Baby-Polka (La Badoise)

Despite the instructions for the dance being listed as the Baby Polka in M. B. Gilbert's Round Dancing (Portland, Maine, 1890) and La Polka Bébé in George Washington Lopp's La Danse (Paris, 1903), the first thing to know about the Baby Polka is that it is actually an older folk dance called La Badoise, for which French composer-choreographer François Paul appears to have either written new music or adapted a folk tune (as he did with Sir Roger de Coverley for his "Gigue anglaise croisée") and then credited himself with the choreography.  "Baby-Polka" thus appears to be simply the name of Paul's composition, which over the last century or so has become (or remained) strongly associated with the folk dance in France and elsewhere, though it is not the only tune attached to it.  The name Baby-Polka seems to have merged with Badoise to become the name of the dance as well.

The image at left above (click to enlarge) is from my own copy of Paul's "Baby-Polka" sheet music; it was reproduced exactly in Gilbert, as may be seen here.

The word "badoise" refers to the German region of Baden, or possibly to the spa town Baden-Baden, so it makes perfect sense that French writers attributed the dance's origin to Germany.  Eugène Giraudet, in and early edition of his Traité de la danse (c1890) simply stated "La Badoise est d'origine allemande" (The Badoise is of German origin).  G. Desrat, in his Dictionnaire de la Danse (1895), noted less definitively that it "paraît être d'origine allemande" (would appear to be of German origin), though he also noted its close analogy to a Russian children's dance, "la menace".  In the Lussan-Borel Traité de la Danse (c1900 and c1904 editions), it was given an "origine teutonne".

Lopp, in La Danse, claimed to have researched the origin of the Baby Polka, to no avail:

La polka Bébé, une des premières danses champêtres connues, nous vient de la Bohême; mais à quelle époque remonte son origine? On n'en sait rien, elle se perd dans la nuit des temps. C'est en vain que j'ai fait des recherches, nulle trace; seule une tradition que j'ai pu trouver et d'après laquelle la polka Bébé aurait été composée par une maitresse d'école qui l'aurait fait danser par ses élèves devant un haut personnage pour fêter son passage.

My loose translation:

The baby polka, one of the premier known dances of the countryside, comes to us from Bohemia; but to what era does its origin go back? We do not know, it is lost in the darkness of time. I have searched in vain, no trace; only one tradition that I was able to find, according to which the baby polka was composed by a schoolmistress who would have had it danced by her students dance for an important personage to celebrate his passage.

He settled on it being Bohemian and cited a Mademoiselle Suski, who provided Lopp with some lyrics to sing while dancing.  

I haven't tried to trace the folk dance origins of the Badoise, but its finger-wagging "scolding" element goes back at least as far as Arbeau's sixteenth-century Branle des Lavandières (Washerwomen's Branle). 

Whatever its origins, in late nineteenth century France it was primarily conceived of as a children's dance.  Desrat on the topic:

La badoise, en raison des mouvements des mains coïncidant avec ceux des pieds, ne peut être dansée que dans les matinées enfantines.

My loose translation:

The badoise, because of the coordinated movements of the hands and feet, can be danced only at children's daytime events.

Other writers' similar thoughts will be noted below.

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Paul's music was dated by Giraudet in his index of his music collection in a later edition of Traité de la Danse (1900, Vol. II) to 1886, but Desrat took its history in France back slightly further:

...cette danse avait été importée en France par Mme. Gueneau de Mussy, femme du comte Gueneau, le célèbre médecin de la famille d'Orléans.  Vers 1880, je la vis danser chez elle pour la première fois.

My translation:

...this dance was imported to France by Madame Gueneau de Mussy, wife of the Count Gueneau, the famous doctor of the Orleans family.  Around 1880, I saw it danced for the first time in her home. 

The Guéneau de Mussy family included several famous physicians, and I haven't been able to figure out for certain which of their wives was the lady to whom Desrat referred.  The two most likely candidates are the wives of two first cousins: Clémence Janssens de Burges (1829-1919), wife of Henri François Guéneau de Mussy (1814-1892), and Isabelle Mac Swiney (1835-1892), second wife of Noël Guéneau de Mussy (1813-1885).  I can find no record of either doctor being a "comte" (Count), but both were members of the Légion d'honneur (Henri's records are here).  Noël seems to have been more famous overall, but on the French Wikipedia page for notable members of the family Guéneau de Mussy, Henri is described as médecin de la Maison d'Orléans (doctor of the House of Orleans), and Clémence was of Belgian descent.  Isabelle was Irish, and although Noël was Paris-based, I believe Clémence is more likely to have been a French society hostess and the Madame Guéneau de Mussy whom Desrat credits with introducing the Badoise to France.

Paul seems not to have been the only composer inspired by La Badoise; Giraudet's music index also included a Nouvelle Badoise, with figures, published by author/composer H. Verley in 1890.

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Reconstruction
The instructions published in Paul's sheet music were reproduced almost word for word by both Gilbert and Lopp; Gilbert even published them in French, with no English translation.  The dance is quite simple:

Part I (16b)
In normal close ballroom hold, sixteen measures of polka; eight complete turns.  Then open up and step apart, facing each other, for the second part, which both dancers perform.

Part II (16b)
1b   Slap both hands to sides of thighs (1), then clap hands once (2)
1b   Clap two hands against partner's two hands three times (1&2)
2b   Repeat the above two measures
1b   Shake the right finger three times at partner (1&2)
1b   Shakes the left finger three times at partner (1&2)
2b   Four walking steps (pas marché) turning in a circle to the left (1, 2, 3, 4)
8b   Repeat all of the above, then take close hold to begin again from Part I

In case this is not entirely self-explanatory, here are closeups of the illustrations from Paul's sheet music of the movements of Part II; click to enlarge them.  Note that in the top image, the sequence is center-left-right and in the bottom one it is right-left-center.

Paul's instructions also offered the option of pirouettes instead of walking steps for the final turn.  Paul and Gilbert phrased this as "4 pas marchés ou pirouettes", which Lopp turned into "quatre pas marchés ou quatre pirouettes".  I'm not certain Paul intended four complete pirouettes, rather than four beats of pirouette.  But in any case, since it was a children's dance, and his illustration looks to me more like walking in a circle than pirouetting, I have gone with the walking steps in my reconstruction.  Many of the French sources for the Badoise, however, preferred the pirouette; if one needed to make a distinction between the Baby-Polka and the Badoise, that might well be it.

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Moving back one step from the Baby-Polka, at least three different authors provided instructions for the Badoise: Giraudet (c1890, 1900, 1913), Lussan-Borel's Traité de la Danse (c1900 and c1904), and B. G. Bottallo, in his Guide du bon danseur (1912).

In his c1890 and 1890 editions of Traité de la Danse, Giraudet gave the same familiar sequence under the name Badoise, associating it with the Baby-Polka only in the later volume's index, where it was listed as BADOISE ou Baby-Polka, de F. Paul.  He used the same language in both editions, sniffing that the dance "n'est pas tres goutee chez nous. Cependent, je dois ajouter que quelques societes l'ont adoptee." (My translation: "is not much to our taste at home.  However, I must add that some societies have adopted it.")  The final turn was a pirouette, literally "tour sur place sur la pointe du pied gauche".

In his 1913 Méthode moderne pour bien apprendre la danse, Giraudet listed it as a dance for children and called it the Baby-Polka ou Badoise.  The final turn was a "tour sur soi-même (pirouette)".

In both editions of Lussan-Borel, it was noted that the dance was performed to polka music, "notamment" (especially) "Baby-Polka".  The instructions in these manuals started with Part II and ended with the polka, and the final turn was "un tour à gauche en pivotant sur la pointe du pied gauche".  He commented that the gestures were "beaucoup trop familiers pour être admis autrement qu'entre jeunes enfants et encore d'une certaine intimité" ("far too familiar to be admitted other than between young children and, as well, those of a certain intimacy.")

Bottallo called it the Badoise Polka and noted that it had special music.  He commented that it was quite old, but in current times was only used for children's balls, though if it were still danced in "certaines soirées familiales" it was because it was very simple and amusing.  

Paul's illustrations showed the clapping of hands at about shoulder height.  Giraudet and Lussan-Borel agreed.  Bottallo suggested face height, and for the finger-wagging, eye height, with the adorable turn of phrase "une gracieuse menace" (a gracious threat).  The final turn was a "pirouette sur eux-mêmes en tournant a gauche".  Bottallo gave a diagram for a pirouette which showed the right foot crossing in front of the left and propelling the dancer around.

In America, the Baby Polka reappeared in the posthumous book School Dances (1913), credited to Gilbert but edited by Susan Hoffman Gilman, with sheet music that was a transposed version of Paul's and a few variations in the instructions:

• While wagging index fingers, the dancers should cross their free arm so that the elbow of the other arm rests on it, head and body bent towards the index finger, and the same foot pointed forward in fourth position.
  
  
• When switching to the other finger, the dancers should jump, changing to extend the other foot and reversing the position of the head, body, and arms.
  
  
• Instead of four walking steps, the dancer may step onto the left foot and then hop three times, turning to the left, with the right foot beating in front and behind.

The arm positions are directly contradicted by Paul's illustrations, which show the free hand at the hip.  The extended front foot is mostly supported by the illustrations and is a nice touch.  The hopping turn to the left seems to be a Gilbert innovation.

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While the Badoise can be done to any polka music, it does work especially nicely with Paul's composition, which has a distinctive musical motif that matches the clapping in the second part:

Here's a software-generated audio clip of Paul's music with the first sixteen bars of polka and then the sixteen bars of "Baby-Polka":

Baby-Polka Clip

 

It's not especially hard to find a nineteenth-century edition of Paul's sheet music; at this writing there were several available for sale on ebay and other sites.  Recordings can be found on folk-dance albums under the names "Badoise" or "Baby-Polka", but note that both names appear attached to other pieces as well.  Here's a link to a version on an album of folk music from Auvergne. 

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As a final note: while I'm not going to make a project of tracing what has happened to the Badoise/Baby Polka over the last 125 years or so, it survives as a modern-day folk dance that seems especially popular in Spain.  It has acquired some variations and often involves only eight bars of the first motif (polka) followed by sixteen bars of the second (hand movements); here's a nice modern audio track with that pattern.  This video has the traditional sixteen/sixteen structure and a very folksy version of the Paul music.  The dance is very close to the version described above.  At the other extreme, here's a group of Spanish dancers doing a heavily folk-processed mixer version that has lost its polka entirely but is still using the Paul music.

Comments

[Jim McKinney]

Michigan square dance caller Don Hendrickson and his wife danced this dance in 1991 to an AB version of Jenny Lind Polka at the square dance held for the presentation of Les Raber’s Michigan Heritage Award. The B part of Jenny Lind fits the hand-clapping and finger-wagging quite nicely. I can’t imagine how this dance got to rural Michigan but I’m not surprised since Sally Waters, Rye Waltz, the Irish Trot and the Varsovienne were also common at old-time Michigan square dances. Thanks for sharing this one.

[Susan de Guardiola]

Jim, thanks for sharing! I love that some of these nineteenth-century dances survived into the twentieth century in living tradition. Dances in nineteenth century America traveled more widely than one would expect, moving with the expansion of American settlement in the west. Newspapers spread the word, dance manuals were plentiful, and traveling callers passed things along.

I've also covered the Rye Waltz (here) and Sally Waters (here) on Kickery. At some point I'll get to writing about the Varsovienne!

[Birte Hoffmann-Cabenda]

This fun dance was described as "Strašák" in Alfred Waldau: Böhmische Nationaltänze, 1859; in Germany is was called "Reichsverweser".