Capering & Kickery

Foxtrot Styling, c1920

A nice little style detail for the foxtrot as danced in England in the years after World War I:

"A variation is also to be observed in the chassé done alternately to left and right, at an angle of 45 degrees to the line of the dance.  In the ordinary way of doing this, say, when the man is going forward, he slides the left foot forward to the left, and then brings the right foot up to the left, and again advances the left.  The new variation is to cross the right foot behind the left.  When the chassé is done to the right, it is of course the left foot which is crossed behind the right.  The lady (or the gentleman if he is going backwards), crosses her foot in front of the foot that is first moved."
        --- "The Sitter Out" (column) in The Dancing Times (London), January 1920, p.270.

By the "chassé", the writer means the two-step, as is clear from the description of the "ordinary way" of performing it.  The description is referenced again in March, 1920, issue (p. 439; the numbering is continuous across multiple issues).  In the "To-Day in the Ballroom" box shown at left (click to enlarge), under "Fox-Trot", there is a note that "The crossing of the feet (described in January) is popular and effective if the steps are kept small."

CD Review: Minuets & Optional Dances ~ Ignatius Sancho

I recently saw the eighteenth-century African-British composer Ignatius Sancho (1729-1780) described as "largely forgotten", which struck me as an odd way to describe someone who's been the subject of a modern biography (Ignatius Sancho: African Man of Letters, by Reyahn King, Sukhdev Sandhu, James Walvin and Jane Girdham (1997)) and a one-man play in both London and New York City, recently had a new collection of his letters published (Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho, an African, edited by Vincent Carretta (2015)), has had both facsimile and modern editions of his music published (including Ignatius Sancho (1729-1780), An Early African Composer in England: The Collected Editions of His Music in Facsimile, by Josephine B. Wright (1981) and at least five books of his works in modern notation from Africanus Editions), whose music is being recorded and performed, and, last but not least, whose dances have been the subject of at least a couple of books of reconstructions.  We should all be so forgotten!

It occurred to me that I had one of those recordings, Minuets & Optional Dances (2015), by the Afro-American Chamber Music Society Orchestra, tucked away somewhere.  I hadn't ever done much with it because it consists primarily of minuets, which are not something I spend much time on.  But the 240th anniversary of his death seems like a good day to dig it out!