Along with masquerade and fancy dress balls and costumes, the other topic I generally include in October is suitably wacky cotillion figures, dance party games that could be part of the final section of a ball or of a stand-alone event. Most of them are simple mixers, but I have a gleeful passion for the stranger ones that involve costumes or props or simply strike me as delightfully weird. Here are a couple of the latter, both taken from H. Layton Walker's Twentieth Century Cotillion Figures (Two Step Publishing Company, Buffalo, New York, 1912).
1. Human Palm Trees. Original description:
After the fifty couples have danced a little while the music stops an the gentlemen are requested to form groups of ten each. The palm leaves numbered from one to ten constitute the first group and eleven to twenty the next group, etc. Three chairs are given to each group for several of the gentlemen to stand on and hold up their palm leaves as high as possible. The rest of the gentlemen crowd around them and also hold up their palm leaves, thus forming a “Human Palm Tree.” The ladies who have also palm leaves, which are given them are separated into circles, numbers one to ten representing first circle, eleven to twenty next circle, etc. The ladies now circle around palm tree representing same numbers. They may play ring-a-ring-Rosie or go through a grand right and left movement. The Human Palm Tree suddenly collapses and the gentlemen pick out their partners by matching numbers of palm leaves and a general dance follows.
I'm fairly certain some of Walker's figures were originally translated from French or German sources, and the grammar on this one makes me suspect this might have been one of them. Or perhaps it was just badly edited. Either way, this is a simple mixer figure with visuals that just make me laugh. The only props needed are palm fronds, but it does require a fairly large group of couples. Not necessarily fifty, but enough to make reasonably robust palm trees and have enough ladies for a comfortable circle around them. The instructions suggest five sets of ten couples each, but in a smaller group I feel it would be better to have, err, bushier palm trees by keeping a minimum of ten couples to each, even if that means fewer of them.
The preparation (pre-cotillion) is to number two matching sets of palm fronds and divide them into sets of ten. The ten gentlemen for each palm tree and the ten ladies meant to circle them each get matching sets. I feel this would be more interesting if the distribution were completely random and sets of numbers just directed to particular corners ("one to ten over here!")
Each palm tree needs three chairs; as many gentlemen as fit stand on them, while the rest of them cluster close and raise their palm fronds high.
The ladies circle in some fashion. I rather like the "Paul Jones" approach of circling for awhile and then doing a grand chain until...and these are the words that struck me as just so ridiculous that I had to do this figure..."the Human Palm Tree suddenly collapses" and the dancers seek out people with the matching numbers on their palm fronds. For some reason (perhaps the word "collapse"?) I picture this as less an orderly separation of the gentlemen and careful stepping-down from the chairs and more like the overly-crowded gentlemen crammed onto the chairs suddenly falling off and taking some of the gentlemen below with them, resulting in a heap of tailcoat-clad gentlemen in a pile on the floor clutching tattered palm fronds.
I'm not sure how easily easily one acquires real palm fronds unless (1) it's close to Easter or (2) one lives in Florida or California, but one could either make paper ones or substitute some other, more easily acquired sort of plant that has suitable branches. I am reminded that Orthodox Christians in Russia use pussy willow branches rather than palm fronds, presumably because Russia's climate is not conducive to palm trees. Human Pussy Willows?
2. Woodland Figure. Original description:
A beautiful large bird house, made to be carried over a man’s head, handsome chenille birds which are numbered and named after the popular birds, and canary warblers are named to correspond with the chenille birds. The orchestra is instructed to play some appropriate summer melody such as “In the Good Old Summer Time,” etc. The musicians are also given canary warblers to play with their music. After the number of couples up have danced a “round,” signal for he gentleman to retire to the side room, where the single gentleman who has to wear the bird house is waiting to get a chance to fly into the room. This gentleman has a canary warbler on which he plays while entering the ball-room. After he has been flying and fluttering around the room awhile the ladies are requested each to catch one of the chenille birds, which are roosting in this bird house. After each lady has caught a bird, the gentlemen who in the side room have all been given canary warblers will fly into the ball-room chirping and singing after their mates, making many birds in the ball-room. Two canaries will pair off and dance in one direction, the nightingales, sparrows, etc., all do likewise.
The birdhouse should be 18 inches long and 15 inches high by 16 wide.
This is one of those prop-heavy figures that requires significant prop-preparation:
- a birdhouse of the given dimensions (18"x15"x16")
- a way to attach it to a gentleman (it does say "wear"...)
- chenille birds, named or numbered, for the ladies
- canary warblers, named or numbered, for the gentlemen, with one extra, plus some for the musicians
As far as I can tell, a canary warbler is a bird whistle; here's a picture of some brass ones, probably from the 1920s:
There are modern equivalents. Plastic would be unfortunate, but wooden, metal, and ceramic ones would be options, even if they aren't actually bird-shaped.
For the birds, chenille birds apparently used to be quite a thing, at least in mid-twentieth century America. Here are a couple of pictures, though I can't even guess at the date. Click to enlarge.
Vintage chenille birds of uncertain age seem to be rather easy to find on ebay, etsy, etc. For the craft-oriented, here are instructions on how to make basic chenille chicks using "bump chenille" (easily available); adding extra pipe-cleaner wings and some judicious touch-ups with paint on white ones could result in more variety of species, or one could simply go by color and paint the whistles or add ribbons to match. There are probably other kinds of small toy birds that would work equally well.
The action of the figure is straightforward, though hard to even explain with a straight face:
- one gentleman leaves early to prepare himself with the bird cage containing the chenille birds
- at the end of a dance, the other gentlemen leave the room
- the musicians play their warblers and the single gentleman enters, wearing a cage full of chenille birds, and flies and flutters around the ballroom, playing his warbler
- after awhile, the ladies all take one of the chenille birds
- the other gentlemen fly into the ballroom, playing their warblers and seeking their matching ladies
- as couples find each other, they dance
For some reason, probably from the same evil source as my vision of the collapsing Human Palm Tree, I picture the birdcage on the gentleman's head, and the ladies reaching up blindly to pluck their birds out of it. On his back probably makes more sense, alas.
As to the vision of all the gentlemen playing bird whistles and fluttering around the room...that's right there in the instructions.
Enjoy!
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