance dating back to at least the 1890s).  The waltz version of the tune, which may be heard on this YouTube video, is not accented like a redowa or mazurka and does not offer especially good musical support to this sequence of steps.  There may have been a version published with a more mazurka- or redowa-like style, but I haven't been able to locate one.  Skilled musicians might also be able to tweak it musically on the fly.  It's also possible that there was a completely different tune called "The Rye", but I actually find this less likely, as the word was so strongly associated with a particular tune.  There was a 1922 novelty dance ("The New Rye Dance") published which combined a "redowa, Rye movement, and waltz" using "Comin' Thro' the Rye", but that's much too late to mean anything more than that people really liked adapting "Comin' Thro' the Rye" for dancing. 

In the absence of adventurous musicians or a mazurka/redowa-accented recording of "Comin' Thro' the Rye", I'd not really recommend that piece for these steps.  They work much better with an appropriate polka mazurka or redowa tune.  For tempo, Lopp offered his typical  recommendation of 144 beats per minute, which works quite well and matches Gilbert's overall recommendation for  redowa/mazurka.

Wayside Gavotte

Just to be thorough, here's a quick reconstruction of the Wayside Gavotte I mentioned in my previous post on the Stephanie Gavotte.  This is another short couple dance sequence, but unlike M. B. Gilbert's Stephanie Gavotte, it moves normally along line of dance throughout and loosely follows a "doubled" schottische pattern with four bars of forward travel and four bars (more-or-less) of turning.  Though it is meant to be danced to "Stéphanie-Gavotte", there is no reason it can't be danced to other schottische music.

Per Gilbert Dances, Vol. II (1913, Susan Hoffman Gilman, ed.), the Wayside Gavotte was choreographed by Helen C. Way, whom I presume to have been a student of Gilbert's.  It is undated, and since, according to the biography in Gilbert Dances, Vol. I, Gilbert was teaching until his death, it could be from as late as the beginning of 1910.  The use of the waltz-galop step feels to me more reminiscent of the schottische sequences of the 1880s-1890s, however, so I suspect it is from closer to 1900.

Stephanie Gavotte

The Stephanie Gavotte is a short (eight-bar) schottische/gavotte sequence which George Washington Lopp, in La Danse (Paris, 1903), attributed to M. B. Gilbert.  It had previously appeared in Gilbert's Round Dancing (Portland, Maine, 1890) without any specific attribution.  

The sequence was almost certainly created for the popular "Stéphanie-Gavotte", op. 312 of Austro-Hungarian composer Alphons Czibulka (1842-1894).  The piece was composed in 1880 in honor of the engagement of Rudolf, Crown Prince of Austria, to Princess Stéphanie of Belgium and apparently became enormously popular.  It's quite easy to find the sheet music; the Library of Congress alone has eighteen copies of it online, including this 1885 edition, from which the image at left was taken.  Performances and recordings of it are likewise easy to find; here's a nice one by the Belgian orchestra Brabelio: