For a change of pace, here's a leap year-themed cotillion (dance party game) figure from H. Layton Walker's Twentieth Century Cotillion Figures (Two Step Publishing Company, Buffalo, New York, 1912). I think the only "leap year" element in it is that the ladies pursue the gentlemen, rather than the reverse.
Here's the original text:
LEAP YEAR FIGURE
For this figure you will require one more gentleman than you do ladies. An extra man is required to put on a paper shroud. This figure can be used for any number of couples, but it is always necessary to have an extra gentleman up. Couples up and dance. When they have danced a little while, form a circle, and grand right and left, the leader getting into the circle and when all dance the leader must secure one of the ladies. This will leave one of the gents out. He is "It," and goes to the centre to receive this paper suit. The ladies all receive a large ring having a tissue covering over it. Get another lady who is not in the figure, so that you will also have an odd lady up. She also receives one of the hoops. Now ask the ladies to catch a man. As there are not enough men for all the ladies the one who does not succeed in getting a man will have to contend [sic] herself by dancing with the dummy.
It took me a moment to sort this out because of how badly written the instructions are. The first three sentences can be ignored. Here's how it works:
- Some number of couples do a couple dance (typically waltz or two-step)
- They form a circle and do a grand right and left, the gentleman leading the cotillion joining in
- At a signal, all take new partners and once more dance
- The odd gentleman out goes to the center of the circle to receive a paper "shroud" (burial cloth), making him look like a classic ghost-in-a-bedsheet
- At another signal, all the ladies are given large hoops with tissue paper fill, like the kind used in circuses (see below)
- The ladies chase the gentlemen and, presumably, smash the hoops over their heads, breaking the tissue paper
- The new couples continue dancing
- Whichever lady failed to capture a gentleman dances with the one wearing the shroud
Other than having to cover a lot of hoops with tissue paper, or find a commercial supplier of such, this would be an easy figure to organize. The 1923 photo at left (click to enlarge) shows a clown holding a tissue-paper-filled hoop that the lady is presumably supposed to dive through. It's taken from a series of Barnum photo negatives held by the Library of Congress; the original is here. A later photo in the same series shows the hoop over the head of the clown.
The shroud could just as easily be an actual bedsheet; that seems easier than trying to make one out of paper.
Almost any cotillion figure in which the gentlemen hunt for or select partners could be turned into a "leap year" figure simply by reversing the genders.
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